Who designed the designer?
- Thread starter Xelasnave.1947
- Start date
It's still not clear what you are trying to say. That in one's x number of years of having departed the womb, there are no transitional or developmental stages of atheism?
If you cannot help but bring an assessment of their relative value, in accordance to your identity as an atheist, of course you are.
A better example of being passive could be some sort of foreign joke, which, when translated, you cannot understand on account of an absence of a valid values map associated with said cultural/historical community.
Eg : https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/kiddingnot-kidding-a-medieval-sense-of-humour/
And thus your humour, or the way you assess the merit of an alien joke, remains distinct from a person who does take an active position on whether or not aliens exist. The distinction will be to the degree that the said person is active on that position.
Of course it would depend on the specific joke, but as a general rule, your active position to an alien joke would be your identification with contemporary culture or affairs (since most alien jokes seem to be more about our culture rather than the pros and cons of their own alien existence).
For instance this joke doesn't function for as long as one is passive about politics, namely an inherent criticism of political leadership. A young child (or, from the opposite spectrum of being critical of leadership, even people coming from a culture that genuinely appreciates their leadership ... if its possible for such people to exist in this day and age) might struggle to understand what is so funny about a civilian requesting aliens take away their leader).
However if you took an active position on whether or not aliens exist, that would also bear an added commensurate difference to a lifetime dedicated to such work. That is the point.
This, again, gets back to atheist ideas about ontology and knowledge. How do you propose something that is ontologically superior to the knower be objectively validated?
This will probably lead to another popular atheist idea: that if there is a problem where objective validation has no traction, it is false.
The reason they are continually challenged is because they continually bring errors into the assessment. The reason is not because they are "bad" or "liars" but because its the nature of the five senses to be limited. IOW the problem exists on an epistemological level, thus the appropriate redress is consistent uncertainty and challenge. This in turn determines which problems they can and cannot solve. If you are dealing with a different sort of problem of knowledge, you have different types of redress. No matter how excited you may get about empiricism, you cant take it, or its inherent redressings, beyond its epistemological limits.
Well that's the theory. Practically, it may not be the case.
Broadly speaking, two.
One is scripture, the other are those who follow scripture.
From these two, one establishes the path of practical spiritual life.
This is bogus.
Calling upon "more than a few observations" and "a few centuries of thought" in no way objectively conveys "rationalism" to your speculations about something being infinite and eternal.
If you want to talk about it being "rational", you can only talk about it according to its obedience to its own self referential field, which clearly excludes physical notions of infinity and eternity.
This is also bogus.
If reality is bigger than our universe, it is not reasonable to think it will just me more of the same. This is clearly provincial thinking, even by the standards of empiricism.
Instead it involves modifying the qualities of the unknown universe, which is bad science.
QED
Except for the passengers who, despite having all the functioning bells and whistles of empirically coming to terms with seat belts, airplane seats, intercoms and the pilot's language etc, decide not to put on their seatbelt. After all, why should they accept the pilot's incredulous appeal to authority?
IOW the difference between those who use the seatbelt and those who don't is not an empirical issue. Those determined to not use the seatbelt, do not require the pilot to say it again, to be shown how to use a seatbelt etc. The only empirical thing to be introduced to get them to put on a seatbelt would be for them to smash their teeth on the floor as the plane violently jerks.
We can only move at the pace of your comprehension.
Actually it's the other way around : empirical existence is derived from these notions of value, context, knowledge, etc. A 2 year old boy and a 22 year old man can both see the same naked woman, but what they make of that image their eyeballs send to their brain is completely different.
A main part of that is because you dispute the existence of God, as required by atheism.
Its just like one who disputes the role of the pilot is not in a position to assess the presence or absence of turbulence beyond counting the number of bleeding teeth in their mouth.
Because in order to benefit or "acquire knowledge" in the scenario, you have to grant the pilot a special "ontological status" ... the idea that "they know what they are doing, and it's in my interests to accept" ... as opposed to "I'm in a plane, the pilot is in a plane. I'm in a seat, the pilot is in a seat. He says there is turbulence but I see no evidence".
It is more an example of "high hopes".
Whatever the case, disassemblage is a given.
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I was just speaking in a language familiar to the audience. For one who views issues of selfhood and the body as nondifferent, death is nonexistence. Of course Buddhism doesn't spell that out as the curtain roll.
I think it's strange that you should discuss Lord of the Rings as a parallel to theism. Despite the epic narrative and involved character developments, etc, it's a Godless universe. There is no one to pray to and no one in control. If, for some funny reason, one decided to extract prescriptive lessons from LOTR, one would be talking about candidates from the rank and file of atheism.
Depends entirely on what one is looking at (and I might add, looking "with") for a comparison. Vultures might compare the carcass of a zebra and crocodile with a host of criteria that puts our celebrity chef panels to shame, even though we don't hesitate to disregard the entire episode as nasty.
There are two types of speculation.
1. Is something so?
2. How is something so?
If one is fixated on the first one, one is stuck in infinite regression, since you can tag "...and what is that?" onto anything and everything forever. We get around it by asking this q until we arrive at self evident truths, immutable truths, axiomatic truths etc, otherwise nothing further is possible.
So the second form of speculation becomes the productive front, since you can introduce "if/then" clauses and proceed with other forms of rationalism.
IOW if you want to introduce problems to a claim via speculation, you have to do it in the category of the 2nd type, since even a 3 year old can introduce perpetual problems using the first type ("But why?".... "But why?".... "But why?".... ."But why?".... "But why?".... etc etc)
Regardless of your assessment of who owns the runs and who owns the problems, successful candidacy begins at the point of interest, specifically submissive interest, and not the stick wielding pinata festival variety.
At the very least, you appear to be careful not to jump head first into discussions of gravity ...
I was following your gag. It seemed to me you were talking about yourself as a means to talk about me, or theists in general.
I gave that offering since you seemed to be suggesting spiritual life is all about kowtowing one's way into cronyhood.
That is either a lie or a sign of insanity. If the presence of your life leaves you just as nonplussed as the absence of your life, it means your life has no value.
But, unless you remain in some sort of heavily medicated state, you can conceive of the inevitable demise of everything associated with not only your "I", but everything related to it (honors, wealth, fame, etc) .... therein lies the pinch.
Even a pauper is proud of their penny.
In some people's books, it's even preposterous and conceited that you would consider your self a speck.
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
They are both made up stories, obvious fiction and have no relationship to reality is the point on the one hand and on the other the body of work associated with any story does not turn that story into reality.
You mentioned religion has a great body of work I guess in an effort to suggest that as so much has been put into it that gives it credibility...well I am saying your body of work for religion could be one hundred fold but the fact remains all that work is upon an unproven and most unlikely notion which seeks authority from stories made up in the bronze age by superstitious folk who did not know where the Sun went at night...the body of work counts for nothing because the fundamental claim is no more than a mere unsupported claim.
Perhaps you could expand upon that idea and demonstrate in detail why you feel that you could draw that conclusion.
Why draw metaphor that steers folk away from the truth.
I admire your style but you lessen the reality and I am not suggesting that was your intention.
The truth is the body of work of science is many fold greater than religion, and I shudder to think I even talk about both religion and science in the same breath, and the science is all fact...all of it..not just close but fact and if you disagree point to one mistake in science, just one, but feel free to make a list...but you wont for I know that you can not...now look at religion and I select christianity as a good example ...first the book of authority, the good book is full of mistakes of fact, its claim to fame comes in part from all the "correct" prophesy does it not...they are so non specific to be worthless or when specific just plain wrong...even JC said to those listening he would be back in their life times did he not...didnt happen and here we are and 2000 years have passed and stupid folk still run around zaying he said he will return like he promised...he promised in their life time if you want to believe that made up story...oh and the stars shall fall upon the ground wrong wrong wrong by a country mile and yet its a great part of the book for prophesy...and angels shall stand at the four corners of the (flat) Earth...you do realise the bible suggests the Earth is flat. And the impossible flood and humans impossible repopulation of the planet...I remind you science does not deal in prophesy but in prediction and those predictions are very specific ( read up on General Relativity and Mercury if you dare) and unlike religion if science finds a mistake, just one, that causes that science to be thrown out...What a pity religion could not do similar rather that retain horrible morality or "facts" that are wrong.
I am sorry to have to generalise about the mistakes it is just that there are just so many I dont have time or inclination to list them...science needs only one mistake on a very specific prediction to throw out an idea yet religion simply lets the mistakes accumulate to such a large number it is a huge task to list them.
If someone lies to me thats is it he has qualified as a liar and never to be trusted again.
Yet this book inspired by God contains more mistakes than any other book on the planet.
No other book would escape the editors red pen nor has none.
Even the run of the mill hollywood movie seems to enjoy a more plausible plot free of glaring inconsistency.
Like what? Do you have anything specific in mind God perhaps.
The premise behind "lets talk about Gods atributes" type threads.
I disagree.
I know you like philosophy but before we get carried away lets establish the notion for discussion as having some link with reality otherwise its not philosophy but mere speculation and eloquence wont change that inconvenient fact.
The only reason I or any atheist as you say introduces problems is because the theists fail to support their claims.
That is the problem.
You want to make a claim well I promise I wont present a problem if you present a reasonable claim with reasonable support.
But if you want to make a claim without support expect problems due to your failure to make a reasonable case.
I cant understand why you would expect to be able to make a claim then direct guilt to anyone who says hold on back that up please.
Well give me the stick and I will pretend I am interested.
I am not interested in a proposition I regard as wrong and immoral ( I sincerely believe religion is immoral and the texts tend to support that opinion) and even if in the presence of the Pope I would point out the obvious...its all made up in the bronze age and has nothing to suggest there is any truth in any part of the God story.
Distil the story and I bet it will sound nonsence even to you.
I am a boots first sort of guy.
I am not that subtle I was acting the goat just to be silly.
No.
I dont think about cronyhood or power trips.
I dont look down or up to people.
I am outside of that sort of stuff.
If you lead people will follow is the way I went through life.
Power is about sex.
Fortunately I never realized until both were of no interest to me.
Have I ever lied to you or anyone.
I am being realistic.
Why should you fear the inevitable.
The problem for folk who fear death is they embrace the loss as if it were somehow real when actually as i said you dont know anything but an eternal life..its eternal if you dont perceive your absence.
Look when you die you wont know you are dead so you cant experience the loss...others will know you are gone but you wont.
JC if he was real or whoever wrote his lines like me realised that if you are at peace with yourself which comes about by not pretending and generally avoiding negative emotions you current life can only be seen as eternal.
Our personal experience is eternal as we percieve no begining or any end to our life.
I dont think I am insane either by my measure or that of folk around me.
I am not burdened by the thing that burdens you. You fear death and a God who says he will ultimately punish you if you dont toe the line.
Fear is just a negative emotion that should be avoided.
Same with guilt and envy, hate well any emotion that is unproductive...be happy with who you are and the fact you are experiencing an eternal life.
I disagree only because you cant understand where I am coming from.
My life has value to me...its great I bet I get my share and two other guys but I realise and accept that I am just a speck in time and space...sit under the stars and realise just how big it all is and how long its been there and then get real and admit importance is a fantacy...look at folk through history who did great things..they are just as dead as the guy in the box next to them and craving importance in the now just says one is really inadequate if that is your motivator.
Most folk love to think they are important but that is just foolish well very stupid really.
So what.
There is no pinch at all.
You dont live forever...in a very short time we will be dead and if you are worried about holding onto stuff with that coming up you will only suffer torment.
You destroy your peace you waste your life if you go through life holding on to stuff you cant hold on to.
When you are dead you dont know..I dont think the council would approve but when I an dead i would like to lay out on the ground not under it and if the wild dogs eat my bones I would not care...its not going to matter is it.
Alex
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
Pride the worst negative emotion of all.
Its not about how the rest of the world sees you so you will only be burdened indulging pride.
I find proud folk so comical.
Pride comes from starting at a point where you dont feel as good as the next person.
There will always be greater and lesser persons so why bother with keeping up with the Jones...waste of time and destroys your peace.
Well yes and they are the sort of folk one should admire.In some people's books, it's even preposterous and conceited that you would consider your self a speck.
Remember make all your losses victories including death.
You only die once may as well enjoy the idea.
Alex
The further you get from our perceptive abilities, the less confidence you can have that a given proposition could be known. So ultimately, if it can’t be validated in some rational way experientially, it can’t be considered knowledge. Having thoughts about hidden metaphysical characteristics doesn’t translate to knowledge of them.
The senses are the minds interface with reality. Any evaluation and validation of reality is dependent on the senses.
By what process do scriptures correct their own falsehoods? And if scriptures are inherently false, where does that leave the follower?
I was speaking of our “known” universe, that which our perceptive abilities allow us to know. That doesn’t imply that what we know covers all possible characteristics of our universe, but that the characteristics we do know could reasonably be assumed to extend into an eternal reality.
Not at all. When we look into the cosmos we see a vast collection of celestial processes that make up our perceptible universe. To conclude that what we experience in our own universe may also occur in other universes would not be unreasonable. And to further conclude that realty could be infinitely populated with such universes would be reasonable as well. We know that repetition pervades our known existence, it’s reasonable to assume it also extends to the unknown.
You can’t modify what you don't know, but you can reasonably speculate that what you do know might extend to the unknown.
Because they’ve been empirically conditioned to act one way or the other.
Whether or not the warning is heeded depends on the individual experience of the passenger. Some may conclude that since they have not experienced consequences for ignoring past warnings, they will continue to ignore them in the present.
All of those notions are derived from experiential perspective. There would be no naked woman or anything else for the boy and man to contemplate without a history of sensory existence.
I don’t dispute the potential existence of gods, I just dispute that anyone has knowledge of their existence.
Do you understand the concept of caution? It’s something we learn by experience, or through the experiences of others. Pilots exercise caution when they recognize a need for it, and by relaying that recognition to passengers, they are able to do the same.
If you can't objectively validate it, how do you justify it as anything more than an idea which can be dismissed (not proven false) as unfalsifiable? Doesn't that make it equal to an infinite number of such ideas? For example, universe creating invisible pixies?
There could be. All babies are born atheists but in our god-permeated society they're going to be exposed and may catch the disease to some extent or another. Even a dyed-in-the-wool fanatic can be cured. Sometimes people go back and forth between theism and atheism. But there is no need for an atheist to become a theist.
Many don't. So you can't make a blanket statement that, "they are representative of atheism."
That isn't an example of being passive; it's an example of being ignorant of the language. Nobody in out society is ignorant of theism, so the example isn't applicable.
The point being that many atheists don't take an active position on whether or not gods exist.
It was written by an overt Roman Catholic believer, the man most often credited with converting C.S. Lewis to Christianity, a man directly responsible for his wife's conversion to Catholicism as a condition of marriage, a man whose intellectual career was devoted to unearthing and establishing as intellectually respectable the holiness, the profundity, the spiritual depth, inherent in what was then by fashion dismissed as shallow fairytales told to people condescended to for their simple and credulous nature.
If there is a theistic point of view in any work of literature, if that category of points of view exists at all, the Lord Of The Rings has that point of view and belongs in that category.
Identifying "theism" with "prescriptive lessons" is of course a common blind spot of the shallower sort of Abrahamic atheist in social rebellion.
But as we see, there is a reason for that, isn't there. The notion of getting prescriptive lessons from a parable or tale - as if from an instructor or designer or planner of lessons - where else? Most Abrahamic-rejecting atheistic folk (a minority of that worldwide and timelong grab bag of a category) got their initial lessons in theism from theists.
The "God As Projection Of Human Designer" lesson central among them.
A bad way to legitimize my remarks is to reply to them when on re-reading I have no idea if I had a point to make.
Xelasnave.1947
Valued Senior Member
Who designed the designer?
No one offers an answer.
Let me provide a clue.
The designer is an invention by those folk well skilled in inventing non existent entities and guide their lives by reliance upon made up stuff from times when humans were only a few generations evolved from the ancestor that humans and apes could call grandpa.
Well not really but who can resist an opportunity to ridicule when the opposition dwells upon nonsence.
There never was a designer other than the designer of the inteligent designer who was no more than a sneaky theist trying to play grown ups pretending they present more than wishful thinking wraped up in a fairey tale.
My message to theists would be to stop pretending and embrace the reality offerred two thousand years past where you shop for your truth.
However if there is anything to the notion that a designer played some part please present some evidence or withdraw.
Alex
No one offers an answer.
Let me provide a clue.
The designer is an invention by those folk well skilled in inventing non existent entities and guide their lives by reliance upon made up stuff from times when humans were only a few generations evolved from the ancestor that humans and apes could call grandpa.
Well not really but who can resist an opportunity to ridicule when the opposition dwells upon nonsence.
There never was a designer other than the designer of the inteligent designer who was no more than a sneaky theist trying to play grown ups pretending they present more than wishful thinking wraped up in a fairey tale.
My message to theists would be to stop pretending and embrace the reality offerred two thousand years past where you shop for your truth.
However if there is anything to the notion that a designer played some part please present some evidence or withdraw.
Alex
Perhaps you need to save your drafts for a day or two before posting to avoid future confusion of any other parties that might get involved.
But, that would make me appear smarter than I actually am.
Slartibartfast
Registered Member
That seems very straight forward.
I understand that is your view, but forming it into a coherent argument is more involved.
LOTR doesn't "solve" any inherent theistic problem. It's a universe with no one in control and an array of characters out to establish higher and lower qualities in relation to power.
You might as well be talking about Wall Street.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_(1987_film)
As I said, it depends on what one is looking at (and with). If astronomy is "your thing", then yes, the bible is probably not the sharpest tool in the shed. Likewise, if you having difficulty formatting your hard drive, astronomy texts are not likely to provide satisfying answers.
Similarly, if one is interested in the finer points of cuisine that distinguish a rotting zebra from a rotting crocodile, master chef is just going to come across as a series of inadequate and irrelevant fallacies.
Well obviously that is a biggy for the theist camp, but it's hardly the only one or even something unique to theists. For instance Descartes, "I think therefore I am" is another ("I may doubt the existence of so many things, but its not practical to doubt that which is doing the doubting namely the existence of my self").
You could (and some do) ask, "well how do you know that?", but it starts pushing the discussion into very deep water and discussions so open ended that the cows will never come home. Usually, if you want to come to something fruitful with speculation, it's more practical just to establish the axiomatic boundaries, etc on face value and see what it rationally means to apply them within such a perimeter. Eg "ok so your a theist/ atheist, therefore etc etc?"
Well I did bold, italic and underline the bit that said "If you want to speculate ..." (call it my mystic augury, but I suspected you would miss it, even if I put in up in neon lights). You expressed the desire to talk about the multitude of possibilities one could devise around the concept of creation.
If instead you want to abandon speculative philosophy and get down to "reality", then you will have to change epistemological gears. For you (unless you have changed your axiomatic parameters recently), is empiricism, and, as previously mentioned, empiricism and notions of comprehending causitive processes of the universe are poor bedfellows.
The problem is that you want the claim to be supported within your axiomatic framework. Its like vultures eating dead zebras ... thats for the wildlife channel I'm afraid, not master chef.
Because it is unwanted. We spend our days endeavouring to avoid all sorts of sufferings that threaten to undo us into moist, red messes. The wiser part of ourselves telling us that if our endeavours don't fail today, they will definitely fail tomorrow, in no way grants reconcilliation to the prospects of ceasing to exist.
Easier said than done.
I'm pretty sure if you tripped over and smashed your new telescope you would be pissed off. The nature of existing in this world is that it awakens attachment, and all attachments establish themselves through the mind and body.
Then the prospect of that value diminishing or ceasing brings concommitant issues
If you value your life at 6, reducing it down to 5,4,3,2,1, and 0, brings inevitable conflict.
You shouldn't worry about it.
Everyone already knows you are just pretending to be dumb, but are very good at it.
No. I'm deliberately stupid.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/...703/were-wired-take-the-path-least-resistance
:EDIT:
I was once called a millenial without knowing it was meant as an insult. Proof that I'm stupid.
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