THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: jimbunny on 12 Jan 2008, 13:46
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Ran across this song; one of my all time favorite artists, Daisy May -
http://www.savethewildup.org/downstream/
(The best I've ever heard her voice on a recording, which is to say, to die for.)
She's on the Earthwork Music label (www.earthworkmusic.com), which, in addition to putting out really excellent folk music, gets involved with local environmental issues and farming (in the state of Michigan). Check it out for the music.
Also, wondering if you all had songs/artists you really liked (any genre) that could be considered 'environmentally conscious.'
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EARTH CRISIS.
/thread
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This is the new ethic. Animals' lives are their own and must be given respect. Reject the anthropocentric falsehood that maintains the oppressive hierarchy of mankind over the animals. It's time to set them free. Their lives reduced to biomachines in the factory, farm and laboratory. Dairy, eggs and meat, fur, suede, wool, leather are the end products of torture, confinement and murder. I abjure their use out of reverence for all innocent life. Wildlifes' right to live in peace in their natural environment without this civilization's interference can no longer be denied. Must no longer be denied. To make a civilization worthy of the word civilized the cruelty must end, starting within or own lives. Reject the anthropocentric falsehood that maintains the oppressive hierarchy of mankind over the animals. It's time to set them free. Veganism is the essence of compassion and peaceful living. The animals are not ours to abuse or dominate. I abjure their use out of reverence for all innocent life.
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Holy shit they're still around.
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they sure do like the word "abjure".
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just a heads up, i'm resisting the urge to post here one of my anti vegan rants. i'm gonna wait and see how this thread turns out first.
on the topic, music and issues have always gone hand in hand. dont question it, accept it
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I guess I should explain for you young'uns, Earth Crisis, despite being kind of horrible musically, are notoriously hypocritical - at one point in the mid-90s or so it became common knowledge that the band members ate meat and fucked groupies and smoked and drank and everything else.
Then, all the kids who had gotten Earth Crisis tattoos felt like idiots.
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So I have two questions.
1) Are they going to scold mountain lions for hunting their food? Maybe suggest tofu-rabbits?
2) Are they going to yell at bikers wearing leathers, or stick with the old ladies in fur coats?
@zero: Ah, I see, I never heard of them.
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1) Mountain Lions don't breed their food in horrible conditions, gas the undesireable ones at birth, etc. Also, certain animals need to eat meat to survive, such as felines. Also, are you suggesting people are as aware as mountain lions, or mountain lions are as aware as humans? Also your point is similar to being against people who don't support people eating their own children if they smell wrong, using the argument "because hamsters do it".
2) Considering you've never heard of them, and I assume you're talking about Earth Crisis (I have never heard of them either, but there was a hilarious Earth Crisis tattoo in the tattoo thread), how do you know who they yell at, if anyone at all?
one of my anti vegan rants.
No offense, but I hope it's reasonably legible.
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1) I agree that the meat breeding and killing market (what is the term for that again? I know there is one) is frequently inhumane, but their statement made no distinction between seal-clubbers, feedlot operators, and people that hunt only as much as they can eat, or hunt and donate the meat to soup kitchens. I would personally like to become one of those people that never eats meat that they haven't hunted themselves, but I don't think I could intentionally take the life of an animal, so I will probably end up continuing to eat meat from inhumanely-treated animals, since if I didn't see it happen, it is fine. Funny how the human mind works, isn't it?
I don't think that humans should do something solely because animals do it, I have even less desire to lick my hindside than I have ability to do so. The point I was making is that their statement seemed to imply that somehow we should go back to nature, some sort of paradise, when really, natural living would be living on the verge of starving and always living in fear of something that might consider you food.
2)By the quote I saw, they were sounding like the PETA people that yell at people wearing fur, throw paint/ketchup on them, etc, my comment was noting how those people never seem to aggravate the people that might respond in a less than civil way (civil: adj. running away from trouble and hoping it leaves you alone or someone else helps you).
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Stop the violence against plant life! Our vegtable brothers and sisters have been oppressed too long. They're lives are as precious as our own and the systematic killing to fill your empty stomachs only empties your heart and soul.
Stop the violence. Eat dirt instead.
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This is the new ethic. Animals' lives are their own and must be given respect. Reject the anthropocentric falsehood that maintains the oppressive hierarchy of mankind over the animals. It's time to set them free. Their lives reduced to biomachines in the factory, farm and laboratory. Dairy, eggs and meat, fur, suede, wool, leather are the end products of torture, confinement and murder. I abjure their use out of reverence for all innocent life. Wildlifes' right to live in peace in their natural environment without this civilization's interference can no longer be denied. Must no longer be denied. To make a civilization worthy of the word civilized the cruelty must end, starting within or own lives. Reject the anthropocentric falsehood that maintains the oppressive hierarchy of mankind over the animals. It's time to set them free. Veganism is the essence of compassion and peaceful living. The animals are not ours to abuse or dominate. I abjure their use out of reverence for all innocent life.
hehehe. guess earth crisis can henceforth get filed under the same mental compartment as NSBM in terms of 'they sound kinda cool but let's studiously ignore the politics'
never even thought about the implications of the name before, funnily enough.
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but Earth Crisis never sounded kind of cool
ever
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Stop the violence against plant life! Our vegtable brothers and sisters have been oppressed too long. They're lives are as precious as our own and the systematic killing to fill your empty stomachs only empties your heart and soul.
Stop the violence. Eat dirt instead.
I guess this is funny if you ignore the fact that plants can't feel pain and aren't reasonably aware?
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Bullshit, plants are aware. I have personally spoken to a tree spirit. His name was Bert. He was very sad.
And just because I was on acid at the time doesn't mean it wasn't real!
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if there is one thing i hate more than hippies, it has to be the environment.
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Nature has all sorts of stuff that could kill you. Fire. Wolves. AIDS. The wind. Your own appendix. If you have to choose between appeasement and mastery, choose mastery.
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Holy shit they're still around.
Nah, they split a while ago. Karl Beuchner resurrected Path Of Resistance afterwards, not sure if they're still active either but they played London a year or two back. I've never heard about them eating meat and drinking though, there might have been rumours but that's definitely not common knowledge. People should still feel silly about having an Earth Crisis tattoo though, that band had maybe one or two decent songs and Firestorm sounded far better when Reversal Of Man ripped it off for Get The Kid With The Sideburns after they got into a fight with Earth Crisis anyway. Not to mention all the nonsense they talked. Chokehold were always far better at vegan straight edge metalcore.
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I guess this is funny if you ignore the fact that plants can't feel pain and aren't reasonably aware?
Now who's being consciousness-ist?
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Animals can run away. What hope does a cabbage have?
Animals in factory farms being harvested also do not have the chance to run away, incidentally.
Also, who's to say plants can't feel pain or aren't reasonably aware.
They are aware enough to grow towards the sunlight.
Phototropism does not equal the comparably relateable and identifiable feeling of suffering.
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Stop the violence against plant life! Our vegtable brothers and sisters have been oppressed too long. They're lives are as precious as our own and the systematic killing to fill your empty stomachs only empties your heart and soul.
Stop the violence. Eat dirt instead.
No! What about all the little microbes and stuff that lives in dirt? We can't harm helpless microbes!
And don't even think about trying to separate them from the dirt, which is their habitat.
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I never understood the idea of anti-veganism.
I guess they can be a little obnoxious if you're trying to find a restaurant with one and you're a pathetic McDonald's addict or something. Other than the far-end-of-the-bell-curve militant vegans, what exactly is the problem? They use less resources and when most of our asses are in the hospital from all the greasy meat we've consumed our entire life (not to mention all the bullshit that's put into dairy products), they will be one less person taking up space in the O.R./E.R.
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I just find veganism to be silly. Vegetarianism, that's fine, since it's grounded in fairly simple utilitarian ethics. Veganism seems to be more about some kind of nebulous "principle of the thing". There's no distinction made between killing an animal for its meat and harvesting its bodily secretions for consumption. Why am I not supposed to eat cheese even if I can be reasonably assured that such cheese wasn't procured through some grave inhuman torture? I've yet to hear an explanation that doesn't extend to an animal's right to be segregated from humans or right to be unused as though their "purpose" was otherwise (as championed by our fine friends in Earth Crisis above). I can agree upon the reasonability of not inflicting pain upon animals. I scoff at the idea of some sort of struggle for rights that goes beyond enforcement of that.
There's the whole health aspect of veganism that I'm ignoring, but I don't really care about that. Most vegans I know speak of their lifestyle as a moral imperative.
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what exactly is the problem? They use less resources and when most of our asses are in the hospital from all the greasy meat we've consumed our entire life
You just answered your own question right there, hoss. Vegetarians and vegans seem, on the whole, to be far more likely to unquestioningly accept any and all information about nutrition that is fed to them (pun intended) when the fact is, we actually know very very little for certain about nutrition and can't explain why some people can eat nothing but white rice their entire life and live to be 100 and in perfect physical shape despite the fact that they aren't getting any substantial amounts of vitamins or amino acids, nor why some people can eat steak two times a day (thrice on Sunday) and likewise live to be 100 and in perfect physical shape.
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If animals want rights, they can fight me for them, like we Mexicans fought the Spaniards for ours and you white people fought your respective mother countries.
In the meantime, for every animal you intentionally don't eat, I'll eat four different animals.
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(http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1069/foodjq9.jpg)
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I woke from my daydream, discovered my nightmare was real,
At the altar of progress to gods of ambition we kneel,
Our database deities, they cannot save us,
Microchip miracles only enslave us.
The high priests of high finance claim that their actions are wise...
But our planet still dies. . .
It dies for the want of more people who care
'bout the poisons we pump in the seas and the air,
Yet blissfully ignorant, still unaware,
We strive for a future entwined with despair.
You say, "Why waste concern on the rivers and trees;
They belong to mankind to exploit as we please?"
Face up to the fact that mankind's a disease
Irrelevant microbes with colour T.V.s.
Tell me just what kind of fools would laugh and stare death in the face?
Only to worst kind of fools (like you and I: the human race).
If we laugh for long enough it could well be our epitaph,
Mother Earth will laugh the loudest
She will have the final laugh.
BUT WAIT--the time has come to realise,
BELIEVE--the truth our eyes will not disguise.
SPEAK OUT--to say, "It's no concern of mine,"
DECEIVED--is to be party to the crime.
We all toe the line and swallow the lies...
And our island dies!
Let computers dictate our emotions,
Determine the way we should feel.
Turn our backs to the future now our days are numbered,
And where will we run to when this world is plundered?
Your conscience a whisper drowned out when your avarice cries;
And humanity dies. . .
Without hot winds or tower blocks crashing,
No silver-lined mushroom clouds herald man's passing,
From the Garden of Eden, into death everlasting,
Such a high price to pay for what we took without asking.
Stupidity's legacy is passed down the years,
As our knowledge increases dispelling the fears
That the ghosts of the past may again reappear
As the dawn of the silent apocalypse nears.
Tell me just what kind of fools would laugh and stare death in the face?
Only the worst kind of fools (like you and I: the human race).
If we laugh for long enough it could well be our epitaph,
Mother Earth will laugh the loudest
She will have the final laugh.
(The advent of insanity, no future for humanity.
You pander to your vanity, it blinds you to reality.
In temples of indifference we hail the gods of ignorance,
And sacrifice our final chance, behold the death of innocence.)
BUT WAIT--the end is near so we must choose,
BELIEVE--that we have everything to lose.
SPEAK OUT--if empty words are all we're worth,
DECEIVED--it is the end for Mother Earth.
We all toe the line and swallow the lies...
and our island dies.
If we think the world is our oyster we'll surely choke on the pearl,
It is ours for a while to respect not defile, but minds drunk with power still whirl.
The lands we dispute are not ours to pollute, neither the air that we breathe,
But how will we ever see reason when we can't see the wood for the trees.
Now we hold the future in the palm of our hand
Place your faith in 'Rainbow Warriors' not castles of sand,
The hourglass is empty time is slipping away
So prepare your excuses for the Judgement Day.
Court is now in session, Mother Nature presides,
The jury are our children; whose futures we've denied.
The evidence conclusive, we have no alibi,
The victim was our planet, the verdict: MATRICIDE! MATRICIDE! MATRICIDE!
BUT WAIT--the time has come to realise,
BELIEVE--the truth our eyes will not disguise.
SPEAK OUT--to say, "It's no concern of mine,"
DECEIVED--is to be party to the crime.
BUT WAIT--the end is near so we must choose,
BELIEVE--that we have everything to lose.
SPEAK OUT--if empty words are all we're worth,
DECEIVED--it is the end for Mother Earth.
and
Well we know what makes the flowers grow - but we don't know why
And we all have the knowledge of DNA - but we still die
We perch so thin and fragile here upon the land
And the earth that moves beneath us, we don't understand
So we rush towards the Judgement Day, when She reclaims
A toast to the Luddite martyrs then, who died in vain
Down at the lab they're working still, finishing off
How do we tell the people in the white coats
Enough is enough?
Chorus:
Hey, hey I listen to you pray as if some help will come
Hey, hey She will dance on our graves when we are dead and gone
You and I we made no suicide pact - we didn't want to die
But we watch the wall, little darling, while the chemical trucks go by
This desperate imitation, now, of innocence
Those last few days at Jonestown ain't got nothing on this
Chorus:
Hey, hey I listen to you pray as if some help will come
Hey, hey She will dance on our graves when we are dead and gone
Now beneath the fitted carpets, beyond the padded cells
Within these crimes of passion, the naked truth She dwells
And this fury's just a part and this thunder's just a part
Desire is just a part - the cracking ice, the splitting rock
Chorus:
Hey, hey I listen to you pray as if some help will come
Hey, hey She will dance on our graves when we are dead and gone
Hey, hey to the suicide day, the blind man blunders on
Hey, hey She will dance on our graves when we are dead and gone
As children learn about the world, we built that wall of sand
Along the beach we laboured hard with our bare hands
We worked until the sun went down beneath the waves
And the tide came rolling splashing in, washed the wall away
How do we tell the people in the white coats
Enough is enough?
ourposefully
(Skyclad - Our Dying Island and New Model Army - White Coats
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And here I was all thinking you were going to quote some Skinny Puppy.
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Hey man, "Dogshit" contains some profound truths.
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nor why some people can eat steak two times a day (thrice on Sunday) and likewise live to be 100 and in perfect physical shape.
Nor do we know why some people still deny the almost irrefutable correlation between a diet heavy in red meat and heart disease.
The world sure is full of mystery, huh?
There's the whole health aspect of veganism that I'm ignoring, but I don't really care about that. Most vegans I know speak of their lifestyle as a moral imperative.
If you disagree with factory farming, it would make sense to not reap the benefits either way. A moral imperative against the mistreatment of animals makes perfect sense to me, and the methods by which both mainstream dairy and egg products are extracted from their sources tend to border on animal cruelty.
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That still doesn't explain why I shouldn't consume the "organic" products that are supposed to be acquired outside the factory farming system.
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FDA labels like "organic" and "free range" are technical terms. Organic food only applies to whether or not they were genetically modified or given routine antibiotics or hormones. Free range means that the animal gets to see daylight. It is not specified how often. These two terms even in tandem do not really suggest to me a humanely raised food object.
Sometimes the labels lie. Horizon, I know, has come under fire for their "organic" milk which is apparently nothing of the sort.
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Nor do we know why some people still deny the almost irrefutable correlation between a diet heavy in red meat and heart disease.
As much as I would be totally gay for an argument about the FDA, the AMA and the dubious nature of everything that people claim we "know" about food and the human body's workings in general this is the Music Forum and oh, also, I am seriously not gay for having that discussion because it's like talking to an atheist, ie roughly as much fun as repeatedly flinging oneself into piles of dogshit.
(But I will say this: I don't "deny" your reality, I "accept" different ones. There is more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in your science, etc.)
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I would be totally gay for your post as well (which I noticed, by the way, is appropriately music themed, considering this is the Music Talk forum), but unfortunately, I find dismissive ad hominem arguments to be infantile and irritating.
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While it's true that there's no real sort of regulation or standardization for organic products, and the "organic" label is thrown around more as a means of justifying higher prices than anything else, there have to be ways to research a company's policy in regard to its treatment of its animals. The relevant question would be, if it were the case that if you were to come across humanely acquired products, would you feel justified in consuming them? If not, there have to be other premises to the vegan argument needed to justify it.
We're sort of getting off-topic in that the context of discussion is no longer centered on Earth Crisis, but it's kind of sort of addressing the merits of Earth Crisis' cause.
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Buy local, kids.
That's the best way to do it.
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I find dismissive ad hominem arguments to be infantile and irritating.
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While it's true that there's no real sort of regulation or standardization for organic products, and the "organic" label is thrown around more as a means of justifying higher prices than anything else, there have to be ways to research a company's policy in regard to its treatment of its animals. The relevant question would be, if it were the case that if you were to come across humanely acquired products, would you feel justified in consuming them? If not, there have to be other premises to the vegan argument needed to justify it.
We're sort of getting off-topic in that the context of discussion is no longer centered on Earth Crisis, but it's kind of sort of addressing the merits of Earth Crisis' cause.
You aren't really, you're talking about veganism in general when Earth Crisis were a hardline band and conflating veganism as a whole with a really narrow offshoot of sXe is way off the mark. Philosophically Earth Crisis et al have a completely different standpoint to a lot of other people who happen to also call themselves vegan. In any case, Good Clean Fun (who're vegan) did a funnier job of attacking hardline years ago with In Defense Of All Life:
Peaceful protest doesn't get the job done
So I wake up for the rally grab my soy milk and my gun
Breakfast with the family get the grub to see what`s up
Then I saw my sister had milk in her cup
I jumped out of my chair and sprayed her with my mace
I yelled 'vegan power' and I kicked her in the face
Dad was bugging, he started to run
But he`s a meat eater so I pulled out my gun
Shot him in the back, then I shot his wife
That`s how it`s got to be in defense of all life
Then again, going after hardliners is very much like shooting fish in a barrel. For context, the song's largely ripping the piss out of No One Is Innocent by the infamous Vegan Reich (entertainingly enough, one of the guys who drummed for this band is now in Fall Out Boy):
No one is innocent we all commit crimes, if you're not guilty in their eyes, you're guilty in mine. There are only two sides and a line that divides, if you stand in the middle you're not on my side. No such thing as an innocent passerby you're the enemy if you turn a blind eye. Not taking a stand while others die complicity your crime you will be tried. To bad if that's cold there's not time to be nice ain't playing a game it's a war which we fight. In defense of earth's future and all forms of life, against those in the way all is justified. And for what I believe I'm willing to die to free those enslaved I'll take a life. Won't shed a tear, I know I am right, and if I am caught, I'll pay the price… cos there's no excuse for letting things slide, in the actions of others or in your own life. If you don't stand firm on the side of right you're nothing but a waste of life so you'd better choose a fucking side and not be sitting in the middle when the bullets start to fly. If you don't make a choice it could mean your life for if you're not on my side you're a target in my eyes.
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Guys this is the music forum.
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You just answered your own question right there, hoss. Vegetarians and vegans seem, on the whole, to be far more likely to unquestioningly accept any and all information about nutrition that is fed to them (pun intended) when the fact is, we actually know very very little for certain about nutrition and can't explain why some people can eat nothing but white rice their entire life and live to be 100 and in perfect physical shape despite the fact that they aren't getting any substantial amounts of vitamins or amino acids, nor why some people can eat steak two times a day (thrice on Sunday) and likewise live to be 100 and in perfect physical shape.
My own statement didn't really answer my question, though, regarding a majority's stance of anti-veganism. And I've yet to read anything that answers it other than most people seem to have a neanderthalic or, perhaps far worse even, biblical stance on consumption and that if it's there and we can, than we should eat it. I'm hardly vegan, nor am I even vegetarian. I have, however, pretty much cut meat out of my life entirely and honestly eat healthier and feel healthier than I ever have in the 15+ years that I have pretty much been able to make my own choices regarding what I put in my body.
PS, the Fall Out Boy drummer/Vegan Reich member apparently used to (or still does) subscribe to a theory of hardline veganism that basically condemns all modern society and believes that we should live in the woods with barely any shelter. To make the whole thing even more ridiculous, he still sells the TShirts that bare this ethos' namesake and wears them during Fall Out Boy photoshoots. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel.
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Guys this is the music forum.
MUSIC IS MURDER
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I just find veganism to be silly. Vegetarianism, that's fine, since it's grounded in fairly simple utilitarian ethics.
This seems to be the wrong way round to me. I can understand veganism, because it is opposed to all forms of exploitation of animals. Vegetarianism, though, finds it perfectly acceptable to force animals to permanently lactate so we can drink their milk? That's pretty cruel. As for anti-cruelty-to-animals meat-eaters, isn't killing an animal cruelty just as much as hurting it is? Veganism seems like the only internally coherent attitude to me.
I still eat meat.
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no, see, we have to kill some of them so that they don't overpopulate and die
they're coming right for us!
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This seems to be the wrong way round to me. I can understand veganism, because it is opposed to all forms of exploitation of animals. Vegetarianism, though, finds it perfectly acceptable to force animals to permanently lactate so we can drink their milk?
Not to mention continuing to kill them to use their hides for belts, shoes, car seats, or their bones and organs for toothpaste, beauty products, etc. A vegetarian that is so for ethical reasons would be unfortunately hypocritical.
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if it's there and we can, than we should eat it.
Well, we are omnivores.
So long as humans continue to be the way we are, the unfortunate truth is that exploitation of the planet - animals included - is pretty much necessary. We've put ourselves on a path with little other choice. How many things died for my Internet connection?
Don't worry, soon we'll have nano-assemblers and it won't really matter.
Pun not intended.
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Guys I think we could still turn this into a constructive Music Thread. Let's write a song about eating! Maybe a song about meat! I do not know.
I'll start:
There once was a boy
Who didn't eat meat
He smelled kind of funny
But he sure had that Beat
*catchy 4-bar drum solo*
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mountain lions have claws; we have big brains.
we use what random mutation has given us.
FUCKING DEAL WITH IT
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Mang you are totally killing the groove.
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sorry, i have no rhythm. whenever i am asked to improv music i just start yelling about evolution and try to sneak away when no one's looking.
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I don't know, I could see those being cookie-monster metal lyrics:
MOUNTAIN LIONS HAVE CLAWS
HUMANS HAVE BRAINS
WE USE WHAT EVOLUTION GAVE US
SO GO EAT MEAT
IT'S A TASTY TREAT
AND ONLY JESUS CHRIST CAN SAVE US
RRRAAAAAAGHHGGDSDJADKSGAASAAGFDSGAFD
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Oh man that is such a better song than mine.
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I just find veganism to be silly. Vegetarianism, that's fine, since it's grounded in fairly simple utilitarian ethics.
This seems to be the wrong way round to me. I can understand veganism, because it is opposed to all forms of exploitation of animals. Vegetarianism, though, finds it perfectly acceptable to force animals to permanently lactate so we can drink their milk? That's pretty cruel. As for anti-cruelty-to-animals meat-eaters, isn't killing an animal cruelty just as much as hurting it is? Veganism seems like the only internally coherent attitude to me.
I still eat meat.
I never really liked utilitarian ethics, I've always been partial to the social contract, and as such the concept of "exploitation" of things that aren't part of a contract and never will be part of the contract seems ludicrous to me. I can understand the concept of an animal's right not to be unduly harmed, though I don't necessarily agree with it and have major problems with the calculus granting such a right would force us to use, but granting second order rights, like some sort of right to owning their byproducts, is dissonant.
Anyway, don't you worry, in a hundred years, if we're not all dead, we'll be eating steaks grown whole in labs.
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SO GO EAT MEAT
IT'S A TASTY TREAT
AND ONLY JESUS CHRIST CAN SAVE US
RRRAAAAAAGHHGGDSDJADKSGAASAAGFDSGAFD
If those are cookie monster metal lyrics surely "AND ONLY THE GRIM AND INVERTED NORTHERN MOONLORD SATAN CAN SAVE US" would be more appropriate?
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No, because metal lyrics contain depth and irony*!
*product may not actually contain depth or irony
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may contain nuts
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No, because metal lyrics contain depth and irony*!
*product may not actually contain depth or irony
My sword is all red becaus I have killed you
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There are actually some serious metal lyrics. For instance, take this manowar song!
Demon's blood and dragon fire, falling on my wings
Racing to the battle in the sky
Ancient gods are calling me I hear them when they sing
Of all the heores who wait for me to die
Beneath the cloak of magic, I'll meet them in the air
I am invisible, I move without a sound
They look but cannot find me, they think that I'm not there
With a spell I send them crashing to the ground
Wait for me dragon, we'll meet in the sky by fire and magic I am sworn
Hell is calling! We cannot be denied fly to the blackness of the storm
We must die to be reborn
I wear a sacred talisman, I make a secret sign
Now welcome me into this wicked wind
On the journey of a shaman a dragon I must ride
The gates of hell are open! Let me in!
Rule in hell or serve in heaven choose an altar or throne
All Commandments and the laws of man disown
Now eat the fruit of knowledge unto no one ye atone
Into the fire with your soul!
Wait for me dragon, we'll meet in the sky by fire and magic I am sworn
Hell is calling! We cannot be denied fly to the blackness of the storm
We must die to be reborn
Demon's blood and dragon fire, falling on my wings Racing to the battle in the sky
Ancient gods are calling me I hear them when they sing
Of all the heores who wait for me to die
Beneath the cloak of magic, I'll meet them in the air
I am invisible, I move without a sound
They look but cannot find me, they think that I'm not there
With a spell I send them crashing to the ground
Wait for me dragon, we'll meet in the sky by fire and magic I am sworn
Hell is calling! We cannot be denied fly to the blackness of the storm
We must die to be reborn
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I had no idea Manowar were such big Harry Potter fans.
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I don't even dare post any rhapsody lyrics...Hehe, dragonophilia. People with this fetish must be rather depressed.
Anyways, there is some serious metal lyrics out there.The metal community has yet to find them, but there must be some.
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As for anti-cruelty-to-animals meat-eaters, isn't killing an animal cruelty just as much as hurting it is?
Well, if you are doing it right, the animal feels pain for only a couple seconds. Course, that doesn't work for trophy hunting (A shot to the brain somewhat ruins that buck head that you were going to mount to your wall), and an animal can run quite a ways before it dies if you don't hit the central nervous system. I have noticed that a lot of hunters are very careful about how they hunt, they don't take a shot if they don't think it will kill the animal, they would rather go home without any meat than do that.
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Anyways, there is some serious metal lyrics out there.The metal community has yet to find them, but there must be some.
NSBM has pretty serious lyrics if you're into that kinda thing
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As for anti-cruelty-to-animals meat-eaters, isn't killing an animal cruelty just as much as hurting it is?
Well, if you are doing it right, the animal feels pain for only a couple seconds. Course, that doesn't work for trophy hunting (A shot to the brain somewhat ruins that buck head that you were going to mount to your wall), and an animal can run quite a ways before it dies if you don't hit the central nervous system. I have noticed that a lot of hunters are very careful about how they hunt, they don't take a shot if they don't think it will kill the animal, they would rather go home without any meat than do that.
Straight through the neck works, I think? Anyways, if you hit the chest/back in the right place, won't it shock the animal so that the animals brain basically shuts down? I know it sometimes happens to humans.
Yes, NSBM artists are very serious-the point is, does anyone else take it seriously? :laugh:
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I guess this is funny if you ignore the fact that plants can't feel pain and aren't reasonably aware?
Plants can feel pain, apparently. Who would have thunk it?
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correct me if i'm wrong, but plants don't have nerves.
correct me if i'm wrong again, but doesn't not having nerves equal not feeling pain? (or anything else for that matter?)
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Having a central nervous system is the minimum criterion, at least according to Peter Singer, who inherited the animal rights tradition from Mill. That pretty much rules out invertebrates and plants.
And yet, people still care about lobster.
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there you have it, you hippies.
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Wait... so when the lobsters attack, where am I supposed to aim? Or should I just hook up a fire hose to boiling water?
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aim for the eyes initially, then worry about actually killing the beast.
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This seems to be the wrong way round to me. I can understand veganism, because it is opposed to all forms of exploitation of animals. Vegetarianism, though, finds it perfectly acceptable to force animals to permanently lactate so we can drink their milk? That's pretty cruel. As for anti-cruelty-to-animals meat-eaters, isn't killing an animal cruelty just as much as hurting it is? Veganism seems like the only internally coherent attitude to me.
I still eat meat.
Generally speaking, animals kept for dairy live in more unpleasant conditions than those kept for meat. However, almost nobody in an industrialised society lives a lifestyle where none of their consumption has a relation to some being suffering so vegetarianism isn't necessarily incoherent if done on an animal welfare/rights basis. As for killing being necessarily cruel, I'm not so sure about that. Derrick Jensen, the environmental activist and writer, is not a vegan but is very concerned with animal welfare. His writing is often concerned with relationships between humans and other animals, one of those relationships being killing and consumption. It's a fairly complex thing and one I've never been able to properly navigate myself, I simply don't have the necessary relationship with animals to put myself comfortably in part of a food chain with them.
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I simply don't have the necessary relationship with animals to put myself comfortably in part of a food chain with them.
Is this a polite way of saying you're a furry?
Just playin', dogg.
Hehe. "Dogg".
This cold medicine is making me loopy.
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You know when they call people tree huggers? Let's just say I took that to a whole other level.
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dendrophilia for thread win
celebratory Devin Townsend lyrics:
"Earth Day"
Eat your beets, recycle...recycle...
Don't eat your beets, recycle...recycle
The message is; 'THERE IS NO MESSAGE'
Babe, you better not ever think,
Staring into the drink...get out of my mind...
Cause I may not be the one to say,
is there no other way we could do this another day?
I saw God.
She said...'If you don't believe me, guaranteed you'll never leave me'
On your way, and out of my time
But I didn't even know if it was true or just a result of chemicals
Shut up and think of something more important to say...
'Sometimes I think that in every straight there's a gay!' Something or nothing a whole either way it's a way,
it's a way, it's a way, it's a way, it's a way
EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY
it's a way, it's a way, it's a way, it's a way
EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY, EARTH DAY
It's like your birthday, it's on Earth Day,
Like a child you're born again, little child you're bored again...
It's your worst fucking day, it's on Earth Day...
Little lies to cover up...please make your mind up
(Eat your beets, Recycle...recycle...)
(...Don't eat your beets, recycle...recycle)
Man Overboard (I'm so far away)
Man overboard (I'm so far...)
But fuck it! ...I really don't care
Fuck! Listen to me! Just shut the fuck up!
Peace, Love, Joy
Man overboard (I'm so far...)
Hate, hell, war
Hate, love, love, hate, love, hate...destruction!
So just shut your face and take a seat
Because after all, you're just talking meat...and music?
Well, it's just entertainment folks.
Sometimes I think that I really have something moreto say...
'Sometimes I think that in every straight there's a gay!' ...forgive me for saying it blows either way, it's a
way,
it's a way, it's a way, it's a way, it's a way...
It's your birthday, it's on Earth Day,
Like a child you're born again, little child you're cold again...
It's your worst fucking day, it's on Earth Day
Little child your time is up...please turn the heat up
You need your beets, you recycle...
...Don't eat your beets...recycle...
Man overboard...I'm so far away...
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Well, if you are doing it right, the animal feels pain for only a couple seconds.
Well, you are taking away its potential future life experiences, which is arguably cruel. Or causing pain, or something.
I don't really have much of a hold on this subject either - basically my vegan housemate last year brought up the point of killing being cruel and I had no logical answer to it that would allow me to oppose animal cruelty and still continue to eat meat. Generally I just ignore it, or think that cruelty-free animals are better tasting/better for the environment. Mainly, choosing to oppose animal cruelty and still eat meat seems like a way of making myself feel better than anything else. I'm sure there is a far better answer to it than this though.
<jangly guitars, flowing synths, a small kooky singer with a unusual voice>
I like bunnies
I like cows
Cut up in to tiny pieces
And put into my tummy
Meat is tasty
Cruelty is bad
Let's eat nice meat
And not be sad
Lalalalala
Lalalalala
Lalalalala
Lalalalala
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I feel like we have a similar outlook.
Essentially what I was saying before is that if we are such intelligent creatures, shouldn't we be able to come up with better alternatives than killing? From most responses, I've gathered a resounding "no," or that most people aren't willing or interested in finding such alternatives. I'm still confident that people will start to figure it out and progress a little, until then I'll do my best to cut such things out of my diet and lifestyle and fully support those who already have.
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(http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1069/foodjq9.jpg)
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Essentially what I was saying before is that if we are such intelligent creatures, shouldn't we be able to come up with better alternatives than killing?
Your flaw here is in the assertion that humanity as a whole is all that intelligent. Have you been to a shopping mall lately?
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Well, you are taking away its potential future life experiences, which is arguably cruel.
Hmmm, not sure if you're being serious here, but if you are, you're going to have to twist yourself up something fierce to justify a pro-choice outlook, which I assume you have, because it's the right outlook.
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Ethics: some tough shit!
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I don't mind people being vegan or vegetarian because, hey, freedom of choice, right? But for me, eating meat is a moral act. I'm absolutely serious. Humanity has managed to fuck up the environment spectacularly, and I genuinely think that a very significant part of the reason for that is because we've managed to divorce ourselves from the natural world. I think people need to embrace the fact that we're just another animal with our place in the ecosystem just like all the others. If we can get into that mindset we might actually start giving a shit about the world again. For me, part of that mindset is the realisation that we're omnivores: we've got teeth for grinding and chewing vegetable matter, and teeth for ripping and tearing meat. To me, saying "Humans shouldn't eat meat" is akin to saying "Dogs shouldn't eat meat" or "Crows shouldn't eat meat". Only the loopiest outer fringe would accuse the dog or the crow of cruelty when it decides to tuck into some meat - so why should the act of humans eating meat be any different? I don't think it should: for me, as soon as you start to differentiate between consumption of meat by humans, and consumption of meat by other animals, you're starting to put humans in a separate box from other animals, and for me that's wrong for the reasons outlined above.
The problem, of course, comes from the conditions the animal was kept in before it was killed. Living in the middle of a large city makes it pretty much impossible for me to kill my own food (something I'd be more than willing to learn how do if I lived in the country - I studied biology, I'm not squeamish). Instead I come at the problem from two directions: 1, I try to get biodynamic or organic or especially free-range meat whenever I can; and 2, I don't eat a lot of meat, especially in summer. Most people who eat meat eat vastly more than they actually need to: a little bit of meat goes a very long way. In winter I eat a relatively large amount because when it's cold you need that much more energy coming into your body to keep yourself warm, but in summer I tend to be mainly vegetarian, not often having meat more than once or twice a week.
edited to get rid of embarassing plural apostrophe
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Plus 10 for Inlander. Jolly good points.
I actually have known people who have kept "vegetarian dogs". Now THAT is cruelty to animals.
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correct me if i'm wrong, but plants don't have nerves.
correct me if i'm wrong again, but doesn't not having nerves equal not feeling pain? (or anything else for that matter?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdish_Chandra_Bose
"Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was a Bengali polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, and science fiction writer. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made extremely significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. He is considered the father of radio science, and is also considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He was the first from the Indian subcontinent to get a US patent, in 1904."
"In his research in plant stimuli, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals. He therefore found a parallelism between animal and plant tissues. His experiments showed that plants grow faster in pleasant music and its growth retards in noise or harsh sound. This was experimentally verified later on."
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There was a fairly excellent book written on those very points, Inlander, though I'm blanking on the title and author (I'm just a wellspring of knowledge!) Relatively speaking for his era, Mill was on an extreme fringe, but as time went on the rural way of life dissipated, and things like husbandry became the arena of wealthy enthusiasts, and the only connection the vast majority of people had with animals were with their house pets. Given that, it's easy to see how a few generations of young people could not fucking believe that you have to kill things to stay fed and healthy and came around to the idea that it had to be stopped.
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Growing meat in vitro is the way of (http://www.new-harvest.org/default.php) the future! (http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/disembodied/dis.html)
Well, not really. While it's probably going to be commercially feasible in the next five (!) years or so to grow meat in labs, I reckon it'll run up against the same problems as GM food currently faces with regard to public opinion.
Would you eat a steak that'd been grown in a vat?
Also, Inlander... do you eat any kangaroo? In my opinion, eschewing or limiting cow/sheep consumption is the way to go if you're approaching meat-eating from an ecological perspective in Aus. It's still not very popular here, however.
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To be fair, it tastes terrible. Emu isn't too bad though, and I'd like to have a crack at snake or croc meat.
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Are you crazy? Kangaroo meat's great! Sadly you don't see it in shops or butchers very often.
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Moose is great. Soft and succulent.
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Are you crazy? Kangaroo meat's great! Sadly you don't see it in shops or butchers very often.
I'm sorry that I hate things that are dick nasty
Honestly, I had a kangaroo pie and I couldn't finish it. When something is too gross to be eaten in a pie, you know you're onto something nasty.
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Maybe the pie was made by imbeciles. Get some raw roo meat and cook it yourself.
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Are you crazy? Kangaroo meat's great! Sadly you don't see it in shops or butchers very often.
What? They have it at Woolworths here all the time! Sausages, steak, marinated kangaroo roasts, the lot!
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But... but how could they go wrong? All they needed to do was float some lumps of gristle in scalding hot plasma!
Mmm. Pies.
Kangaroo does tend to go fuck-off tough when overcooked. Possible the problem with putting it in a pie. If you do it kinda rare/medium-rare like you'd cook a steak, it's very good.
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What? They have it at Woolworths here all the time! Sausages, steak, marinated kangaroo roasts, the lot!
Interesting. My local supermarket's an I.G.A., and I've never noticed much kangaroo meat there.
Anyway, I almost never buy meat from supermarkets. Even if they do have good-quality meat (which more and more do these days), it's always sold in pretty large quantities, certainly way one person, especially someone such as myself who doesn't eat much meat to begin with. Far easier to go to my friendly local butcher and get exactly the amount I want.
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Well, if you are doing it right, the animal feels pain for only a couple seconds.
Well, you are taking away its potential future life experiences, which is arguably cruel. Or causing pain, or something.
The animal is dead. Last time I checked, the nervous system shuts down when that happens. Unless time dilates or something, so you live an eternity in an instant, or something. Isn't that what Dio believes? I thought I read that in an interview with him.
I don't really see ending a life as cruel to the thing you kill, but to the things that care about it, the thing you killed is either in a better place or isn't going to be complaining. Yes, there is the issue of whatever animals may have loved it, but I am still working that through, do animals love? Do just the ones that mate for life love? Would they care if one that they hadn't seen for a few months was never seen again? Not knowing how animal's minds work makes it very difficult to define cruelty.
Oh, Johnny? Sigg'd.
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I don't mind people being vegan or vegetarian because, hey, freedom of choice, right? But for me, eating meat is a moral act. I'm absolutely serious. Humanity has managed to fuck up the environment spectacularly, and I genuinely think that a very significant part of the reason for that is because we've managed to divorce ourselves from the natural world. I think people need to embrace the fact that we're just another animal with our place in the ecosystem just like all the others. If we can get into that mindset we might actually start giving a shit about the world again. For me, part of that mindset is the realisation that we're omnivores: we've got teeth for grinding and chewing vegetable matter, and teeth for ripping and tearing meat. To me, saying "Humans shouldn't eat meat" is akin to saying "Dogs shouldn't eat meat" or "Crows shouldn't eat meat". Only the loopiest outer fringe would accuse the dog or the crow of cruelty when it decides to tuck into some meat - so why should the act of humans eating meat be any different? I don't think it should: for me, as soon as you start to differentiate between consumption of meat by humans, and consumption of meat by other animals, you're starting to put humans in a separate box from other animals, and for me that's wrong for the reasons outlined above.
The problem, of course, comes from the conditions the animal was kept in before it was killed. Living in the middle of a large city makes it pretty much impossible for me to kill my own food (something I'd be more than willing to learn how do if I lived in the country - I studied biology, I'm not squeamish). Instead I come at the problem from two directions: 1, I try to get biodynamic or organic or especially free-range meat whenever I can; and 2, I don't eat a lot of meat, especially in summer. Most people who eat meat eat vastly more than they actually need to: a little bit of meat goes a very long way. In winter I eat a relatively large amount because when it's cold you need that much more energy coming into your body to keep yourself warm, but in summer I tend to be mainly vegetarian, not often having meat more than once or twice a week.
edited to get rid of embarassing plural apostrophe
This is some really interesting stuff. It actually does remind me of some of what Derick Jensen talks about in A Language Older Than Words (although obviously without the bits about being able to talk to animals). The disassociation humans have between their actions and how this effects the ecosystem we're all a part of is truly huge and quite terrifying to me, and we really do need to gain a greater understanding of ourselves as simply one facet of a very complex instead of this idea that we're superior and not effected by everything else in it.
Unlike you though, I don't think I'd gain a greater understanding of my position as just another animal just by eating meat. I grew up and have always lived in the city, divorced from where my food comes from. The only food I've ever eaten where I've been able to see and really understand on a personal level its production has been fruit and vegetables grown in allotments and gardens. Given the urban environment I live in I feel I'd have to leave it and live somewhere else in order to become comfortable with consuming meat and dairy, somewhere where not only could I control the ways in which I obtained these things but also that they were more necessary to my survival. A friend of mine basically does this. When he's here he eats a basically vegan diet, but he does a lot of work in rain forests as a researcher. When in places like that he changes to an omnivorous diet since this becomes an appropriate one for his surroundings. I'd do the same thing. Well, maybe. I really don't fancy the bit where your body gets sick from the change in diet, apparently he puked a hell of a lot when he ate meat for the first time in years.
Another thing about the vegan diet is that it doesn't always have anything to do with animal welfare at all. Sometimes it's all about the amount of resources used in something. A diet heavy in meat and dairy uses a massive amount of land compared to one which has little or none of these things, so for me one of the reasons I steer clear is the same as the reason I haven't been on a plane for over ten years and don't own a car. It's not that these are in some way inherently immoral acts but that they're things I don't need to do and can easily work around. Since personally I think we as a species need to be consuming far less resources than we do as a collective now, I'd feel hypocritical if I argued that this was the case but didn't try and limit my own personal consumption habits. That's more about levels of animal product consumption than strictly cutting them out altogether though as my vegan diet does.
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Now, this is twice I have seen someone say that they can't control where the meat they eat comes from when they live in the city. Why is that? You can still go hunting, are you just saying that you can't raise an animal for meat in the city?
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Technically I could, but for me this would still be a disassociated relationship with my food. I don't fully understand or have a good enough relationship with that animal and its environment for me to be comfortable killing and eating it. What I'm talking about isn't what's physically possible but what seems to me to be appropriate patterns of consumption to my environment and my personal relationship with food.
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Ah, okay. I guess I would have an easier time killing something if I didn't know it, that is what the militaries of the world rely on, after all, but to each their own. As I have said, I doubt I could intentionally kill an animal while hunting anyway, at least not without getting horribly depressed.
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Now, this is twice I have seen someone say that they can't control where the meat they eat comes from when they live in the city. Why is that? You can still go hunting, are you just saying that you can't raise an animal for meat in the city?
I live in the middle of a city with close to four million inhabitants. Australian cities in particular are characterised by a very high urban sprawl: the area of Melbourne is almost 9000 square kilometres. Once you get outside the city, you encounter a large amount of privately-owned land used for farming or just as rural residences. What this means in practical terms is that for someone like myself, who doesn't have a car and relies on public transport to get everywhere not in bicycling distance, is that it would take me a very long time to get out of the city in order to go hunting, and then anything I managed to kill would have to be carried back on the train - and I expect Connex might have something to say about that! So with my current living circumstances, hunting is effectively impossible. As for raising animals at home, I live in a rented single-story semi-detached terrace house with a miniscule backyard which is largely concrete. So that's not really gonna work, either.
Unless I want to eat pigeons and rats all the time, which I don't particularly!
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Unlike you though, I don't think I'd gain a greater understanding of my position as just another animal just by eating meat.
Well, there are a lot of behavioural things besides diet that I draw on to recognise the fact of my own existence as an animal. The more you observe animals, the more you notice parallels of behaviour between "them" and "us", often in ways that you wouldn't expect. Pets are particularly good for this because we're around them so much. For instance, I once observed my cat picking at his scabs. This surprised me as it we're taught to believe that animal behaviour is purely instinctive, and picking at scabs had always seemed to me to be peculiarly human in its counter-productiveness. It's also instructive to compare young non-human animals, and young children: there are so many parallels there it's quite staggering. I could probably come up with a few when it's not one in the morning! Meanwhile, it seems that the more scientists learn about animals, the more our pre-conceptions about human uniqueness fall by the wayside: we used to believe that our ability to make and use tools separated us from all the other creatures on the planet, but now we know that there are masses of animals out there that use tools - and not all of them closely related to us.
Another thing about the vegan diet is that it doesn't always have anything to do with animal welfare at all. Sometimes it's all about the amount of resources used in something. A diet heavy in meat and dairy uses a massive amount of land compared to one which has little or none of these things
Oh I know, and that's another reason why I try to restrict my meat consumption strictly to what's necessary to keep me going. (I'm not keen on taking vitamin supplements and pills and things like that, I'd rather get everything I need through my food.)
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Essentially what I was saying before is that if we are such intelligent creatures, shouldn't we be able to come up with better alternatives than killing?
Your flaw here is in the assertion that humanity as a whole is all that intelligent. Have you been to a shopping mall lately?
Unfortunately I guess I may have to agree with you.
I actually have known people who have kept "vegetarian dogs". Now THAT is cruelty to animals.
I've actually known a few people to do it, and the dogs are fine. Run an google search on "vegetarian dog" and see how many results come up casting it in a negative light. I even found a small survey that checked into it (though, granted, I think the survey was casted by PETA so I didn't really take it seriously). Cats cannot be, but from what I've heard and seen, dogs can.
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Hmmm, not sure if you're being serious here, but if you are, you're going to have to twist yourself up something fierce to justify a pro-choice outlook, which I assume you have, because it's the right outlook.
Definitely not being serious - although it'd be easy enough to get around. Animals have been already born, after all.
I am pretty much the exact opposite of Harry's position. I think that there is a significant distinction between us and animals. We are conscious in an entirely different way from other animals - self-reflective consciousness, maybe? I'm not sure of the right word. Basically a consciousness that allows us to deal with complex abstract thoughts. Given this, I think that we are separate from other animals. I don't see eating meat as being a moral choice, therefore. We're smart enough to have transcended the instinctual need to put meat in our bellies if we don't want to. Saying humans shouldn't eat meat is wrong in my book, but not for the same reason saying dogs or lions shouldn't, but because its an infringement on freedom.
I think we have a duty to use the resources of the planet in a way that maximises the good of humankind in its entirety, rather than the good of nature. Of course, this doesn't mean going around and doing what we do now, or accelerating the process. But it also doesn't mean fetishising the environment at the expense of people. We should have game parks to keep all the beautiful animals of the world safe, but that shouldn't be at the expense of a million kids going hungry tonight. Maintaining a personal connection to your food is only possible for everyone if we get rid of loads of people and give up on modern technology and whatnot. Primos can fuck right off.
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I'm not saying dogs can't be vegetarians, just that it's rather silly to turn a carnivore into an herbivore.
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He's right though, in that dogs transfer well to a vegetarian diet compared to other domestic animals. Cats simply will kill for meat they aren't obtaining from their owners, but dogs tend to accept it, and the dogs I've seen who have had owners transfer their own ethical standards of food consumption onto their dogs have done fairly well for the most part, although it seems to depend a great deal on the breed. Surprisingly, I've seen staffies adjust well to a vegetarian diet, while Laboradors don't seem to do it as easily, which I thought was interesting considering I'd think it was the other way around.
I think this says more about the obedience of dogs to their masters compared to cats though, than it does anything about the merits of vegetarianism.
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Yet another reason cats are superior to dogs in every conceivable way.
They actually think for themselves! Imagine that.
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Man, the land use argument annoys me. It annoys me because it reveals a crucial misunderstanding of how agriculture functions. I mean, I live in the country and know farmers and shit, but didn't they cover this shit in school? I mean seriously. I can't be bothered to explain going to lay it out to you with some simple questions
1) Have you ever tried eating grass?
2) Do you know what the difference between arable land and pasture is?
3) Do you know what percentage of the worlds land is arable?
4) Have you ever tried growing soya on a welsh hillside?
Certain methods of farming animals are incredibly inefficient, but this isn't really an argument against eating meat. Its more an argument against eating american beef.
You know what would really save the planet? More birth control and less poverty.
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1) I have actually! I was a small child, and marginally less intelligent than I am now. It was not a taste sensation.
2) Yes.
3) About 1/5 according to wikipedia (so probably something else entirely).
4) No.
I remember them teaching us about conservation of energy in school and the amount that gets lost if you go from plants to animals to humans instead of plants to humans. Of course, not all land which is suitable for raising animals is suitable for growing crops. But then again a lot of the land used for growing crops is used for crops that are to be fed to animals. Humans eating some meat is not unsustainable particularly if it's locally sourced (and I'm pretty sure nobody in this thread has said it isn't anyway), you are absolutely right there, but humans eating the amount of meat we do at the moment uses up far more resources than I feel is good for the planet.
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Now, this could be an absolute lie, though my father should have known better than to tell his son that something was edible that wasn't when said son was three or four, but I think the part of grass that is underground can actually be good for you (the whitish part), I don't remember it tasting bad.
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but humans eating the amount of meat we do at the moment uses up far more resources than I feel is good for the planet.
Here's what gets me about the "resources" argument: it's bullshit.
Do you know how much resource-wasting goes into humans eating anything at all that they don't grow themself or buy from a local farmer?
It's like the recycling argument: People just blandly accept this propaganda that "oh, of course it's good to recycle", when in point of fact, the recycling industry is arguably more damaging to the environment than landfills. Aluminum is just about the only thing that is easily and cleanly recyclable; recycling paper is a giant environmental clusterfuck.
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Huh... I never knew that. What about compressing plastic? You can make benches out of that, probably tables and chairs and desks too.
Does paper have nutrients in it for trees? Why not just shred it and use that to supplement a trees growth if so?
I think part of it is that even if it is worse for the environment, we are also using less trees if we recycle paper. Course, I never read any independent studies, all I know about recycling is said propaganda, so I could be wrong on that point.
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Here's what gets me about the "resources" argument: it's bullshit.
Do you know how much resource-wasting goes into humans eating anything at all that they don't grow themself or buy from a local farmer?
Huge amounts of resources go into food that isn't sourced locally. And don't forget about the amount of resources that go into cooking, for example boiling potatoes without a lid on the pan uses up a shocking amount more resources than if you just put the lid on or if you were eating something that didn't even require cooking. Everything uses a resource of some kind. What that means is that there are a lot of things that need to be considered when it comes to the use of resources, not that the amount of meat we as a species currently consume is sustainable. It isn't.
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I think part of it is that even if it is worse for the environment, we are also using less trees if we recycle paper.
This is another popular propaganda bullshit talking point. The trees we currently use for paper only exist because they were planted to be harvested to make paper.
We are not running out of trees. The industries which depend on harvesting trees ensure that they plant enough new ones to keep the cycle going.
EDIT: Not that you should blandly believe Penn and Teller either, but they do a good job of hitting a lot of the best points in an entertaining way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Aae5dmxnA
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This is true, for example in Brazil the main cause of deforestation is for land for cattle ranching and soybean production (mainly to be used as feed for livestock). Paper isn't much of a cause at all globally.
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My worry is the amount of time it takes for a tree to grow to a decent size, do they have enough wherever to not end up chopping down a bunch of the old ones before they can use the new trees?
At least paper decomposes, I don't believe plastic does (though again, that is from the same propaganda), but there are things you can do with busted tires and bottles and whatnot, and for the ones that don't decompose, and don't get re-used? The earth will simply adjust to a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. Cookie to whoever gets that quote without searching.
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My worry is the amount of time it takes for a tree to grow to a decent size, do they have enough wherever to not end up chopping down a bunch of the old ones before they can use the new trees?
Yes. It is a fact that America has more trees now than we ever have.
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This is another popular propaganda bullshit talking point. The trees we currently use for paper only exist because they were planted to be harvested to make paper.
Hahaha, oh man. Visit British Columbia sometime.
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My worry is the amount of time it takes for a tree to grow to a decent size, do they have enough wherever to not end up chopping down a bunch of the old ones before they can use the new trees?
Yes. It is a fact that America has more trees now than we ever have.
Hmm... that is true, some of the forests around here are actually overgrown, you are supposed to be able to ride three horses shoulder-to-shoulder through a forest, but you can't in a lot of this area, but I suppose that can also be part of the beauty of it.
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Yes. It is a fact that America has more trees now than we ever have.
Significantly less forest land though, but admittedly nothing like the levels lost in somewhere like the UK and I think there's been a general trend of increase over the past few years.
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Planting huge monocultures of foreign trees introduces other problems, as well. Lowered species diversity, increased susceptibility to diseases/pests, possibly changing soil pH, overuse of fertiliser...
Sustainable harvesting of normal, non-plantation forests incorporating regeneration programs is much better.
Fuck. I sound like a forestry employee.
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a pack of wolves, if you went to wikipedia to look up about arable land, you will have seen the diagram that shows where this arabe land is concentrated.
Hint: not where brown people live.
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Humans eating some meat is not unsustainable particularly if it's locally sourced
QC Music Forum: We're even that fucking indie about our meat.
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Dude I said almost that exact same goddamn thing last page.
Everyone assumes that because my answers are funny they aren't relevant. I am here to tell you that I am both funny and relevant.
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This is another popular propaganda bullshit talking point. The trees we currently use for paper only exist because they were planted to be harvested to make paper.
Hahaha, oh man. Visit British Columbia sometime.
That sort of thing has turned around somewhat though. The harvest of paper these days involves more trees being planted than are cut down. However, the huge clearcutting that took place in the not so distant past has left huge scars on the landscape which are still not going to be healed for some time.
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At best that's merely replacing what we're taking, not creating new stocks from which the paper is taken.
There's a difference in there and it's subtle. It's much better that they're planting again rather than just clear-cutting, but still.
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At best that's merely replacing what we're taking, not creating new stocks from which the paper is taken.
There's a difference in there and it's subtle. It's much better that they're planting again rather than just clear-cutting, but still.
Exactly. It would take a long time to set up something other than that, but it would be good to have trees that have actually been planted to be cut, rather than just replacing them.
Call me a romantic, but I hate to think of something that has seen hundreds of years come and go getting cut down because we want something soft to wipe our asses with.
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It's not just a question of romanticism. In Australia at least, a very large proportion of the native animals in forests and woodlands rely on tree hollows in which to nest or take shelter. Such hollows only occur in old growth forests - i.e., forests that have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. If you log in an old growth forest, even if you replant afterwards you're not actually replacing the habitat in any practical terms. This is actually a major environmental issue in Australia, especially in Tasmania - where, for the record, old growth forests are still logged to make wood chips and pulp.
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Man, i am reading this thread at 3:30 AM while drinking some chai i got from this absurd shop which is actually owned by walmart and wearing a shirt that was probably sewn together using vietnamese childrens' shattered dreams and i was thinking about my current lifestyle and choices and I find it very frightening how much I have changed in a relatively short period of time.
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so what have we learned from this thread?
basically, everything you could ever do is completely evil; everything is bad for something, so who fucking cares?
just enjoy your short lives while you can and try to be nice to other people.
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That is actually a good point. Too many people focus on being nice to the environment and not on being nice to other people. Holding a picket sign and screaming at people is emotionally retarded and the kind of mentality that drives such action, on both sides of any issue, is a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed.
But people tend to gravitate towards "simple" solutions that make us "feel good", as pointed out in the Penn & Teller episode I linked to.
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my outlook on life is thus: my life and your life and pretty much everybody's life is pointless. In the "large scheme of life" anything you or i or anyone can do is insignificant. In a hundred years we'll be dead and only a handful of people will care, and they'll get over it. The entire human race or fluffy bunnies and pandas can all die and it won't really matter; but fuck the large scheme of life, I am not the world, I am not the people and while i'm here i'll try and have a good time. If i get 60 years of existance sandwhiched between two eternities of non existance then I'm not going to waste them on petty issues. We're on a ride to nowhere, come on inside. Taking that ride to nowhere, we'll take that ride. Maybe you wonder where you are, I don't care. Here is where time is on our side, take you there
We're on a road to nowhere, ha, ha
We're on a road to nowhere, ha, ha
We're on a road to nowhere, ha, ha, whoo
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hooray nihilism!
Let's rape some nuns!
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I'd say my beliefs (for they are beliefs and that pretty much makes me not a nihilist) are much more rooted in absurdism and situationism.
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Really, situationism? Would you mind expanding on that, I can't see the connection myself and situationism has always made me feel like life is anything but pointless so I'm interested in how it's led you to such a different place.
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lief is incredibly pointless, but why do you need to have a point? why is pointless bad? live your life! enjoy it! make every moment a well spent moment! why do you feel the need to justify your existance when the sad truth is that you simply exist? why do you need a point when life itself can be so rewarding?
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I'd say my beliefs (for they are beliefs and that pretty much makes me not a nihilist) are much more rooted in absurdism and situationism.
You can see by my cold, cold stare that I was being completely serious there.
Unfortunately, I was expecting some kind of initiative to try and explain how raping people isn't something one should do in your worldview. Bah to you, sir.
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live your life! enjoy it!
Saying that one should live one's life to maximum enjoyment is saying that the point of life is to enjoy oneself.
You can't get away from the fact that everyone believes that there is some "point" to life, in some form or other.
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oh, i am perfectly fine with whatever you want to make with your life. What i dispute is the idea of there being "a point" to life. we'll die, it is kind of a bummer, we are alive, it is kind of awesome. Whatever you want to do with your life is utterly irrelevant, but have fun doing it, I try to have fun with mine.
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Absurdists don't deny that people have motivations, they just deny that there's one overarching principle of the universe from which value judgements can be said to spring. Anything beyond that is hairsplitting and personal preferences.
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oh, i am perfectly fine with whatever you want to make with your life. What i dispute is the idea of there being "a point" to life.
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oh, i am perfectly fine with whatever you want to make with your life. What i dispute is the idea of there being "a point" to life. we'll die, it is kind of a bummer, we are alive, it is kind of awesome. Whatever you want to do with your life is utterly irrelevant, but have fun doing it, I try to have fun with mine.
Bear with me, I don't know if you've explained this in such a way that I fully understand your ideology, but I'm going to air my sappy, bemused thoughts out here and you can point out where I'm going wrong, if I am.
I flirted with this line of thinking in high school (hedonism and egoism are mighty tempting to every teenage male), but the more I thought about it (and after a humanitarian trip to Nicaragua), the less sense it made. Is there an endless nothing before and beyond my life? Probably. But to say actions are utterly irrelevant is patently untrue and seems to be more of a resentful reaction to the complexity of the world and one's own relative powerlesness on a large scale. I won't end suffering on Earth. Not in my lifetime, not in a hundred. But suffering is a real thing, nonetheless, and I'd like to say that preventing people from kicking dogs, or their girlfriends, is something worth acting towards, and is very relevant, more relevant than, say, smoking weed and playing Halo. We can point out the relative insignificance of a particular instance of suffering in context of all suffering and time, but we wouldn't really be saying anything about it, or its importance. Honestly, I'm very tempted to write it off that kind of a worldview off as a byproduct of a sheltered, comfortable life.
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Suppose someone saves your life. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter all that much. Does that mean that you aren't going to be glad they did it? Like Pervert said, relatively insignificant, at least in the big picture, but to the person whose life was saved, quite significant, significant to his/her loved ones as well.
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But suffering is a real thing, nonetheless, and I'd like to say that preventing people from kicking dogs, or their girlfriends, is something worth acting towards, and is very relevant, more relevant than, say, smoking weed and playing Halo
Well said, sah.
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But it's not any more real or inevitable than smoking weed or playing Halo either. The neutrality of the universe itself has no bearing on value judgements. It's like gravity; it's just the way things are, but that doesn't mean we can't come to our own opinions and conclusions.
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So do you not see any meaningful difference between being a doctor or veterinarian and hotboxing all day?
I still fail to see the importance of the "neutrality of the universe". When I think about it, all I can come up with is an is/ought fallacy. I don't need to refer to the overall temperament of the cosmos to validate the idea that something is right/wrong. What would I need to do so, anyway? A heaven guaranteed for certain deeds? Karmic justice?
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When I was a teenager I did the protests, the rallies, the self published zine, the humanitarian trips, the soup kitchen (i still do the last couple actually), the being hit by the riot police, etc, and I actually did have a sheltered and comfortable life!
I won't end suffering on Earth. Not in my lifetime, not in a hundred. But suffering is a real thing, nonetheless, and I'd like to say that preventing people from kicking dogs, or their girlfriends, is something worth acting towards
sure! i spend a considerable amount of time doing this, because i feel it is the right thing for me to do. I could be wrong though, and it is ultimately moot.
We can point out the relative insignificance of a particular instance of suffering in context of all suffering and time, but we wouldn't really be saying anything about it, or its importance.
with this bit i disagree, because i don't think that is relatively insignificant, but absolutely insignificant in this Large Scheme Of Life, like everything, and when everything is insignificant, what is left to do but what you think is right?
What you may have been missing is that right after talking about the large scheme of life there is the phrase "but fuck the large scheme of life". We are entirely powerless to affect it, so instead i turn to changing my own life, my own friends, my own environment. This is something i came to think after a particularly disastrous humanitarian trip (funny how things affect people differently) when i realised that it was hypocritical and arrogant for me to try and help "them" when "I" had so many things that needed to be changed.
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there is always one of these threads on a messageboard. My advice:
Don't look to anyone else for your values or beliefs. This goes for mainstream or "normal" values and ideals as well as what might be abnormal. Find what agrees with you and is right with you. (which very well be what is considered normal, considering you've been around it your whole life) but always understanding why you do what you do, always know why you choose what you choose. Don't live your life in ignorance, assuming what has existed and what does exist is good, right, or the way it should be. You'll find it's a rare occasion for that to be the case.
If you just follow that sort of advice, you shouldn't have a problem with vegetarians or with meat eaters. Just do what you feel is right and let others do the same. I'm a vegetarian, but I would never wish to impose my beliefs on someone else. I know they eat meat for the same reasons I don't. It's just their values and their beliefs and they are free to them. I hope others will do the same.
There is nothing I despise more than someone telling me I'm doing something wrong because it is not how they do it or how "everyone else does it." Anti-vegetarians are just as bad as vegetarians pushing their beliefs on folks. Neither deserve respect or acknowledgment for their immaturity.
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What would I need to do so, anyway? A heaven guaranteed for certain deeds? Karmic justice?
According to a lot of religions, yes, you would. Which is why many religious people believe that atheists for example are incapable of being truly morally responsible because without God how could they possibly have any meaningful standards? I don't think you need much outside help to give a shit about people or to care for others, but apparently there's a section of the population who strongly disagrees.
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I personally believe that humanity's collective unconscious - the health of which is affected by, among other things, how we treat each other - is independant of the normal rules of space and time, so it will never "go away" and thus it does "matter".
There is something disturbing to me about the armchair nihilism of saying "Since the Universe won't last forever, there is no point to anything." Regardless of whether it's true, the carefree way that some (typically younger) people reach and accept this conclusion is depressing to me.
It's not as bad as the trendiness of atheism, though, which SA did a surprisingly good article on recently:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/atheist-atheism.php
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Yeah, I'm not really a nihilist, I'm more in line with the atheist existentialists or absurdists, I suppose, although it's not like I really put all that much thought into it anymore. I just think meaning and purpose are personal creations rather than some puzzle to be solved or found in dogma.
Anyway, I'm curious as to when "a surprisingly good article" became code for "somethingawful's usual trite reductivism". I really don't see how atheism is any less defensible than nihilism. More importantly, that was boring 'cuz I think I saw the same thing on the Encylopedia dramatica ages ago.
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I don't like atheism because i don't really like any religions
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I don't really buy into the "Atheism IS a religion!" argument, but I dislike the idea of dismissing out of hand the idea that there can be any existance of a god whatsoever. I just know I'm really, really skeptical of say, Odin, or the Judeo-Christian god. So I guess you could say I'm more of an agnostic, but it really does become an exercise in hairsplitting after a while.
I'm pretty certain Bokonism beats everything hands down though, so maybe I should go with that.
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I thought the article was good because it's true and is speaking out against something that a lot of SA readers probably believe in.
It's not "trite reductivism", it's an accurate portrait of a genuine trend.
I've never met a true atheist that wasn't a complete moron. Most "atheists" I've known that were intelligent, when pressed, admit that they're actually agnostics, since believing in nothing requires as much faith as believing in something. Not to mention that a lot of atheists (ahem, Dawkins, ahem) are using a rejection of very specific church dogmas as a logical step in rejecting the entire idea of spirituality.
I'll let this review of a Dawkins book (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html) speak for me, since it does a much better job of what I'm getting at.
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I try not to put much thought anymore into whether I'm an agnostic or an atheist (and as I said, I'm an agnostic if I'm anything) mostly because I'm not sure how much my stance on anything important would change if I knew for certain there was a god. Certainly it would change my outlook in some ways, even maybe a lot of ways, but beyond perhaps legitimizing a religion or two, I'm not sure what god could really represent to me other than some nebulous authority figure beyond my understanding. Which, oddly enough, is why the whole idea of Deism and a passive god appeals to me and makes more sense than any of the current Judeo-Christian beliefs. I like the idea that if there is a god it's something wise or kind enough to accept that just because you created something doesn't mean it is just to demand fealty.
Ugh, this kind of thinking always hurts my brain; I was raised Catholic and like most agnostics and atheists (whether they admit it or not) I still actually hold to most Christian values, but not really truly believing there's a definite reason why I absolutely should have stick to those values makes for loads of cognitive dissonance some days.
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gah. this thread.
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You are such a consistent complainer, jim. Why do you feel the need to always complain about threads you don't like? Why don't you just, you know, not post in them or ignore them?
Oh, right, because it makes you look cool to go "gah. this thread."
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He is right, though. It's a baffling discussion for a music forum, and besides that its original idea has been twisted so far that it's become the usual Internet Argument On Subjective Morality. And now we're discussing religion. Great!
Gah, this thread.
EDIT: On the other hand, I just realized that the S.A. article has one absolutely fascinating point in it:
But what can you expect from a generation who's mythos is based around night elves and Yoshi? Noah didn't save the animals, Sonic the Hedgehog did by defeating Dr. Robotnik. They've been a survivor, a healer, the first son, and the omega in 8 bit and 3-D. Amen.
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Yeah, but we go off-topic all the time, and some of us don't mind meandering tangents.
Besides, he started this thread as having only a tangential relation to music so it's especially funny for him to complain that it has wandered.
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Most "atheists" I've known that were intelligent, when pressed, admit that they're actually agnostics, since believing in nothing requires as much faith as believing in something.
This is why it really amazes me that somebody like Richard Dawkins can proclaim himself an atheist - and a very obstreperous one, at that. Having studied science at uni, it seems to me that atheism is a supremely non-scientific stand-point: you can no more proclaim categorically that god does not exist, than you can claim that he does exist. This is why I consider myself an agnostic, which has historically been viewed (mainly by atheists, I guess) as a weak and unequivocal position, but which is actually I think the only scientifically rigorous position one can take with regards to religious faith.
As for this thread, if you'll allow me to briefly put on my mod hat: I like it. This is the most interesting and thought-provoking and downright reasonable thread we've had on this forum in bloody ages. I know that technically it's not really a music thread any more, and "technically" it should be moved to I Like Fish, but in all honesty, there's a different crowd down there, and if it was moved down there I think the thread would (A) very quickly get filled with trite one-liner joke posts, and (B) quickly after that devolve into argument and name-calling. Which would mean (C) it'd get locked, quick-smart. I don't want to see that happen. I know technically we're not supposed to talk about religion or politics around here, but those rules are in place, I think, largely because discussions of those topics usually turn into shit-fights. We've got to four pages now without that happening. I think we can keep it up.
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You raise a fairly good point on both counts, I s'pose. The agnosticism stance is a good point and probably the most reasonable stance you can take, whether or not you believe in anything. It hasn't gotten into a shit-fight yet but it came dangerously close on a couple of points on the last page.
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I went to a lecture by Daniel Dennett, who's generally considered a leader of the "bright" movement along with Dawkins and that other guy, and he seemed very deliberate, reasonable, and thoughtful and he refrained from the strong rhetoric of Dawkins. The way that Dennett put it, atheism isn't really a scientific position, but in many ways it is a logical one, at least in opposition to judeo-christian theism. One can believe in a God and still be rational, but the traditional ways of thinking, that God is all good, all powerful, etc. are as-yet impossible to fully defend under heavy scrutiny.
Incidentally, the lecture was about religion as a natural phenomena (memes subject to natural section) and it was fascinating.
Perhaps a thread split is in order? :\
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You are such a consistent complainer, jim. Why do you feel the need to always complain about threads you don't like? Why don't you just, you know, not post in them or ignore them?
Oh, right, because it makes you look cool to go "gah. this thread."
Well, I am unbearably cool, so it makes sense that I should also look so. And I suppose I am consistent, in that I've done this...more than once? I suppose I did feel a little entitled this time, because I did start this thread. I realize that doesn't mean much, though.
If you want my opinion on atheists, it's that they're wrong. And I'd have an easy time ceding the merits of agnosticism based on science, if I didn't believe that science was a fundamentally inadequate point for examining life, as a whole.
I would support a thread split, if breaking the pretense that this is a forum in which we "talk about music" was OK with everyone else.
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Care to elaborate on how you think that science is a fundamentally inadequate point for examining life?
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I've never met a true atheist that wasn't a complete moron. Most "atheists" I've known that were intelligent, when pressed, admit that they're actually agnostics, since believing in nothing requires as much faith as believing in something. Not to mention that a lot of atheists (ahem, Dawkins, ahem) are using a rejection of very specific church dogmas as a logical step in rejecting the entire idea of spirituality.
But take that position, and you have to be 'agnostic' about a lot of things. I mean, you have to admit that there could be lots of tiny invisible insubstantial pink unicorns floating around your head right now. After all, there is the same level of evidence for that.
While I am in a certain sense agnostic in this way, it's in the same way that I am agnostic about the sun coming up in the morning, or the operation of cause and effect, or the existence of the universe. I believe God exists about as much as I believe that the room I am sitting in doesn't.
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Care to elaborate on how you think that science is a fundamentally inadequate point for examining life?
I'm not sure if it would be his point, but you have to remember science is based on faith.
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That's not quite the case. The Scientific Method is based upon observation to collect data and repetition to ensure the veracity of that data. Anything that cannot be observed, or any experiment that cannot be replicated, is unscientific.
That having been said, the scientific method can't truly prove anything, it can only disprove. It is inductive by nature. Even though every credible scientist on Earth believes in gravity, we could still be wrong about it. But all the best evidence we have points toward the theory that we have, rather than invisible gravity elves or ethereal tethers or whatever. It would take better evidence to make an alternate theory more palatable.
Science is the best thing around. What people around here probably have issue with is arch-materialism, which Dawkins subscribes to.
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I believe God exists about as much as I believe that the room I am sitting in doesn't.
The problem is when people, as stated in the Dawkins-review I linked, tend to "think of God as some sort of chap". It is ignorant of theology and spiritual history to say that one doesn't believe in "a giant alien in the sky who watches us to make sure we don't do anything bad".
God can be considered a non-"existant" concept even by people who believe in the real fundamental tenets of Christianity, as based on the teachings of a possibly insane anarchist who "hung out with whores and social outcasts".
In other words, in 100 years there will be a religion based on Efrim Manuck's liner notes and lyrics. And it will be awesome.
EDIT: Oh, and jimbunny? Speaking from experience, the thing you want to do is be a likeable poster on this forum before being a pissy Negative Nancy. Otherwise we'll never let you sit at the Cool Kids Table. Possibly also we will shoot spitballs at you.
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Hmm. Science to me is just a tool... a framework of logic which is useful for examining various phenomena and providing an approximate indication of what's going on therein.
While there might be faith involved, it's no greater a leap of faith than that required to walk out of your door in the morning and still expect the world to exist.
I've yet to hear of another viewpoint/system which has proved as useful towards the examination of life, the universe and everything.
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It is also worth noting that, while we can basically agree that gravity works, we still don't really have any idea why.
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It's actually a lot more complicated than that. Karl Popper's falsifiability, Lakatos and Kuhn with research programmes and paradigms, and so on. Feyerabend argues there is nothing separating science from anything else other than the fact we choose to separate it. There's a lot of arguing about what is and isn't scientific, and how you decide what falsifies something - the Duhem-Quine problem, and there's also something about how you tell if an unpredicted result is due to equipment, or the other theories involved (say, for example, the laws of thermodynamics) or if it is your actual hypothesis that is wrong.
Also, I could be wrong, because my knowledge of religion is weighted more towards philosophical rather than theological, but isn't God some sort of definite individual being, at least in some senses?
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Also, I could be wrong, because my knowledge of religion is weighted more towards philosophical rather than theological, but isn't God some sort of definite individual being, at least in some senses?
Not according to many theologians and some religions. There are many different interpretations, and the knee-jerk assumption that people like Dawkins make that every religious or spiritual person believes that God is some kind of super-sized and super-powerful person is at best wildly ignorant.
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And yet, despite this gaping hole in our knowledge regarding gravity, we have put it to good (and bad!) use, for things like skydiving and football.
Much like, despite some inherent problems and "leaps of faith" with science, it's still a remarkably useful tool. For example, I use it on a daily basis to examine why and how various strains of cholera can pick up immunity to antibiotics. Despite some german man with a large moustache telling me that what I'm observing may not be actually happening we can produce practical models and use them in a way that is beneficial to preventing global pandemics of super-bugs.
(Also, is anyone else slightly worried that when they fire up the new large hadron collider it's going to accidentally flick the proverbial reset switch on the universe?)
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Care to elaborate on how you think that science is a fundamentally inadequate point for examining life?
Life, as a whole. Life in a biological sense, sure - I'm quite willing to ascribe the functions that allow me to walk, breathe, and by extension think and feel to the best answers science has to offer. Similar to the natural world. I'm not going to say that something that science finds - through remarkable examination, observation, and logical connection - to be there, isn't there. But life in as much as it has meaning - e.g. my self-awareness, interaction with others, and moral free will - escapes science, precisely because science has no inherent meaning. This isn't to devalue the pursuit and use of science, and the understanding which is the result, which (perhaps coincidentally) presents itself to meaningful consideration in a myriad of amazing ways. Actually, I just use "meaning" because I can't think of a better word for it. I would look at life as the composition of two basic necessities: the need to sustain life and the need to justify life. (And by the way, if I sound slightly biased, it is because I am a humanities major. Please, accept my apologies and try to meet me halfway.)
Scientific theory may be based on assumptions, but there is something different between those assumptions and what a Christian would call faith.
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Now that's more like it. I more or less agree with that whole post, especially wrt Free Will.
As expounded on by a University of Texas professor in the film Waking Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdPNuR_x6Dk).
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(B) quickly after that devolve into argument and name-calling.
But this is the music forum, so highly advanced that we went through that phase ages ago.
I like this thread too.
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Now that's more like it. I more or less agree with that whole post, especially wrt Free Will.
As expounded on by a University of Texas professor in the film Waking Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdPNuR_x6Dk).
Not that anyone asked me or anything, but being a fairly scientific-minded person, I am a determinist. But my pov (disparaged by that particular professor) is that, like with the question of whether or not gravity is due to the attraction of bodies in space or invisible fey spirits, it doesn't truly matter if all actions are determined on some astronomically high level. Even if it were the case, we'd rather act as though we weren't, and that's fine. We'll never be in a position to predict the future with total accuracy even if it was theoretically possible.
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That's not quite the case. The Scientific Method is based upon observation to collect data and repetition to ensure the veracity of that data. Anything that cannot be observed, or any experiment that cannot be replicated, is unscientific.
That having been said, the scientific method can't truly prove anything, it can only disprove. It is inductive by nature. Even though every credible scientist on Earth believes in gravity, we could still be wrong about it. But all the best evidence we have points toward the theory that we have, rather than invisible gravity elves or ethereal tethers or whatever. It would take better evidence to make an alternate theory more palatable.
Science is the best thing around. What people around here probably have issue with is arch-materialism, which Dawkins subscribes to.
You have to remember we derive all scientific knowledge from axioms. This is why all science is faith based.
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It is also worth noting that, while we can basically agree that gravity works, we still don't really have any idea why.
Yeah, it's a real bitch, isn't it? All we can really "know" from science is that some things can be demonstrated repeatedly and that we can sometimes make useful extrapolations and learn new ways to harness things from what we observe. Science is a terrifically useful way of approaching problems, which is why I find the whole evolution battle so frustrating; I think it's pretty clear that at the least there's some facets of evolution and natural selection as we currently understand them that are demonstrably useful and it really bothers me that some people are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater because we don't understand every nuance of biodiversity and speciation yet. I just wish people weren't so quick to equate incomplete with incorrect.
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it really bothers me that some people are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater because we don't understand every nuance of biodiversity and speciation yet. I just wish people weren't so quick to equate incomplete with incorrect.
People like that tend to be in the shallow end of the gene pool so I wouldn't fret too much about it.
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and yes somehow on the upper political echelons!
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Guys all of your arguments need to be rhyming and in iambic pentameter to remain in this thread kthx.
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Extreme belief in any faith or creed
Without a thought to how or why it stands,
Should not be held up as a life to lead
But undergo a rational demand
And Science, too, cannot remain alone
Untouched by any form of doubt or thought
For it too is based on faith and has grown
On what the giants of before have wrought
And yet, one is subject to our disdain
The other raised above all inquiry
No-one questions into science's reign
But we hate religion's authority
Science and faith, for each to hold their own
The truth is something never to be known
SONNET FORM BITCH
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Guys, saying science is based on faith is a pretty big misunderstanding. Faith implies an act of will to believe in something either without reason, or without reasonable proof. Yeah, sure, science is not absolute, and this is something a lot of people don't get. However, good science implicitly understands this. Even the most hardened skeptics will normally tell you that they would find nothing more exciting and interesting than, say, genuine proof of ESP or telekinesis. Scientific theorys are the best model we have for understanding our environment at any given time. True, scientific theories contain no inherent truth or substance, being abstract human inventions, however, the independtly verifiable experimental results on which they are based are not abstractions. To suggest that science is equivalent to religious faith is a philosophical abstraction as simplistic and ludicrous as 'there's no point in doing anything because of the heat death of the universe' (already discussed) or saying that there is no proof that anything whatsoever is real. Yeah, you can construct a pretty good argument for it, but it just digs you into a hole and kills all progress. Similiarly to the way that western philosophy has pretty much had to accept that 'I think, therefore I am' in order to get anywhere worthwhile. To say science is based on faith would be to imply that there is no objective reality. It would be to say that it is a miracle every time the heating element in my kettle boils the water within it. It just won't wash guys. Go read some Pirsig.
Also, if you think people go in for creationism because of flaws in the theory of evolution, I think you're mistaken. Pt the eople go in for creationism because they have no true faith, no critical faculties, and no fucking imagination. In order to believe in their religion, they have to cling rigidly to one view of the world, and reject everything else, no matter how preposterous their arguments or proofs. Taking on good faith that at least the majority of creationists are not cynical charlatans milking seminar audiences and church congregations for donations, then there is a hell of a lot of willing self-deception going round. You see it in any such group: all brands of conspiracy theorists, flat earthers, hollow earthers, certain sorts of UFO believers, cultists, a good deal of the less philosophically and theologically sound occultists. Just try talking with them. Rational argument will not work, because they have trapped themselves in a self-sustaining loop of false logic where the conclusions they feel they have to reach form an integral part of the argument for their conclusions, ie:
"You can't question the historical authenticity of the King James Bible, because the King James Bible says it is infallible"
"Of course no creditable academics or news sources will report that Mossad and the CIA did September 11th/George Bush is a 12 foot ananaki vampire lizard/The Masons run the Government, they've all been bought off by the [gigantic conspiracy]"
"Of course there's no peer-reviewed medical studies that support the benefits of homeopathy, conventional doctors are opposed to homeopathy because it'll run them out of business"
And so on, and so forth.
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Guys, saying science is based on faith is a pretty big misunderstanding. Faith implies an act of will to believe in something either without reason, or without reasonable proof.
I largely agree with what you've said, but this definition of faith is wrong. Used generally, I may say that I have "faith" in you and base it on very reasonable proof -- namely all the times in the past that you've acted honestly, etc. Even if we accept that "faith" in the religious context has a special meaning, you must admit that many deists believe in miracles which provide, for those who believe they occurred, reason and reasonable proof in the existence of God. I accept that some deists (ie. believers in one or more gods) take the position that faith may exist outside of reason, and perhaps that God tests the faith of his worshippers by withholding reasonable proof of his existence -- but I've always found this line of reasoning sophomoric. Indeed, if one defines a deity as a being capable of exercising supernatural powers not explicable by the laws of physics (for instance, an omnipotent God) it becomes difficult not to admit that God has exercised his will directly thereby providing reasonable proof of his existence. Now I'm certain this discussion doesn't encompass all deists, but I'm not seeking to make a categorical statement. Rather, I'm pointing out that many (and almost certainly the majority) of deists hold faith in God or gods that is in their opinion buttressed by reasonable proof.
I've never met a true atheist that wasn't a complete moron.
Then I'd suggest that you haven't met very many atheists, or you're overly judgmental. The very idea of a "true" atheist is a strawman -- rational certainty is not characterized by the absence of any exceedingly farfetched alternate theory (hence the first year college philosophy gem "How do you know the world wasn't created five minutes ago with everyone having memories going back to the beginning of their ficitious lives . . . well you don't but it's just not very plausible, is it?).
I'd be happy to continue this conversation outside of this forum, given the no religion discussion rule (that I just violated).
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But believers also have a faith that such miracles are not random chance, and faith as to which deity or force they are attributable to. Believing in Christianity because the bible says Jesus walked on water is another logic loop.
And yes, there are several dictionary definitions of the word 'faith'. I don't have an OED here with me, but I'd say that the two pertinent here are that of trusting in something based on some evidence (but not any certainty) and of belief without reason. Both require an act of will. You have faith in me repaying my debts, but no proof I will. You may have faith in the law, but injustice is still possible. Your faith can be well placed, or not well placed, but we're generally talking about a different thing to religious belief. You can have faith in science, but science is not a faith, if you see what I mean.
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Re: Creationism, the only real reason there's even a debate between "Intelligent Design" or whatever they want to call it and evolution is that a staggering number of people who believe they're well-informed are misinformed about what evolution is (they think it's about humanity coming from monkeys or some other straw man bullshit). Natural Selection is as iron-clad as a scientific theory gets at this point. Hell, the catholic church has acknowledged its legitimacy. Of course, the kind of people who would deny Natural Selection probably wouldn't consider catholicism to be christianity anyway.
Re: Miracles, Hume has the last word on it, as far as I'm concerned.
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In Robert Anton Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger 2 (I believe) he has an extended passage regarding a miraculous recovery that he had from an illness.
In said passage, he talks about how he researched so-called "spontaneous unexplainable cures". There is actually a group of medical PhD's in America that investigates such claims. As of the writing of the book, they had found insufficient evidence for hundreds of said claims, but there were, IIRC, somewhere between 12 and 17 cases which the panel had no choice but to declare "completely contrary to all established medical knowledge".
One such case involves a man in the 60s who was diagnosed with a disease that literally no one has ever been cured of, period. The disease caused there to be a massive tumor in his hip - grapefruit-sized or larger. Since he had been basically told he was going to die and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, he checked out of the hospital, rented a hotel room, and spent a week watching Marx Brothers films and eating ice cream.
At the end of that week, the tumor was entirely gone and his disease was completely cured, never to return.
Time and again we see evidence that the mind has an incredible ability to affect our body and its health. Why this should be the case is, as far as conventional science is concerned, a total mystery.
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And the moral of the story is, the Marx brothers should be deified.
Also, Supersheep, that's the best summary of a thread in Sonnet form that I've ever seen.
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I can't deny that such crazily abnormal cases happen, but they are anecdotal. The doctors made the right call, and I'm sure they were greatly relieved when they were still proven wrong. You can't bank on miracles. Like Hume says, if I have a bag of 100 marbles, and I pour out 99 of them and they're all blue, the only reasonable prediction I could make is that the 100th is also blue. I certainly couldn't bet them all that the last is red.
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And the moral of the story is, the Marx brothers should be deified.
Also, Supersheep, that's the best summary of a thread in Sonnet form that I've ever seen.
And Ice cream should be a holy object?
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I can't deny that such crazily abnormal cases happen, but they are anecdotal.
No, the point of my post is that they're not. There are a significant number of cases which defy explanation entirely. The doctors didn't "make the right call", they made "the only call" - as I said, this is a disease that has no treatment and no cure and certainly has never just vanished into thin air. Such things warrant investigation, because the entire point of science is to understand what happens, not just understand "what usually happens".
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(Also, is anyone else slightly worried that when they fire up the new large hadron collider it's going to accidentally flick the proverbial reset switch on the universe?)
Not really, since there has been that worry with every other device of that sort that they've made so far.
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I can't deny that such crazily abnormal cases happen, but they are anecdotal.
No, the point of my post is that they're not. There are a significant number of cases which defy explanation entirely. The doctors didn't "make the right call", they made "the only call" - as I said, this is a disease that has no treatment and no cure and certainly has never just vanished into thin air. Such things warrant investigation, because the entire point of science is to understand what happens, not just understand "what usually happens".
That is true. However, what kind of investigation would you propose? You told us about a man who was cured of a supposedly incurable disease with no treatment whatsoever. What experiment can a researcher conduct to test the cause of this? Should they run a test programme where they pick a sample of people with the same tumour and not treat a random group from the sample (the test group), and then, what, not not treat the control group? What is the placebo here? What variables can they hold constant and which can they change?
The bottom line is that were you to tell a medical researcher this story, she or he will reply "OK, that is one lucky man. However, my job is to do what I can to cure diseases". There's really no investigation that can be done into this guy's story other than "wow this guy was exceptionally lucky for some reason". A scientist can't investigate something s/he can't control, and "divine intervention" or "random chance" or whatever you want to offer as an explanation can't be controlled. There's no way to test any theory about why this guy survived, because, unless you're suggesting the Marx brothers cured him, there's no testable hypothesis I can think of that will explain why he survived.
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Thanks VD! It is actually nowhere near a good argument but I was bored and at least I am the only one following the rules which means I win by default!
Faith is probably a bad word to use, due to it meaning both "belief that" - that is, the belief that there is a table over there - and "belief in" - as in belief in God. And Khar, Feyerabend disagrees with you.
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I really think that faith implies more willpower than the act of assuming that the objects around us are actually real. I mean, seriously.
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Does it? When I was a little kid I went to a CofE school, and because I was told there was a god I thought this was true. It didn't require any greater willpower than, say, being told there was oxygen in what I breathed in and this was one thing which kept me alive. Losing faith in god was the part that actually required willpower, since I thought about the story of Noah's Ark and realised that I had to choose between belief in god and dinosaurs. I was eight. God lost.
Just because science and religion are both basically belief systems doesn't mean they're the same, they differ massively. But both do require faith in certain things. That's fine with me, just like I know that my atheism is based on belief. It isn't scientifically rigorous but I nevertheless firmly believe that there is no god.
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There's really no investigation that can be done into this guy's story other than "wow this guy was exceptionally lucky for some reason". A scientist can't investigate something s/he can't control, and "divine intervention" or "random chance" or whatever you want to offer as an explanation can't be controlled. There's no way to test any theory about why this guy survived, because, unless you're suggesting the Marx brothers cured him, there's no testable hypothesis I can think of that will explain why he survived.
1. Investigating a single case is not the point. The point is to investigate why things like this happen a statistically significant number of times.
2. There are already have been, and continue to be, studies on how the human mind - through positive thinking - can radically affect the body's processes.
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i think i have a solution to everyones problems, if you guys wanna hear it.
i have theory about the universe in which both science and religion win. sort of.
given an infinite amount of space and time, anything is possible. including the birth of a god. however, this would not be a god in the traditional sense. since it evolved and was born it would not be our idea of a god exactly; it would be a god-like creature. it's still all powerful or whatever, it's just not what we've imagined god to be for so long. i say "it" when in all likelyhood, if this were true, there would be many (see: infinity) of these beings. not to mention infinite numbers of infinite variations of said beings.
i say this to remind us that we have no idea what we are talking about and we won't live long enough to find out. so just be good people and try not to worry about it.
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That only stands for things that are physically possible, right? Which almost certainly rules out God, at least, as well as probably an all-powerful, or an omniscient, being. Even if it was the case that the all-powerful being came into existence, unless it was the one that made us, the religious people are still out of business.
I don't see how atheism is unscientific, to be honest. There's no evidence for it, so you believe it doesn't exist. Now, if there was evidence, then belieivng that it doesn't exist would be unscientific, but otherwise, it's fine.
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I don't see how atheism is unscientific, to be honest. There's no evidence for it, so you believe it doesn't exist
There is a difference in "I believe this doesn't exist" and "I don't believe this exists". And it's a mighty big difference.
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Zero is right, though it seems like a matter of semantics at first, there is quite a difference.
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That only stands for things that are physically possible, right? Which almost certainly rules out God, at least, as well as probably an all-powerful, or an omniscient, being.
would you be willing to admit that there is a .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%* chance of an omnipotent being evolving?
because if there is a chance of that happening (no matter how small) then it has already happened and will happen over and over again forever.
*actual percentage much much much lower
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Yeah, there is, but it's only at some levels, I think. The invisible flying insubstantial pink unicorns flying around you at the moment - is it the case that you believe they don't exist or you don't believe they exist?
SWM, on omnipotence, I don't know if it is physically possible for an omnipotent being to evolve - and I am almost definite that a being with the attributes generally assigned to God could not physically evolve. Also, given that we don't know if there is infinite time and space, we can't say that for definite. But yes, given infinite time and space, a being will evolve that reaches the level of what it is physically possible for a being to do, and is at least practically omnipotent. That isn't God, though.
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Yeah, there is, but it's only at some levels, I think. The invisible flying insubstantial pink unicorns flying around you at the moment - is it the case that you believe they don't exist or you don't believe they exist?
I don't believe they exist.
Equating every concept of God with the Tooth Fairy or invisible pink unicorns is exactly what is laughably ignorant about the Dawkins type of atheism.
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@Supersheep
yes, it's definitely not God. it might be a god, though. there is pretty severe difference.
on infinite space and time: space goes on forever; real talk. but remember what space is: space is empty; it's absolutely nothing. sometimes there is matter floating in it.
so space goes on forever, but the matter within space only goes out so far.
instead of thinking about our universe as everything there is, try thinking about it as just a really, really big galaxy which is seperated by unfathomable amounts of space from other galaxies (other universes). they are so far from each other that they can never interact with each other (i say never loosely because honestly, who knows?).
infinite time? well, i just don't know. i'm almost positive that time can't end but it will require more thought.
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Given enough time, humans could become god-like, through evolution and use of technology. You all know that Arthur C. Clarke quote, right?
Of course, that is if we don't manage to kill each other off first.
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It is more likely that, no matter how advanced humans get, we will always be doomed to fall into a Dark Age from which we must emerge again, forever. The odds are just stacked too much against us (meteors, disease, hatred, war, selfishness, etc).
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i'm pretty sure humans won't last long enough to become god-like. we definitely won't evolve that way. thanks to our big brains we have stopped evolving. instead of selecting for survival we are now selecting for looks since all of our survival is done for us by machines. we will evolve, yes, but into blond-haired, blue-eyed supermodels. not gods.
that's assuming we make it that far, which i kind of doubt.
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You're ignoring societal evolution, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRLy7LqFN6E
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See, I fail to see any difference between God and the flying pink unicorns - there is no scientific evidence for either of them. Why can you say that they don't exist, but when someone says God doesn't exist, they're laughably ignorant? Actually, maybe you are talking about a different concept of God than the one I am - I basically going for the omnipotent omniscient external being totally different from us, along the lines of what Aquinas describes.
The whole space and time thing is something that I don't know anywhere near enough physics to even begin to try and understand. But if you're talking about infinite numbers of universes, then yes, I agree with you.
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that seems to be a seperate matter from what i was talking about, though. maybe i misunderstood him (very likely; he talks quite fast).
i whole-heartedly agree that our society and technology is advancing at a ridiculous, ever-increasing rate but spontaneous, individual mutation? again, i may have completely misunderstood that guy so please correct me if i'm way off.
i think i may have just lost my grasp on this conversation. my brain is rebelling; it won't let me think about this anymore.
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Evolution isn't linear. There isn't a "goal", and there isn't a progression, as in, humanity isn't the sum total of evolution up to this point, all the things that came before us weren't trial runs and everything that will come after us won't necessarily be an improvement over what exists now. We were one organism amongst many millions who just happened to have evolved to have larger and more complex brains that give us an astounding advantage over all other life on Earth. One of the common misconceptions about Natural Selection is that only beneficial traits are passed on genetically. Any trait can be passed on so long as it doesn't directly interfere with the survival of the organism. And even then, things like autism and hemophilia continue to exist, because they don't outright kill you and in some cases they "skip generations". Talk of a "homo superior" or other such concept that we will eventually ascend to through evolution is science fiction, if not fantasy. We won't naturally shed all of our ugly habits over time.
As for cultural / scientific evolution, there is a threshold. It's intimidating to think about the rate of discovery over time, but the talk always assumes that trends will stay constant. My wager is that for the most part things will stay mostly the same for a long time. We have to remember that 50 years ago learned people honestly believed that by now we could be living on other planets, free of all communicable diseases and driving clean, flying cars, due to technological possibilities that seemed limitless. Chances are there will be gains, but they will be comparitively modest.
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See, I fail to see any difference between God and the flying pink unicorns - there is no scientific evidence for either of them. Why can you say that they don't exist, but when someone says God doesn't exist, they're laughably ignorant?
If you will read the Dawkins review I linked earlier in the thread, you'll find the answer to that question.
Lacking evidence of something is not enough for me to say that I believe it doesn't exist. I don't believe negatives. Just because I don't believe in invisible unicorns doesn't mean I believe there are no such things.
Broadly speaking, I don't believe in much at all, including "tables", "Mogwai albums", "gravity", and "matter".
Actually, maybe you are talking about a different concept of God than the one I am - I basically going for the omnipotent omniscient external being
Yes, again, refer to said article: "Dawkins seems to believe in God, if not having a white beard, at least as some sort of chap, however supersized."
Dawkins and many atheists are provably ignorant of theologians that define God in completely different terms entirely.
Again quoting the article, "reading Dawkins on God is like reading a book on evolutionary biology written by someone who has only read The Book of British Birds".
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Sadly, a lot of the ID folks haven't even read the Book of British Birds.
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Just because I'm bashing Dawkins-style atheism is no reason to think I'm some kind of super-religious Christian, or even a Christian at all in any significant sense.
So let's leave Intelligent Design out of it.
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Evolution isn't linear. There isn't a "goal", and there isn't a progression, as in, humanity isn't the sum total of evolution up to this point, all the things that came before us weren't trial runs and everything that will come after us won't necessarily be an improvement over what exists now. We were one organism amongst many millions who just happened to have evolved to have larger and more complex brains that give us an astounding advantage over all other life on Earth. One of the common misconceptions about Natural Selection is that only beneficial traits are passed on genetically. Any trait can be passed on so long as it doesn't directly interfere with the survival of the organism. And even then, things like autism and hemophilia continue to exist, because they don't outright kill you and in some cases they "skip generations". Talk of a "homo superior" or other such concept that we will eventually ascend to through evolution is science fiction, if not fantasy. We won't naturally shed all of our ugly habits over time.
As for cultural / scientific evolution, there is a threshold. It's intimidating to think about the rate of discovery over time, but the talk always assumes that trends will stay constant. My wager is that for the most part things will stay mostly the same for a long time. We have to remember that 50 years ago learned people honestly believed that by now we could be living on other planets, free of all communicable diseases and driving clean, flying cars, due to technological possibilities that seemed limitless. Chances are there will be gains, but they will be comparitively modest.
And about twenty years before then, they thought that it was impossible to ever get to the moon.
And not that I am not speaking about any time that any of us will see, just that at some point in time, millions or billions of years from now, if we do not destroy our civilizations, we could do things that seem impossible to the average person these days. Even five hundred years ago, someone would have thought things impossible that these days we take for granted. How long did it take columbus to cross the ocean again? Compared to the length of flights across continents now?
How long has the universe existed? Doesn't it seem somewhat arrogant to assume that in our meager time on this planet, we have become as advanced as anything else has?
And Intelligent Design? Seems like the most intelligent way to design something is so that it continues creating and changing itself. Unless it is a robot that you are giving control of all your weaponry, in which case you are being really fucking stupid.
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Lacking evidence of something is not enough for me to say that I believe it doesn't exist. I don't believe negatives. Just because I don't believe in invisible unicorns doesn't mean I believe there are no such things.
I can't really show that there is or is not a tea kettle orbiting Jupiter, but I'm not agnostic about it.
Dawkins and many atheists are provably ignorant of theologians that define God in completely different terms entirely.
I don't think they care about those theists that aren't contained within a very specific yet very large set that believes there is a omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient cloud being who has been and is active in the events of the world and a 2,000 year old novel is both his word and the only reference point for making sense of the modern world and its problems. Anyone else, say, a theist who believes that God is merely the energy created by all the hugs in the world, is beneath notice. They don't present anything worth addressing. If Jesus was just an anarchistic, crazy guru who presented ideas already presented elsewhere in the world, there's no good reason to fixate upon him.
I'll have to read and respond to that SA article a bit later, I have a party to attend presently. I look forward to it, though. Both the party and the article.
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Not the SA article, Kid, I was referring to the lengthy criticism of Dawkins' The God Delusion.
Here is a link to it again so you don't have to look for it. (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html)
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See, I fail to see any difference between God and the flying pink unicorns
Erm - one's a flying pink strawman?
I don't think they care about those theists that aren't contained within a very specific yet very large set that believes there is a omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omniscient cloud being who has been and is active in the events of the worldfixate upon him.
Who says that's even the dominant theme in Christianity? Not one single priest I've ever talked to thinks of God as the big buddy up in the clouds. They view God as omnipresent, omnibenevolent and omniscient but to think that he's just a slightly bigger organism is to completely ignore the idea that he's supposed to be, above all of those omniadjectives, omnipotent.
Since we're all talking about this in terms of science and logic, here's a puzzler for you - if God is omnipotent, won't He or She have already seen your arguments coming? If God's supposed to be taken on faith, would God design a universe where He or She could be proven to either exist or not exist?
Zerodrone's argument seems to boil down to the fact that there are things out there beyond our comprehension, and that those things actually do exist or they do happen. His postulation is that it's not a significant set of steps to go from "there are things out there we don't understand" to "I believe in God."
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"in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects."
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God, I love theology.
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"in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects."
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So god is in effect a concept that has no material effect on the world? In that case I guess you can have your god I guess, but dont expect me to stop ridiculeing prayer.
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Yeah, man. You ridicule those religious types! MAJOR PWNAGE, man!
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Since we're talking about evolution and religion, I'm surprised no one has talked about Dawkins only actually original and interesting observation, ie. that the majority of religions (certainly of the most popular ones) are set up so that the survival of the dogma is more important than the survival of humanity, and the way in which this mimics the behaviour of viruses?
The whole idea that nothing necessarily exists, don't believe in tables, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda is really pathetic fucking apologetics bullshit. I'm sorry, but it is. What you're trying to do of course, is place abstract concepts on the same level as concrete artifacts, and imply an equivalence between them. That's nice, except for the way that completely ignores the distinction between objective and subjective reality. Or, to put it bluntly, no matter how much Hume you quote at it, you'll still be able to trip over your coffee table. Moreover, so will I. However, if we were to both, say, pray together, or meditate together, or practice yoga, or magick, or what the fuck ever together at the same time, and we both had a spiritual exprience, then the nature of those experiences would be different. Now, maybe what you were talking about was extrinsic properties, which is fine, but the table still has its own intrinsic properties of mass, size, composition etc. that you will trip over no matter what you call it or how you view it. If you can find me a molecule of God to analyse, then we can continue with your line of reasoning zerodrone. Otherwise, stop being an idiot.
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Since we're talking about evolution and religion, I'm surprised no one has talked about Dawkins only actually original and interesting observation, ie. that the majority of religions (certainly of the most popular ones) are set up so that the survival of the dogma is more important than the survival of humanity, and the way in which this mimics the behaviour of viruses?
I'm assuming we've al read Snow Crash already.
The whole idea that nothing necessarily exists, don't believe in tables, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda is really pathetic fucking apologetics bullshit. I'm sorry, but it is. What you're trying to do of course, is place abstract concepts on the same level as concrete artifacts, and imply an equivalence between them. That's nice, except for the way that completely ignores the distinction between objective and subjective reality. Or, to put it bluntly, no matter how much Hume you quote at it, you'll still be able to trip over your coffee table.
No, I'll still be able to receive information from my brain that I am tripping over a coffee table. This in no way tells me that the table "exists", only that I am receiving data.
I receive data that if I see a table, I can touch it and it will be solid. I have also had genuine experiences whereby I had telepathic conversations with another human being, which we both afterwards verified as having happened, down to the word. And yet I'm sure your own set of data will provoke you to tell me that it didn't happen or it was bullshit, which is your prerogative. It is, after all, your Universe.
Moreover, so will I. However, if we were to both, say, pray together, or meditate together, or practice yoga, or magick, or what the fuck ever together at the same time, and we both had a spiritual exprience, then the nature of those experiences would be different.
See above. I have also had experiences with the same group of 4 other people where we all had a same internal "vision" which we all perceived as identical.
Now, maybe what you were talking about was extrinsic properties, which is fine, but the table still has its own intrinsic properties of mass, size, composition etc. that you will trip over no matter what you call it or how you view it. If you can find me a molecule of God to analyse, then we can continue with your line of reasoning zerodrone. Otherwise, stop being an idiot.
Who says God is made of molecules? Are thoughts made of molecules? Are choices? Did you decide to call me an idiot, or did you call me an idiot because of an inexorable series of chemical reactions in your brain?
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You found, upon communicating with each other, that your experiences were the same?
What a surprise!
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What a flip dismissal!
One of them would say something that they were perceiving. It would match up exactly with what I was seeing internally, and what the rest of them were.
These are people that absolutely would not have been lying or agreeing for the sake of seeming "cool".
But again, as I said, I knew you would tell me my experiences were bullshit before you even did, so carry on.
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As for cultural / scientific evolution, there is a threshold. It's intimidating to think about the rate of discovery over time, but the talk always assumes that trends will stay constant. My wager is that for the most part things will stay mostly the same for a long time. We have to remember that 50 years ago learned people honestly believed that by now we could be living on other planets, free of all communicable diseases and driving clean, flying cars, due to technological possibilities that seemed limitless. Chances are there will be gains, but they will be comparitively modest.
I agree that evolution via natural selection is pretty stagnant within humans as a species. I personally think that evolution via technology will be a much more important factor within a few hundred years. I'm not entirely sure what you meant by "threshhold", but as far as evolution goes, it all comes down to DNA. Once we know exactly what everything in the human genome does, and how to put it together, then we can pretty much do whatever we like as far as self-directed evolution goes.
This knowledge of genetics will happen. It's already happening, and it's getting faster. How it will be used is a different matter, but its potential is pretty high.
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Unless things like "kindness" and "cruelty" are completely independant of genetics. Then we'll still have the same problems we have now.
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Who says God is made of molecules? Are thoughts made of molecules? Are choices? Did you decide to call me an idiot, or did you call me an idiot because of an inexorable series of chemical reactions in your brain?
Okay so if your thoughts are not made of molecules then how exactly does alchahol work.... magic....
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The act of thinking involves the firing of neurons, but are those neurons and electrical reactions really all that constitute a "thought", a "choice", or a "mood"?
It amazes me that there are people who actually embrace a worldview which suggests that they only have an illusion of free will and that everything that will ever happen in their life is inevitable.
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Does that mean that they wouldn't sue if you stole their car? Or would that be destined to happen?
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The logical extension of the argument that our thoughts are nothing but chemical reactions is that every single "choice" we make is not a choice, but is rather the only possibly outcome when the incredibly vast, but nonetheless finite, amount of data is taken into consideration.
Some would argue that sufficiently advanced interactions of atoms is indistinguishable from free will, obviously, but that argument falls apart when confronted by the fact that there's no real, current way to account for choice or willpower within a strictly scientific framework.
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I'm reminded of a group of studies (referenced through B.F. Skinner, I believe. I don't have direct reference) in which electrodes were implanted in test subjects' brains in such a place that when electrical currents were run through the electrode, the subject turned his/her head, involuntarily. The fascinating part was that none of the test subjects reported an involuntary action, indeed, they said they turned their heads on purpose, of their own free will. "I heard a noise" or "my neck was tired and I was stretching" or somesuch. As I said before, I don't truly believe in the self as true cause of action. Human behavior is a complex system, but it is a system.
It amazes me that there are people who actually embrace a worldview which suggests that they only have an illusion of free will and that everything that will ever happen in their life is inevitable.
Why not? My conscious awareness that the decisions I'm going to be making are determined by situational factors doesn't really affect how I feel about those decisions. I don't enjoy my life any less. Besides, we (should) already admit that certain people don't have control over themselves. The mentally ill, for instance, or drug addicts. There are obviously factors that compromise their will, and it would be both grotesque and ignorant to insist that a clinically depressed person just isn't trying hard enough to change their attitude, or that all a smack addict suffers from is a lack of personal fortitude and responsibility. Are they really free? Are they less free than we are? Or are the determining factors of their behavior just more obvious than usual? Will and determinism aren't necessarily incompatible as it is. After all, the best thing Bowie did to kick heroin was up and move to an environment that didn't enable it. Unfortunately for him, that city was Berlin, which came with its own vices.
Who says God is made of molecules? Are thoughts made of molecules? Are choices? Did you decide to call me an idiot, or did you call me an idiot because of an inexorable series of chemical reactions in your brain?
Are you making a "mental material" argument here, or are you being sardonic? I don't believe that when I think of my perfect island getaway, that island actually exists somewhere in reality. That perfect island getaway is in some way my brain state at the time of thought. It's not a full-fledged theory, it has its problems, but it's a better explanation than thought occupying some extradimensional space.
Regarding the review of The God Delusion, it has a number of strong points regarding the backwardness of Dawkins' crusade, and I've pondered the quickness of young atheists to literally scapegoat religion as the ipso facto origin of all worldly ills myself. But somehow, the academic objections to the book and the movement it represents seem sort of beside the point. Out here in WASP country there are precious few people who appreciate the finer points of theology. All the talk of what christianity really is is lost on all the people who will tell you that yes, Jesus did actually rise from the dead and yes, the Earth is 6,000 years old and yes, every word of Revelations will come to pass (do serious theologians not believe in Revelations?). I'd blame Dawkins for casting too broad a net, and allowing his rhetoric to cover non-protestants.
But having seen Daniel Dennett speak, he went at it less from an angry scientists' perspective and more of a philosopher's perspective, although the main focus of his lecture was the study of religion as meme. As any phi 101 student can tell you (and have you noticed how we're slowly cycling through all sorts of phi 101 topics?) any philosophy that prominently includes God is bound to be shittier than usual. Dennett certainly wasn't gung-ho about anything, and it was mighty disappointing that the Q&A after the lecture was mostly taken up by Dennett repeating his logic to clergy who angrily demanded for him to admit that God existed.
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I don't believe that when I think of my perfect island getaway, that island actually exists somewhere in reality. That perfect island getaway is in some way my brain state at the time of thought.
Maybe the exact island you're picturing doesn't exist but that doesn't rule out the existence of an island getaway.
Out here in WASP country there are precious few people who appreciate the finer points of theology. All the talk of what christianity really is is lost on all the people who will tell you that yes, Jesus did actually rise from the dead and yes, the Earth is 6,000 years old and yes, every word of Revelations will come to pass (do serious theologians not believe in Revelations?).
Precious few people appreciate the finer points of democracy, but that doesn't invalidate it. If Dawkins' message was "think seriously about whether or not you actually believe in your religion" and he directed it at those people, that would be reasonable. It's not "beside the point" to criticize him for having too broad a message that's too off-target. Plus there are other reasons Dawkins' argument isn't particularly valid, which have been covered up in the thread.
(A lot of people think Revelations is code, hey? Well, "code" isn't exactly the right word, but it gets the idea across. It's purportedly a message to Christians to continue to have conviction in their beliefs in the teachings of Christ, even in the face of great danger.)
As any phi 101 student can tell you (and have you noticed how we're slowly cycling through all sorts of phi 101 topics?) any philosophy that prominently includes God is bound to be shittier than usual.
Any phi 101 student I've ever met is either full of himself, full of crap or bursting over with both. Not sure what this has to do with any part of your argument other than suggesting that a select group of people taking a particular area of study that for the past few centuries has been examining the notion of God and finding it lacking will not be receptive to arguments relating to God. I guess you're right on the money there.
The notion of a religion as a meme is a fascinating one, but does it account for individuals having separate beliefs within the same belief structure? My mother and I are both Catholic but we have different views on the theology and both of us certainly have different views from our priest, who also has different views from the bishop. At its core the beliefs are similar but in practice they are wildly different from one another, except that we all believe a dude was nailed to a tree for saying some stuff people didn't like and then he came back later.
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phi 101
My phi101 class here at school was a miserable excretion of the educational system. It involved a one-on-one debate between my professor and a kid who was attempting to dismantle John Locke's primary and secondary qualities using the example of a zebra (the fact that it occurred in nature and was multicolored apparently disproved the fact that its two colors in the human eye are ultimately perception and don't really exist otherwise), and the debate for or against god consisted of a girl actually citing the moral pioneerings of Final Destination as an example of god's plan for each and every one of us.
Classes like this are mostly why I'm transferring.
I wish my phi101 class was like this thread at all.
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Why not? My conscious awareness that the decisions I'm going to be making are determined by situational factors doesn't really affect how I feel about those decisions.
The point is that if you acknowledge that thought is strictly a physical phenomenon, you never make decisions at all. You seem to be stuck in a sort of loop whereby you claim that one can make decisions, but have said nothing about what scientific evidence leads you to believe that our brains are capable of deciding which neurons to fire. If the firing of a neuron is subject to chemical law, then so is the firing of the neuron which causes you to believe you're choosing to fire another neuron. At some point you have to pony up an explanation of what is allowing you to "choose" anything at all, or admit that factoring in everything about the Universe - a finite set of data - there will always only be one outcome because atoms and molecules behave according to entirely predictable laws which do not include "morality" or "choice" or "freedom".
or that all a smack addict suffers from is a lack of personal fortitude and responsibility
The body's dependance on a chemical is part of the interaction, sure. This is entirely beside the point. How can someone be held responsible for something they have no control over?
Will and determinism aren't necessarily incompatible as it is. After all, the best thing Bowie did to kick heroin was up and move to an environment that didn't enable it.
Sure. Now tell me what part of him enabled him to make that "choice". Show me the part of the brain that our minds can control, rather than the current scientific evidence which is that our brains control our minds.
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Supersheep, if this were my thread, you would have won it almost 2 pages ago.
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on infinite space and time: space goes on forever; real talk. but remember what space is: space is empty; it's absolutely nothing. sometimes there is matter floating in it.
so space goes on forever, but the matter within space only goes out so far.
There's really no reason to believe space goes on infinitely. It might, it might not. However, if it is infinite, it probably is filled with matter pretty evenly for that infinite expanse. The big bang theory doesn't describe the creation of matter within an existing space; the theory is that space itself was created in the big bang, along with time and all the energy in the universe. The energy/matter was created within all the space that was created.
There is empirical evidence for the universe being homogenously full of matter too! The cosmic microwave background, which is the "echo" (for want of a better word?) of the big bang, is pretty much the same in every direction. So, yeah, if there is infinite space, there is an infinite amount of matter in that space. Of course, as I said, there might not be infinite space. There's a lot we don't know about the shape of the universe; whether it's infinite or finite, flat, curved positively like a kind of three dimensional sphere or curved negatively like a kind of three dimensional saddle.
instead of thinking about our universe as everything there is, try thinking about it as just a really, really big galaxy which is seperated by unfathomable amounts of space from other galaxies (other universes). they are so far from each other that they can never interact with each other (i say never loosely because honestly, who knows?).
umm?
infinite time? well, i just don't know. i'm almost positive that time can't end but it will require more thought.
The universe will almost certainly come to an "end" of sorts. So there isn't actually an infinite amount of time for all possibilities to arise. Thermodynamics is a bitch like that.
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"in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects."
This is begging the question! If you define God as the necessary condition for existence, then of course God exists, but this is an even more pointless task than Aquinas' First Way - you've proved something that has to be, and then defining it as god. Also I have never come across this definition.
On reflection, using the word being is a bad choice - it doesn't convey the sense of being part of the universe itself while also being in some way a separate entity. God is not the universe, but they are intrinsically linked in some way by being similar. Is that what you're getting at here? So the way in which the flying pink unicorns differ from God is the property of being part of the universe? I don't see them as being a strawman - to me both are invisible insubstantial 'entities' (using a very loose definition of the word entity), so I want to find out how they differ from one another.
As for free will, I've seen people try to explain choice by appeals to either quantum indeterminacy or the many-worlds hypothesis. Whether these are convincing or not I don't know, but they are possibilities that work within science. The identical visions you and your friends saw could have been caused by a particular trigger external to you all, or perhaps your brain convinced itself that what your friend described was what it saw, or so on. There are potential physical explanations for it that do not need to appeal to external spiritual factors - we just haven't developed a theory for them yet, we can only provide ad hoc hypotheses.
And I don't think talking philosophy here is a pointless enterprise - it's pretty much the only place you can have this discussion.
Also, THANKS KATIE!
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As for free will, I've seen people try to explain choice by appeals to either quantum indeterminacy or the many-worlds hypothesis. Whether these are convincing or not I don't know, but they are possibilities that work within science.
Not really. Free Will is still a flying pink unicorn that people choose to believe in without any scientific evidence whatsoever.
Atoms and molecules interact with each other, as far as we know, in entirely predictable ways or in entirely probabilistic ways. Neither option provides an explanation for if "choice" exists. In order for free will - choice - to exist, there has to be some evidence that our brains are physically capable of affecting the way atoms and molecules interact. There is no such evidence inside the realm of hard science.
Believing in Free Will is just as faith-based as believing in God, karma, fate or destiny. It is a convenient belief that makes people feel good but that has even less scientific basic, since there have in fact been studies which suggest that Free Will can be influenced by stimulation of certain parts of the brain.
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On reflection, using the word being is a bad choice - it doesn't convey the sense of being part of the universe itself while also being in some way a separate entity. God is not the universe, but they are intrinsically linked in some way by being similar. Is that what you're getting at here? So the way in which the flying pink unicorns differ from God is the property of being part of the universe? I don't see them as being a strawman - to me both are invisible insubstantial 'entities' (using a very loose definition of the word entity), so I want to find out how they differ from one another.
They're two separate things. I understand your point - you can't see either of them so why assume they exist? It is, however, one thing to assume that tiny, physically impossible animals somehow exist at a sub-atomic level and another thing to assume that an omnipotent extra-organic force somehow exists above and beyond our plane. It's a strawman because you've somewhat represented theists' and agnostics' beliefs as the notion that God is hiding just behind every molecule and having a chuckle that we can't see him.
I dunno. At this stage of my life the only conclusion I can come to about God is that it's a notion completely beyond our comprehension and no amount of saying "here's why he doesn't exist" and clapping ourselves on the back can really change that, because an omnipotent being would be so far beyond our scope. I said this up earlier in the thread:
If God's supposed to be taken on faith, would God design a universe where He or She could be proven to either exist or not exist?
What makes us assume that an omnipotent being operates by our set of principles? What makes us think that God is just a big thing kinda like us that we can comprehend? This might have worked for the Greeks whose gods were essentially just big jerks living up on a mountain, but that's very different from the modern concept of God in Western monotheism.
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Not really. Free Will is still a flying pink unicorn that people choose to believe in without any scientific evidence whatsoever.
Atoms and molecules interact with each other, as far as we know, in entirely predictable ways or in entirely probabilistic ways. Neither option provides an explanation for if "choice" exists. In order for free will - choice - to exist, there has to be some evidence that our brains are physically capable of affecting the way atoms and molecules interact. There is no such evidence inside the realm of hard science.
Believing in Free Will is just as faith-based as believing in God, karma, fate or destiny. It is a convenient belief that makes people feel good but that has even less scientific basic, since there have in fact been studies which suggest that Free Will can be influenced by stimulation of certain parts of the brain.
Respectfully, I don't believe you understand the fundamentals of the scientific method. No rational person says "I will believe only that which I can scientifically prove exists." Instead, a rational person says: "I will observe the world and try, to the extent possible, to find logically consistent theories to explain that which I observed." A scientist observes her own apparent capacity of self-awareness and to make decisions. A number of competing theories are apparent explaining this capacity. Is it an exceptionally complex interactions of hormones, electric discharge between neurons, and external stimuli which create these observed phenomena? The scientist may accept this as the contours of a theory even while admitting that the exact workings of this mechanism are not known and perhaps may never be fully understood.
In other words, the fact that science does not currently offer a complete explanation for a phenomenon does not mean a supernatural explanation is acceptable. For instance: science does not currently explain what occurred prior to the Big Bang. There are theories, but no evidence. Science does not currently explain why the energy and matter in the universe observable through gravitational effects is 96% larger than than the energy and matter observable through electromagnetic radiation. Science does not currently provide a model for quantum interactions consistent with a model for nuclear interactions.
So what? Maybe someday, science will provide the answers. Maybe humankind will never develop sophisticated enough models to account for these phenomenae. Maybe the evidence for such models no longer exists. Every scientist will admit that these holes exist. Few would agree that they are philosophically problematic.
What makes us assume that an omnipotent being operates by our set of principles? What makes us think that God is just a big thing kinda like us that we can comprehend? This might have worked for the Greeks whose gods were essentially just big jerks living up on a mountain, but that's very different from the modern concept of God in Western monotheism.
But modern Western Monotheism encompasses a whole bunch of mutually inconsistent beliefs. This Harris poll (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=618) found that:
The 82 percent of adults who believe in God include 86 percent of women and 93 percent of Republicans but only 78 percent of men, 69 percent of those with postgraduate degrees, and 75 percent of political independents.
The 73 percent of adults who believe in miracles include 79 percent of women, 83 percent of those with high school education or less and 76 percent of Republicans. Fewer (66%) men, post graduates (50%) and Independents (65%) believe in miracles.
The 70 percent of those who believe in the survival of the soul after death include 74 percent of women, 82 percent of Republicans but only 66 percent of men. Three-quarters (76%) of those without a college degree share this belief but only 53 percent of those with postgraduate degrees believe in this.
The 70 percent who believe in heaven includes 76 percent of women and 64 percent of men. This falls to 60 percent of Independents and 49 percent among people with postgraduate degrees.
Seven in ten (70%) believe that Jesus is God or the son of God. This belief is more prevalent among women (75%) than men (64%), among those with less education (77%) than among post graduates (48%) and among Republicans (82%) than Independents (62%).
Assuming for the sake of argument that this poll does accurately describe the beliefs of a majority of Americans, how can these beliefs be consistent with the transcendental conception of God that you claim is the "modern concept of God in Western monotheism"?
To the theists and agnostics participating in this conversation, I ask you:
(1) Do you believe that there have been events on Earth inexplicable by the laws of physics, and caused by God?
(2) Do you believe that there have been instructions, communicated by God to man, which provide, directly or through interpretation, an irrefutable basis to guide or judge moral decisions?
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Assuming for the sake of argument that this poll does accurately describe the beliefs of a majority of Americans, how can these beliefs be consistent with the transcendental conception of God that you claim is the "modern concept of God in Western monotheism"?
Fair enough, you've caught me. The vast majority of theism that I'm versed in is liberation theology. You're right, belief in God and God's work is tremendously inconsistent across the board. I suppose by a "modern concept of God in Western monotheism" I'm not necessarily talking about the average person's views on the subject, but rather the bulk of priests and theologians and, shit, Christians with religious studies degrees in my life. Those people are very unlikely to say that God is a big bearded cloud-being. You're right, I probably could have clarified that up the page, and that certainly undermines that part of my argument a bit. Well-played.
To the theists and agnoistics participating in this conversation, I ask you:
(1) Do you believe that there have been events on Earth inexplicable by the laws of physics, and caused by God?
(2) Do you believe that there have been instructions, communicated by God to man, which provide, directly or through interpretation, an irrefutable basis to guide or judge moral decisions?
Are you asking about miracles with that first question? I have my doubts, but since my set of beliefs acknowledges a possibility that there is an omnipotent being behind the creation of the universe I have to acknowledge the possibility that they can happen. They might also be events of mass hysteria, just like God might be a meme. My beliefs fall on the first side. You're perfectly entitled to your beliefs falling on the latter side or on any side you please, really.
On the second question, I believe there have been. However, I'm not advocating taking the Bible as either one hundred percent true fact or absolute in every word. Each book of the Bible was written for specific people at specific time. A good deal are fables and allegory meant to prove a point rather than tell a narrative relating to individual people who actually existed. Various parts contradict each other. What's moral in one book is a terrible sin in the next. However, the overall message of the Bible, that love for your fellow man is paramount, is I'd say an irrefutable basis to guide or judge moral decisions, and that's fairly consistent throughout. I'd personally say that even if you aren't willing to take the Bible as instructions communicated by God to man on how to behave with one another, the fact is that behaving in a consistently compassionate and loving manner towards your fellow human being is tremendously rewarding and making your moral decisions based on that behaviour is likewise rewarding. That's not to say you can't occasionally fuck it up, but that release of endorphins is either evolutionary, spiritually related or some combination of the two.
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Respectfully, I don't believe you understand the fundamentals of the scientific method.
Respectfully, I don't think you understood what I was talking about.
No rational person says "I will believe only that which I can scientifically prove exists." Instead, a rational person says: "I will observe the world and try, to the extent possible, to find logically consistent theories to explain that which I observed." A scientist observes her own apparent capacity of self-awareness and to make decisions.
But again, you're still not coming up with a workable definition of what a "decision" is that coincides with established science.
Is it an exceptionally complex interactions of hormones, electric discharge between neurons, and external stimuli which create these observed phenomona?
If so, then choice does not exist. Only the illusion of it.
The scientist may accept this as the contours of a theory even while admitting that the exact workings of this mechanism are not know and perhaps may never be fully understood.
Of course. Just as I may observe that I have had spiritual experiences (not specifically religious ones, but spiritual ones; more Terrence McKenna than Pat Robertson) and accept that they happened while admitting they may never be understood, by myself or anybody else.
In other words, the fact that science does not currently offer a complete explanation for a phenomenon does not mean a supernatural explanation is acceptable.
I reject the word "supernatural" entirely; nothing is supernatural, by definition. At various times in history, gravity, light and fire would have been considered "supernatural".
(1) Do you believe that there have been events on Earth inexplicable by the laws of physics, and caused by God?
Unanswerable question. Define "the laws of physics". Do you mean the laws of physics we had in 100 AD, in 1800 AD, in this year, or the totality of the "laws of physics" which doubtless include untold numbers of things we have yet to conceive of?
I have personally experienced something that was completely and utterly unanswerable by the laws of physics - and it was something so mundane that its happening is all the more perplexing. Story time:
A friend and I went out of town to see a band. We got a hotel room. While I was in the shower, he left the room to get some food. When I emerged from the bathroom, he was knocking on the door. Why couldn't he get in? The deadbolt was locked. There is no way to lock it from outside the room. There was no one else in the room. I was in the bathroom when he left. There is literally, flat-out no explanation for that, yet I assure you that it happened. We were not on drugs or otherwise mentally incapacitated. It happened.
(2) Do you believe that there have been instructions, communicated by God to man, which provide, directly or through interpretation, an irrefutable basis to guide or judge moral decisions?
Another poorly-worded question; we haven't agreed on what God even is yet. To me, "God" is the sum of humanity's collective unconscious, independant of space and time, and briefly glimpsed while in trances, in sleep, in meditation, or on certain powerful psychoactives. Whether "it" existed before us or is a by-product of us, I do not hazard to guess. In either case, however, morality in its broadest terms is a survival trait for any societal animal. It is a socio-genetic advantage to not have the urge to kill and eat your neighbors.
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That's yet another completely different definition of God. Personally I don't believe we have a collective unconscious, just lots of separate unconscious minds, and the things we see in trances or while on psychedelic drugs are just our neurons firing weirdly.
Johnny, are you talking about a conception of God specific to liberation theology or is it the general sort of God that Aquinas and the like are talking about, or some other thing? Also, I am kinda surprised that all the religious people you know are liberation theologists, given that the Church doesn't like it very much. Speaking of which, have you read any Kung? I've been meaning to look into him for about five years, but never got around to it. Any good starting points?
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I haven't had a chance to read Kung, unfortunately. I've been meaning to. When I find out what a good starting point would be, I'll let you know.
My mom is a social justice type so in the Church I grew up around social justice types. The youth at my church were, when I was in high school, fairly active in local community charity - I even worked at one of them for a few months. Hence, a good deal of the people I know are of the opinion that at least in part the story of Jesus is one of social justice. The sort of God I'm talking about is one that most of those people seem to believe in. I think it comes naturally out of the attitude - we're supposed to be busy helping each other, not shouting that God is real and here is the proof. God as an entity with His fingers in all sorts of human pie doesn't gel as well with this belief as God as a benevolent, omnipotent force outside our understanding.
I can't speak for anyone else but myself in this instance, but I'm not particularly enamoured with the Church as an institution, nor have I ever been, so what they say I ought to believe I try and take with a grain of salt.
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On the second question, I believe there have been. However, I'm not advocating taking the Bible as either one hundred percent true fact or absolute in every word. Each book of the Bible was written for specific people at specific time. A good deal are fables and allegory meant to prove a point rather than tell a narrative relating to individual people who actually existed. Various parts contradict each other. What's moral in one book is a terrible sin in the next. However, the overall message of the Bible, that love for your fellow man is paramount, is I'd say an irrefutable basis to guide or judge moral decisions, and that's fairly consistent throughout. I'd personally say that even if you aren't willing to take the Bible as instructions communicated by God to man on how to behave with one another, the fact is that behaving in a consistently compassionate and loving manner towards your fellow human being is tremendously rewarding and making your moral decisions based on that behaviour is likewise rewarding. That's not to say you can't occasionally fuck it up, but that release of endorphins is either evolutionary, spiritually related or some combination of the two.
But most people would like to say there's something meaningful or special about being a Christian. Saying that the bible is allegorical is reducing it into a rather vague parable that doesn't make for a good religion, like a less useful Tortoise and the Hare. If someone agrees with the sentiment of that parable, yet understands that there isn't a literal slow yet ultimately victorious turtle, would we still call them (for lack of a better term) a Shellite? The basic moral philosophy of Jesus is native to every culture on the planet. Accepting it doesn't make you a Christian, unless it also makes you part of 95 other faiths. Believing the meek shall inherit the Earth doesn't make you a Christian, it just means you're not Nietzsche or Ayn Rand. Is there something special about being a Christian?
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However, the overall message of the Bible, that love for your fellow man is paramount, is I'd say an irrefutable basis to guide or judge moral decisions.
I think that humanity needs to realise that no philosophy is irrefutable, and that believeing in absoulute truths can cause large amounts of damage to society.
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That's yet another completely different definition of God. Personally I don't believe we have a collective unconscious, just lots of separate unconscious minds, and the things we see in trances or while on psychedelic drugs are just our neurons firing weirdly.
That doesn't account for some phenomena, such as convergent fables amongst geographically separated populations.
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Is there something special about being a Christian?
The bits about Jesus, I'd say.
I didn't say that the entire Bible was a big allegory, but I said that to treat the Bible as one solid entity that's consistent in style, tone and genre is a mistake. There's a significant difference.
I think that humanity needs to realise that no philosophy is irrefutable, and that believeing in absoulute truths can cause large amounts of damage to society.
Please, refute what is commonly known as the Golden Rule for me. I'd like to see it.
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Unfortunately, there are arguments against the Golden Rule which, while I disagree with entirely, are not logically unimpeachable. Ask any hardcore competition-minded Capitalist.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
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I dunno if I'd say that's logically unimpeachable. "Greed works" depends on whether or not someone intends jail to be their ultimate destination. See: Enron, Bre-X, Conrad Black, Martha Stewart...
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Well, yeah. My point was just that, sadly, a lot of people treat others like shit and improve their lives by doing so, and they have a right to make their soulless, Moloch-worshipping argument that "survival of the fittest" necessitates stepping on other people.
This is why societal evolution is the most important thing now, not evolution of the human animal per se.
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I dunno if I'd say that's logically unimpeachable. "Greed works" depends on whether or not someone intends jail to be their ultimate destination. See: Enron, Bre-X, Conrad Black, Martha Stewart...
Course, those are the ones that got caught. Who knows how many people got away with it?
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Egoist capitalism, as most popularly embodied by Ayn Rand, is much less logically sound than the Golden Rule, and is incredibly marginal amongst academics, if relatively popular amongst amateur "enthusiasts" and political conservatives.
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The point being that the most logically sound way of acting is almost never the way in which people actually conduct their lives.
I didn't say any argument against the Golden Rule was strong, just that it exists.
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To me, "God" is the sum of humanity's collective unconscious, independant of space and time, and briefly glimpsed while in trances, in sleep, in meditation, or on certain powerful psychoactives.
I'm cool with this, but I don't see the point in calling it "God." Being 17, my beliefs on such matters are in a pretty consistent state of flux. At the moment, I can accept something like a god provided we don't insist that it's sentient.
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Well, I could take a cue from Future Sound of London and call it "the Isness", but honestly that just sounds kind of daft.
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You could call it "Om."
Or "David Bowie." Whatever you prefer, I suppose.
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Well, yeah. My point was just that, sadly, a lot of people treat others like shit and improve their lives by doing so, and they have a right to make their soulless, Moloch-worshipping argument that "survival of the fittest" necessitates stepping on other people.
Yeah, I hate it when people use natural selection to justify selfish behavior. It's transparently self-serving and in most cases it's just a sentiment that gets brought out to muddy the waters when someone calls them on their lazy ass manipulative bullshit. Besides, altruistic and cooperative behavior is just as useful for ensuring the ongoing fitness of a population as being hyper-dominant, or else there wouldn't be anyone for the so-called "fit" assholes to rip off or depend on when their own powers fail them. So even if you were such a massive tool that you think its perfectly fine to live life based on what you surmise to be the true goal of biological imperatives, you're still mostly being ignorant and/or a selfish dickhead.
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The Golden Rule (we're talking about "do unto others as you would have done unto yourself", right?) is a pretty decent ethical rule of thumb and works in the vast majority of situations but there are foreseeable results of it that most people would reject. Its problem is that all people have the same desires and wishes, which is roughly true in a large statistical sense but there are always outliers. My counterexample to it would be a person who wishes to be killed in a car accident. If that person follows the golden rule then there is no reason for him/her to not deliberately seek to cause a fatal car accident on the autobahn. S/he would have no problem if somebody else caused an accident killing them. It's not hard to come up with pretty extreme examples like this, because different people have different desires. On a less fatal scale, what's stopping a person who can't stand watching television from stealing his neighbour's TV and selling for money? Not the golden rule, unless we narrow the definition of 'what you would have done' to 'what you would have done unto yourself if you were the other' in which case there's not much to be done unless you can read minds, and still gives absurd results: what if the other person wants you to help him/her kill somebody?
I'm not saying it's not a wonderful rule; it works in pretty much every "normal" situation involving "normal" people (whatever that means), as well as a large majority of "abnormal" situations (for instance it can't justify totalitarianism or genocide). But it's not effective as a singular ethical code. It can't solve quandaries of competing interests, such as in the case where a pregnant woman's life can only be saved by an abortion.
So yeah, it's good in most situations but to be honest it doesn't really help in the areas where ethics are most needed. Most people have a pretty good intuitive idea that stealing is bad.
As for "natural selection", that's not an ethical justification for anything. It's simply a truistic observation: things that are better equipped to survive will survive more. It's in a way a form of begging the question: I am selfish because if I am not then natural selection will kick in and I won't be as well off as I would be if I am selfish. I am selfish because I want to do better than other people. I am selfish because I am selfish. Selfishness is being used justify selfishness.
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That doesn't account for some phenomena, such as convergent fables amongst geographically separated populations.
True, but there are plenty of other explanations for this - such as parallel evolutions of stories, or genetic predispositions towards these stories (or interpreting certain events in a certain way so as to bring out these particular fables). Not saying that these are the actual explanations, just that it is possible that the divergence of stories is not down to us sharing a mass unconsciousness.
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My counterexample to it would be a person who wishes to be killed in a car accident. If that person follows the golden rule then there is no reason for him/her to not deliberately seek to cause a fatal car accident on the autobahn.
That's rhetorical simplification that is just silly and I think we can disregard it as statistically insignificant.
It's not hard to come up with pretty extreme examples like this
Sure, but it would be pretty damn hard to actually find people who fit those examples.
On a less fatal scale, what's stopping a person who can't stand watching television from stealing his neighbour's TV
Because the golden rule, in this case, is "Don't steal people's shit because you wouldn't want them to steal your shit", not "Disliking television programming means you can steal someone else's device for watching it".
So yeah, it's good in most situations but to be honest it doesn't really help in the areas where ethics are most needed. Most people have a pretty good intuitive idea that stealing is bad.
Because stealing being bad is covered by the Golden Rule.
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My counterexample to it would be a person who wishes to be killed in a car accident. If that person follows the golden rule then there is no reason for him/her to not deliberately seek to cause a fatal car accident on the autobahn.
That's rhetorical simplification that is just silly and I think we can disregard it as statistically insignificant.
Ok, how about If I like to play music really loud, and people in the immediate area around me dont, If I would tolerate their loud music, should I not worry about their opinion of it.
Peoples my point before was that nothing should be above question and that people should never take one thing as the "truth" and refuse to question it, not that there is always a more valid argument to any point.
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There are logically consistent arguments against the Golden Rule (I posted some) but yours isn't.
Let's take your first example: "I want to be killed in a car crash."
It's an oversimplification - what that person really means is "I would be pleased to be killed in a car crash."
Therefore it doesn't logically follow that it would be OK for that person to go out and get in a car crash with someone who, and here's the key part, wouldn't be pleased about it.
Same applies to your loud music argument. You're positing that you would tolerate, or enjoy, loud music around you. That's fine. But the point is not that this gives you the right to play loud music; the point is that you would be causing them pain or displeasure.
Do not cause displeasure in others because you wouldn't want them to cause displeasure in you.
You're setting up straw men, not taking into account the entirety of the situations you're describing.
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Do not cause displeasure in others because you wouldn't want them to cause displeasure in you.
But what if you did want them to cause displeasure in you?
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By definition, if you want someone to cause you displeasure, then it is actually pleasure. (See: masochism.)
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Not really. You may have ulterior motives apart from masochism which causes you to want them to cause you displeasure.
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But that assumes we all know what causes pleasure or displeasure in others. Furthermore, it still isn't anywhere near a perfect system. Paying taxes causes most people displeasure; does this mean the government is morally reprehensible?
Like I said, I like the golden rule, but it's not infallible, no matter how nicely you define it.
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Not really. You may have ulterior motives apart from masochism which causes you to want them to cause you displeasure.
So? The point is still that you want it to happen. Do things to other people that they want to be done to them as you would have other people do things to you that you would want to have done to you.
Really, must I go on? Can't you guys think about your own arguments before hitting the "post" button?
Paying taxes causes most people displeasure; does this mean the government is morally reprehensible?
1. "The government" is not an individual.
2. In theory, the individuals who pass laws which collect taxes accept that they, too, must pay those taxes. I am not aware of any exemption which allows members of the US government to avoid sales tax, for example.
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But that assumes we all know what causes pleasure or displeasure in others. Furthermore, it still isn't anywhere near a perfect system. Paying taxes causes most people displeasure; does this mean the government is morally reprehensible?
Your use of "pleasure" and "displeasure" is disingenuous. "Suffering" is a better word to use than "displeasure". We want to concern ourselves more with actual pain than discomfort and worry. I don't have a moral responsibility to make sure other people feel good about themselves. I do have a moral responsibility to, as much as possible, keep people from being physically hurt.
Furthermore, most people take taxes for granted. People who refuse to pay taxes still somehow expect to take advantage of sewage systems and waterworks, well kept and coordinated roads, and other essential services. That's what makes them douchebags for not paying taxes. So paying taxes might be uncomfortable in that you're losing money, but it's supposed to be an investment. Only the most clumsy of demagogues would refer to paying taxes as being torturous.
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Man, I totally rescind my "Gah, this thread." It's absolutely fascinating.
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We've got a bit of a misnomer going on though.
I just wish I was smart enough to contribute something here.
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1. "The government" is not an individual.
2. In theory, the individuals who pass laws which collect taxes accept that they, too, must pay those taxes. I am not aware of any exemption which allows members of the US government to avoid sales tax, for example.
1. Does this matter in this context, if I get a group of people, do the actions of the group as a whole have too follow this? It seems like an easy way out.
2. Well how about the individuals who dont pass the laws?
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The key thing that you are so frustratingly missing here is that nobody is saying the Golden Rule is always followed, just that it is always a good idea. In theory, every individual in the government who is involved in creating laws should not create laws that they themself would not follow, if they're following the Golden Rule.
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It isn't always a good idea. It is unable to resolve situations where there are two second parties with competing interests.
Here's an example that is perhaps one of the "classic" ethical quandaries. A woman is pregnant. A doctor examines her and discovers that for, whatever reason, if the foetus is not aborted the mother will certainly die. Who is the "other" of the golden rule here? The mother or the foetus? Unless the mother is genuinely willing to sacrifice her life to give the child a chance of survival, the golden rule paralyses the doctor by stating that the child must be aborted, otherwise the mother will die, and the child must not be aborted because that would be destroying the child's life.
Alternatively, it is not a "good idea" when one is dealing with a definitely morally culpable person. Say you are (for whatever reason) in a position to obstruct the plans of a person who is bent on committing a series of murders. If you were to obstruct his actions, you would be causing him displeasure. Of course, if you didn't obstruct him, you'd be causing displeasure to his victims. There are two answers to this:
Firstly, one could be overly legalistic and say that obstruction is an act and failure to obstruct is a mere omission, but that's just stupid and wanky.
Alternatively, though, if we say that we're going to require you to stop the murderer because, although you're causing him displeasure, you're preventing far greater displeasure on the part of the victims and so we ignore the displeasure of the murderer. Which in this case most people would agree with as being the moral course of action; however, we've now replaced the golden rule with utilitarianism which has its own difficulties. Aside from the fact that it requires one to assess the quantity of potential happiness to be caused by any course of action, it creates a kind of sanctification of "happiness" or "pleasure" as being the most important consideration in any situation.
This obviously applies equally to the golden rule. The fact that we've all seemed to agree that taxes are a "good thing" and that we ought to pay them, despite the displeasure they bring us, suggests that we agree that happiness isn't the ultimate consideration. Perhaps part of the problem is that "happiness" does not describe a single kind of emotion - it ranges from satisfaction to ecstasy, which I submit differ not only in degree but in character. You can't compare them in any sense that "if I make six people content then that is worth one ecstatic person", much in the same way you can't say "sonata form is worth the same as the theory of relativity".
Anyway I'm not proposing to solve the problem of ethics in an internet forum thread; it's just a good thing to consider. There is no perfect ethical framework; the golden rule is just as practicable on an everyday basis as utilitarianism or deontology or any other kind of popular ethical system.
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If I was that doctor then I'd leave the decision entirely in the hands of the woman, since that's what I'd want a doctor to do if I or anyone I knew was in the same position. If I was the person who knew that someone was about to commit a series of murders then I would stop them because if I was about to commit a series of murders I really hope somebody would stop me before I did it. The golden rule doesn't stipulate that you should never do anything which will cause displeasure but that you should act in a way that you hope people would act towards you in the same situation. It doesn't bind you to inaction or even pacifism at all.
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In the first instance, if you were a foetus would you wish to be aborted if your mother made the decision rather than the doctor?
In the second case, I was demonstrating how redefining (as Zerodrone did) the rule as "do that which does not cause displeasure" creates new problems and replaces the rule with utilitarianism.
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I wouldn't wish anything in the first instance, it's a foetus. In some bizarre hypothetical universe where that was possible then of course I would, it's my mum.
Fair enough in the second case, but the example falls apart as being problematic as soon as you go back to the original definition.
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So, wait, you'd be ok with the idea of your mother having you killed? If that's the case, more power to you, but I'd say there are enough people who would have a few problems with that for it to not be dismissed as statistically insignificant. Understand that I'm not putting forward my own ideas on abortion here; I'm just providing an example of how the golden rule fails where there are competing interests that can't both be satisfied. The specifics of the situation needn't matter: consider a case of conjoined twins, one of whom must be killed in order for the other to survive. The golden rule isn't a useful idea to help decide which one will live.
And the reason zerodrone altered the definition was to avoid the problems with the original definition that we'd already been through. Neither the golden rule nor utilitarianism are without major problems.
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The golden rule isn't the only useful thing in the situation of those conjoined twins but it's still relevant. For example, as in your abortion example it would lead me to leave that decision entirely in the hands of the twins. For the twins themselves it could lead each to not be selfish and to decide who should live based on who has the best chance of survival, or possibly using a method based on a 50/50 probability depending on what they'd want the other to do for them. There's more there than the golden rule but it promotes pretty reasonable activity in a situation like that. You wouldn't want your brother to sneakily ensure that they were the one to live by some underhand method, but you might want them to be selfless so that could be the route you go down.
I disagree that anything mentioned so far necessitates changing 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' to 'do not cause displeasure in others'.
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There's a hidden premise in your first problem that states that the fetus is in fact a moral agent and a "child". All we have to do is deny this and the decision is simple. We abort the fetus. If I had a fatally parasitic organism attached to me I'd damn well desire for it to be removed.
Re: your second dilemma, your definition of utilitarianism is a juvenile one that makes no distinction between the displeasure of a murderer finding out that he can't kill people and the displeasure of a person who is being murdered. There is no dilemma at all, unless you do not understand utilitarianism. The notion that a murderer's pleasure can be of greater weight than the pain of the murdered is so daft as to be offensive.
The golden rule requires a measure of empathy. That a masochist might enjoy being hurt, he's still expected to understand that he is exceptional, and can't make an excuse that he'd want to be hurt when he's hurting others.
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Thanks, Kid and pack, because I was getting really tired of these ridiuclous examples.
The abortion one has been addressed well enough, especially given that it is reductio ad absurdum, and that's being kind.
The "murderer" situation is reducable to one simple axiom: The Golden Rule works both ways.
The murderer is saying "I will do unto others whatever I want without regard to their feelings". Thus, according to the Golden Rule, it is okay to do unto him whatever you want without regard to his feelings.
In other words: "Do unto others" (murder them) "as you would have them do unto you" (get murdered, you fuck).
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Ah, good old consequentialism! How I have missed you (not really.) The problem with consequentialism (and utilitarianism, which is just a form of consequentialism) is that it places too much of a burden on the individual actor, because they're supposed to consider all the implications of possible actions for every action, which is just absurd - expecting someone to sit down and work out which of many possible actions would be the most beneficial would be paralyzing, even if it were possible to calculate an arithmetic of happiness.
My approach to this is basically a combination of rule-following and satisficing behaviour - basically, most of the time, act in accordance to the general rule, only breaking it where necessary, and strive to ensure happiness, but not necessarily maximise it. If you're following the golden rule, only break it in extreme circumstances, and if you have to do, do so in a manner that increases happiness by the optimal amount you can afford to, rather than the maximum you can. (Maximising happiness would require you, for example, to forswear all material goods over and above those necessary for survival, because of diminishing marginal utility.)
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If you're following the golden rule, only break it in extreme circumstances, and if you have to do, do so in a manner that increases happiness by the optimal amount you can afford to, rather than the maximum you can.
I think that those of us arguing in favor of the Golden Rule are the ones agreeing with this statement, and the people trying to find holes in the Golden Rule are the ones who are attempting to assert that one should somehow magically take into account every possible piece of data in the equation.
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I think we've misunderstood my intent somehow, even though I've tried to make it pretty clear throughout the discussion that I'm not saying the golden rule sucks and should be ridiculed and abandoned; rather I have been merely trying to show how it's not perfect and doesn't work in every situation. The abortion example isn't reductio ad absurdum because, firstly, I'm not at all trying to say that because it doesn't work in that situation it never works (which would be a fallacy; I've not used any fallacy since I've not made any conclusion beyond 'the golden rule isn't useful in this particular situation'), and secondly, it's not an absurd example since it's a fairly everyday kind of situation that many people find themselves in.
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The abortion example is reductio ad absurdum because we currently have no evidence that a fetus has consciousness or desires, so to argue that one needs to take them into account is getting into cuckoo land.
Please, please don't turn this thread down the abortion path. There be dragons.
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What he said, with the addition that all of your examples have had the golden rule applied to them as a device for determining a course of action extremely easily.
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The abortion example is reductio ad absurdum because we currently have no evidence that a fetus has consciousness or desires, so to argue that one needs to take them into account is getting into cuckoo land.
Please, please don't turn this thread down the abortion path. There be dragons.
- 1. I'm not trying to turn this into an abortion debate. It was a demonstrative example and I really don't care what you think about the morality of abortion. If you really want my opinion of what would be the appropriate course of action just ask ok but it's totally irrelevant here.
- 2. Might like to consider that we currently have no evidence that God exists but that didn't stop us discussing that for the majority of the thread. At least we know a fetus probably will have a consciousness sometime in the future if we don't kill it. Surely the golden rule is about the potential happiness that will result from a course of action?
- 3. Let's reject the example and consider the conjoined twins example properly. The only 'extremely easy' answer given was to ask the twins to decide for themselves. Seriously, what the hell. They're newborn babies for a start and thus have no powers of communication, and secondly how is it ethical to ask someone to decide to kill their brother or sister? Are they to use the golden rule? How do they use the golden rule here?
- 4. Once again, i quite like the golden rule.
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If you like the Golden Rule, then stop trying to dissect it with extreme situational examples and endless chains of "what if".
"We" have no "evidence" that "God" exists? I'm sorry, I'll tell the billions of people on the planet who have had personal spiritual and/or religious experiences that they don't count since they didn't have them under a microscope.
Compare that to how many people have ever claimed to remember anything before the age of 1 or so.
No offense, but this debate has been stupid for a whole page now. It's gotten to the point of saying something like "Oh, you think murder is bad? Well what about murdering Hitler before he started World War 2, huh?"
In other words, the only thing standing between your arguments and Godwin's Law is a proper noun.
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Ironically, now we've been Godwinned.
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Yes, I did that on purpose. I was using Godwin for good, not evil.
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"We" have no "evidence" that "God" exists? I'm sorry, I'll tell the billions of people on the planet who have had personal spiritual and/or religious experiences that they don't count since they didn't have them under a microscope.
AD POPULUM NYUH NYUH NYUH
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- 3. Let's reject the example and consider the conjoined twins example properly. The only 'extremely easy' answer given was to ask the twins to decide for themselves. Seriously, what the hell. They're newborn babies for a start and thus have no powers of communication, and secondly how is it ethical to ask someone to decide to kill their brother or sister? Are they to use the golden rule? How do they use the golden rule here?
You didn't say they were babies, since we're discussing morality I presumed you were talking about moral agents. I've already explained very well how the golden rule could be applied in that situation. I also fail to see an ethical problem in leaving matters of life and death in the hands of those it will most directly effect. I do see an ethical problem in other people taking over and making those decisions for them.
For your new example of them being babies it's simple. Let's presume a doctor is to make the decision. She picks the baby with the best chance of survival. Why? Because if in that situation herself she'd hope her doctor was a compassionate, unbiased woman and act accordingly.
Your examples don't seem to hinge on a problem with the golden rule but rather a problem with an action which results in something you define as death as ever being able to be a moral one.
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Nope, not Ad Populum, as I wasn't saying that "God" exists because billions of people think he/it does.
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Still, the sentiment seems shaky to me. Is it the sheer number of religious experiences that make them valid evidence in a discussion about God?
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Well, yes, just as the sheer number of people who like a certain band make it interesting for them to discuss said band.
Not seeing the problem here.
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It's a lot easier to discuss something that billions of people have experience and feelings about. It is hard to find people who remember being conscious as a fetus. Not saying that it proves or negates either. Just that it's definitely easier.
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Yes, I did that on purpose. I was using Godwin for good, not evil.
I think this is arguably grounds for Quirk's exception...
And can we all agree that the golden rule is overall a good idea and should be followed, but like all rules is not entirely infalliable please?
"Oh, you think murder is bad? Well what about murdering Hitler before he started World War 2, huh?"
We get c&c Red Alert : )
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This thread is basically what happens at a party when you get drunken philosophy students together - I am pretty sure that I had this exact conversation last night, with the addition of talking about the IRA and slightly more atheism involved.
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And can we all agree that the golden rule is overall a good idea and should be followed, but like all rules is not entirely infalliable please?
We're not saying it's infallible, we're arguing that it's difficult to logically refute.
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"We" have no "evidence" that "God" exists? I'm sorry, I'll tell the billions of people on the planet who have had personal spiritual and/or religious experiences that they don't count since they didn't have them under a microscope.
We have no evidence that werewolves, vampires, dragons, elves, fairies, unicorns or griffins exist either, but I could find you a fair number of people who think they ARE one.
Their spiritual experiences count to them, of course, but they can hardly be used to establish empirical truth. For a start, if you were to collate them, then you would get such a contradictory picture of the divine that you'd make high gnosticism look like a crossword puzzle. We're not just talking koan shit here either.
Who was it who said something along the lines of "Isn't it funny how God always tells people exactly what they believe?"
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We have no evidence that werewolves, vampires, dragons, elves, fairies, unicorns or griffins exist either, but I could find you a fair number of people who think they ARE one.
Oh, please. Billions of people have spiritual experiences. How many people honestly believe they're vampires? A few hundred, MAX?
Their spiritual experiences count to them, of course, but they can hardly be used to establish empirical truth.
As has been stated over and over again, I'm not trying to establish "empirical truth". I'm trying to establish a reasonable explanation for why something is worth discussing.
Who was it who said something along the lines of "Isn't it funny how God always tells people exactly what they believe?"
Probably some jackass atheist who had never studied theology or spirituality.
Terrence McKenna's studies with DMT and the remarkably similar experiences people have with it - encountering the "machine elves" as he calls them - hardly qualify as being told "exactly what they believe".
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Hey, remember when we had a werewolf on these forums?
Those were fun times.
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Yeah. Such a shiny pelt.
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I knew a guy who thought he was a werewolf once.
You'd think he'd be a fun guy to be around. But he was mostly just depressed all the time.
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Terrence McKenna's studies with DMT and the remarkably similar experiences people have with it - encountering the "machine elves" as he calls them - hardly qualify as being told "exactly what they believe".
People have remarkably similiar experiences when they take alcohol. It would seem your skepticism is broken. You really can't conceive any non-natural explanation for this? Remember Occams razor, my friend. Experience tells us that pretty much every claim of paranormal or supernatural activity ever properly investigated is complete hokum, whilst science works. People hear voices in their heads and see things that don't exist without magical creatures mindraping them*.
Your problem, really, is that you're still refusing to acknowledge the difference between subjective and objective reality. You keep conflating them, and claiming that subjective experience is part of objective reality.
I really don't think I should have to explain this all to you, but here it goes. Objective reality is the empirical 'classical' world, the world of physics, mathematics, chemistry and so forth. It's the environment we all share, however, none of us has the same perspective on it: each of us sees our own individual perspective: our subjective reality. Each of us has sets of filters through which we view objective reality: our language and vocabulary (both linguistic and semiotic), our ethics, our political views, our spiritual beliefs. We then process the filtered information and use it to amend our filters, with the idea of trying to find one that fits, and makes sense of the world. However, even if we find such a viewpoint, it is still within us, not a part of the outside world. The most important thing to remember, however, is that information arises within subjective reality without existing in objective reality. This is otherwise known as your imagination. What I am saying is this: internalised experiences have no objective truth. They may be incredibly meaningful to you, but they don't prove anything. There are thousands, maybe millions, of Star Trek fans who have imagined flying on the Starship Enterprise, but that doesn't make the Enterprise real. The only way for subjective reality to affect the objective is through a human agent.
*HINT: A GOOD WAY TO SEE AND HEAR WIERD SHIT IS TO TAKE DRUGS.
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Your problem, really, is that you're still refusing to acknowledge the difference between subjective and objective reality. You keep conflating them, and claiming that subjective experience is part of objective reality.
Actually, I reject the notion of an objective reality existing at all.
I think you are misinterpreting nearly all of what I am saying.
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That's... interesting. And also wrong. There are different kinds of objective existence. The concept of numbers may not be physical, but 2+2=4 is objectively true. To question that is well stupid, and a great way to show that you are a fundamentally irrational person. That's a different sort of argument than saying this computer is "real", but still. There are objective things. I'm what you'd probably call a "dumb realist", in that I hold that all things that I perceive in a normal state are objectively real.
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There is no such thing as objective reality because there is no way to measure it.
The only reality I acknowledge is the information I am presented. I have no way of knowing it is not all a hallucination.
No one can define reality, let alone "objective" reality.
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How would you measure objective reality, then? How do you know the proof you would need isn't a hallucination? Is it just an infinite regress? Your problem is irrational, and thus ignorable.
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I don't have a problem, I have a philosophical position, one shared by a lot of other people.
There simply is no way to measure reality. There likely never will be. All I know about reality is that it appears to be a system of data that is presented to my consciousness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel
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Oh, Timothy Leary. And Robert Anton Wilson. I get it.
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While i suscribe to the classical notion of the incapability of percieving objective reality in an objective way. I do find a lot of the tenets of reality tunnel thinking laughable. You will never see outside the tunnel, you'll just look into another tunnel.
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You will never see outside the tunnel, you'll just look into another tunnel.
Er, that's rather the point? Nothing Leary, McKenna, Wilson et al say would disagree with that. Some of them just think that it's possibly more useful to observe life through various different tunnels instead of just staying comfortably in one all the time.
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reading comprehension 101. See if you can spot the crucial mistake that is being made above.
First, zerodrone says there is no objective reality! then he says he ascribes to the reality tunnel notion. Now read the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel
The theory states that, with a subconscious set of mental "filters" formed from their beliefs and experiences, every individual interprets this same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder".
This is not necessarily meant to imply that there is no objective truth; rather that our access to it is mediated through our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. The individual world each person occupies is said to be their reality tunnel. The term can also apply to groups of people united by beliefs: we can speak of the fundamentalist Muslim reality tunnel or the scientific materialist reality tunnel.
A parallel can be seen in the psychological concept of confirmation bias - our tendency to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm our beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with our prior beliefs and expectations. This helps to explain why reality tunnels are usually transparent to their inhabitants. While it seems most people take their beliefs to correspond to the "one true objective reality," Robert Anton Wilson emphasizes that each person's reality tunnel is their own artistic creation, whether they realize it or not.
This is...pretty much what I was saying up the page about subjective and objective reality, except for two factors:
1) I don't get all my philosophy of Robert Anton Wilson
2) I understand it.
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I don't get my philosophy from RAW either.
And yes, it would be more useful for me to say that, while an objective reality may exist, we can never prove it does or does not.
Much like God.
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I kinda agree with zerodrone on one level, while disagreeing on another. Taken to the extreme, I don't believe that you can prove the existence of anything except the current sense data I am experiencing. On the other hand, in general I believe in objective reality. The extreme skepticism thing is a pretty silly belief to hold as fundamental.
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I have no problem with people who believe in an objective reality, only with people who claim that their belief in it is anything more than faith-based. In the big picture sense, reality itself defies any kind of rational explanation our tiny human minds can conceive of.
Also, and this applies to me as much as everyone else, "Never believe your own bullshit."
I think perhaps it has not come across in this thread that I am just as able to laugh at my own beliefs as I am to adhere to them. Po-faced, unquestioning rationalism just really gets on my tits. It's a form of Puritanical style thinking that studiously and arrogantly ignores the absolutely absurd nature of the human experience.