I had a dream once where I exited this universe. I was in this blackness — frank

Uni means one, which means it's all there is. You therefore couldn't be outside the universe. You were just outside, like being on the sidewalk out front of Taco Bell, wanting to get in, but at the same time wanting to chill outside.

Anyway, the point is that there's nothing clear about what's really going on. We have no clue. What drives you to believe this or that about determinism is emotion, not logic. — frank

So there's a few reasons you might say this: (1) you're the Cartesian devil, (2) you're the Kant's noumena, or (3) you hold that determinism robs us if the ability to judge facts. I'm none of those. I'm one of the faithful, so I do know, but you're unconvinced because you're not. Such is the value of faith.

And really you too have faith, but you just deny it but act as if you do for all practical purposes. Nothing is clear you say, your windshield smudged and foggy in the pitch of night, yet you amazingly navigate. You see clearly, but you're sure you don't, but can't explain how you keep getting home unscathed.

Of course you have free will. How could anything make sense without it?

It doesn't make sense to me that the feeling of intention and agency you are referring to is the free will. — T Clark

This comment just speaks to your privilege. You didn't grow up in a cage, and so what feels like the sunshine of freedom to me just feels like a normal Tuesday for you.

My people were enslaved for 400 years only to be stuck another 40 years in the hot desert. So I know the bitterness of freedomlessness.

But I digress.

Let me start afresh, de novo if you will. We live our lives partially on autopilot, halfway paying attention to much of anything. It's not until we see the sign welcoming us into Mississippi that we realize that home from Birmingham was right, not left.

So, sure, you can overlook the feeling of freedom just like you can brain fart your way through anything, but if we can't make sense of the notion of free will logically, yet blokes say certain things be free, what be they referencing other than a feeling?

And this is just my odd way of saying, "to be free is to feel free. " Fred sleeps in his crate, door closed or open, just as free either way.

That last sentence actually was interesting despite the rest of the post, designed just to be quirkier than you.

An interesting article, but I don't think it really says anything about whether or not there is free will. Why is it significant that "the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status," in this context? — T Clark

It's really confusing, right?

Here's the way I look at it. When I raise my hand, it can be the result of a variety of things:

1. I internally desire to raise my hand, so I raise my hand.
2. I have no desire one way or the other, but someone raises my hand for me.
3. I have a spasm and my hand flies upward.
4. Someone shocks my brain and me hand goes upward (I meant to say "me" here so I could sound like Oliver Twist).

I think we can say that 1 is the result of free will. We can also clearly say that 2 and 3 are not the result of free will.

Note that 1 and 3 are similar in that they are entirely the result of internal stimulation, but they are different in that 1 is a free will event and 3 is not.

Note that 2 is clearly not a free will event, and it's externally caused.

#4 is our interesting case and the subject of the article I cited (and which got a rave review by you, calling it "interesting"). #4 straddles the fence in being external and internal. It's external because some external fucker is sticking shit inside my brain, but it's internal in the sense that it directly stimulates as if it were an adjacent neuron.

What also makes it interesting is that the subject (the guy with electrodes coming out his noggin) self reports that he raised his hand on his own volition. That is, he insists he had free will, yet I'm sitting here staring at a dominatrix mashing a button and making him like a marionette.

What then is free will? The argument here is that it's just a feeling one has, much like the feeling one has of a gentle breeze up one's kilt. Free will, under this discussion (which I'm trying to pepper with ridiculous comments to keep you interested) is not a divine spark, a something from nothing, or a sudden spontaneous force. It's just a feeling fuck heads have when they do something. If it feel free, it is free. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no ontological, metaphysical difference.

When someone steals your mama's purse, the question of whether it was stolen freely then isn't whether it came from an uncaused event or even an entirely internal event. The question would be whether one would have expected the bastard to have had that feeling of freedom, much like a draft up the bawsack.

But there's more to be said about this. I've just run out of words. I don't actually buy into this because I believe in Cartesian freedom, a mind seperate from a body, a divine spark, and the holiness and sacredness of humanity. That will always be my belief. I feel it like an unmistakable gentle breeze. I just like to talk to the godless and hear what they have to say. It's important to listen to everyone so you can say you did it right before you go back to believing what you always did.

This view of decision is inimicably Christian. The concept of will must be inherently unconstrained so that the horrible crap in the world can be our fault. That's what it's for. Free will gives humanity legislative authority over our own evils. — fdrake

Christianity isn't a monolithic belief system, so to argue a Catholic theologian holds consistently with a Kantian concept of freedom being necessary for moral responsibility doesn't make it Christian.

The freedom of the will position I've described is consistent with Judaic beliefs and Greek views pre-existing Christianity.

For a general overview of theological position on free will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology

There are Christian views on predestination of course as well, meaning Roman Catholic views do not define Christianity. Consider too that Christianity comes with a whole host of other theological baggage when it comes to moral responsibility. My eternal reward will not come from just a benevolent use of my free will, but it will require acceptance of Jesus as the messiah.

All activities are carried out by the three modes of material nature. But in ignorance, the soul, deluded by false identification with the body, thinks of itself as the doer. — Bhagavad Gita 3.27

I'm open up learning Hinduism, but my running down the rabbit hole trying to understand this didn't lead me to the conclusion that Hindus universally argue we lack free will or that one's karmic rewards aren't tied to freely chosen decisions. From the Wiki article, it's apparent there are differing views within Hinduisn on this issue.

Your quote I take to mean that only through transcending your physical being can you understand the soul as entirely without physical ability, which is the way to ultimately cease the birth/rebirth process. Sacred literature is often interpreted in highly contextualized ways, and it's hard to conclude much from a literal, four corners interpretation of a quote.

We could consume 100s of pages of debate on what Genesis 1:1 means for example.

As this is a foreign theology to me, it's hard to follow, as are many theologies, because they are not entirely rational. That is to say, I'm not convinced with what I've come across that freedom divorced from causation is not something you find within. Hinduism, and it's certainly something that pre-existed Christianity.

Jesus was not mentioned in Genesis. It was written well before his birth, yet he is found throughout it for those looking. https://www.pursuegod.org/jig/

Whether there is a turtle riding a horse in the clouds in the sky depends upon what your purpose is for cloud gazing. Are you looking for inspiration or are you trying to figure out if it's going to rain? I would think if the former, you wouldn't ask a meteorologist what's in the clouds, nor do I think you would be confused as to the different ways clouds might be interpreted.

One could believe the clouds hold inspiration and precipitation simultaneously without being troubled by the fact that they hold those two things in very different ways.

My view on free will is (I think) consistent with Kant's:

"In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had argued that although we can acknowledge the bare logical possibility that humans possess free will, that there is an immortal soul, and that there is a God, he also argued that we can never have positive knowledge of these things (see 2g above). In his ethical writings, however, Kant complicates this story. He argues that despite the theoretical impossibility of knowledge of these objects, belief in them is nevertheless a precondition for moral action (and for practical cognition generally). Accordingly, freedom, immortality, and God are “postulates of practical reason.” (The following discussion draws primarily on Critique of Practical Reason.)"

https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/

This is to say, to be able to engage in practical cognition (i.e. the ability to meaningfully reason), you must believe (i.e. accept as a given, even if not rationally or empirically supported) in free will.

This is consistent with doxatic volunteerism, the belief you can choose your beliefs. The reductio conclusion for one who disbelieves in free is that they don't believe in free will because they are determined not to. They'd be similarly forced to accept a believer believes because he must. If that's the case, we argue not to persuade or effectuate our opponents to choose our way of thinking, but because we simply must argue and bend as programmed. That is, the very concept of deliberation and consideration collapse in a determined world because the thought processes and conclusions were just another set of pool balls colliding. We don't choose option A bc it's most rational. We choose it because we're compelled.

That is, free will is required for not just moral responsibility, but for practical cognition as well (i.e. rational thought itself).

) Free will as a concept arose as a response to the theodicy. AFAIK this is just true. As a concept it was never meant to make sense of the human on its own terms, it was meant to make sense of our relationship with god and the world's evil. — fdrake

I find this doubtful. Omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence are idiosyncratic of Western monotheistic religion. The problem of theodicy arises from that, asking how there can be evil if a perfectly good and all powerful being created it.

If you can show that societies that developed outside that tradition (e.g. rain forest, Sub-Saharan African, and Native American societies) emerged with no sense of free will, then that would be supportive of your position, but I question if that's true.

That is, if free will theory exists as the result of theodicy, why would societies that have no problems with theodicy still have free will? There are plenty of polytheistic societies that have dozens of gods, all with various flaws and weaknesses, all with I'd assume an acceptance that free will exists.

I've been searching for papers for the finding that electrical stimulation of the brain that results in involuntary movement is interpreted by the subject as resulting from free will.

The best I could find si far: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/electrical-stimulation-produces-feelings-of-free-will

In this, a subject's brain was stimulated which caused him to want to move his arm and he actually thought he moved his arm (although he did not). This would suggest the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status.

That is, the feeling of free will that precedes the act is just that - a feeling - and not s cause. Our attribution of the will as the cause is just our programmed interpretation.

What might challenge this interpretation of the study is whether the subject always maintained the power to stop the urge to act, but that's not apparent from this study.

No worries. I hope you feel better.

Positivity is an ideology near and dear to me, central actually. From a secular perspective, it's referred to as a self fulfilling prophesy. It's the idea that one subconsciously lays the groundwork for change by thinking positive thoughts. It's the way to explain the magic that good things were created by apparent thought alone by assuming subtle actions consistent with that thought must have created it.

To suggest otherwise assumes the impossible, relying upon mysticism, that matters can be not just spoken into existence, but thought into existence.

My response to your moments of negativity is that they are there for good reason, indicating you are exactly where you ought to be. That is what is meant by having a positivity bias. All is seen from a positive perspective. Obviously there are limits, as the truly bad does happen, which is why I like the term "bias," as opposed to it being a requirement.

If for no other reason than pragmatism, why not accept a positive perspective if it will more reliably yield a positive result than being negative? That is, if one's positive perspective can create a more positive world, what is gained by not engaging?

Positivity, like most attitudes, is a choice.

Tracht gut vet zein gut.

The other option (and my apologies if already mentioned) is that free will is just a post hoc justification for why we do things. Support for that theory:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094521730062X

That is, you kicked in your dream as the result of a spasm and convinced your dream self you chose to strike your enemy in order to maintain the free will illusion we're programmed to have.

If dream states can be interpreted to be just like real life states, then we'd conclude free will is just a rationalization and not a true cause. Some do believe dreams can be used to explain real life, repeating over and over and over that life is but a dream (row row row your boat).

The potassium and magnesium of bananas are said to reduce night kicking. Worth a try, but that would of course eliminate the higher plane of perception you've achieved through essential mineral depletion.

The "simple' is the One of Plato and the noumena of Kant. We create our realities. Many scientists believe the world is not actual until consciousness collapses the wave function. I doubt they can prove their interpretation, but it is a modern verson of Kant without Newton's Euclidean approach (which Kant was so obsessed with) — Gregory

The One would be the ultimate source of reality, describing a unity, where I'd say the noumena is just what is beyond human knowledge. As with all forms, you can't know them by perception, but that doesn't mean they can't be known at all, whether that be by philosophical contemplation or remembering them from our former acquaintance of them while in heaven (this from Wiki at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms). In any event, that seems distinct from the noumena, which is per se unknowable, really describing a limit of knowledge (epistimological) as opposed to the underlying form of forms (ontologoical).

Feelings are something that people exclude from God or Allah — Gregory

Genesis 6:6 among many others.

But live in your bubble where Trump is playing his 4D-chess, and enjoy the trade war he has started. — ssu

I don't subscribe to his being a genius as much as his being the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room. He gets to do what he wants because no one can stop him.

It's just bullying is all it is. He has the idea that playing nice concedes too much. That's how all ruthless people rule. I just think it will be more effective than you do.

What's going to happen is that a peace treaty will be signed and Trump will take credit for it. He increased uncertainty so that resolution became necessary. No one wants this war anymore, much less an expanded conflict.

Russia will be able to maintain its narrative with US approval and Ukraine and Europe will be able to maintain theirs. Truth be damned. This war is going to end.

It's the Greek πίστις (pistis) - to have trust or confidence in something, could be towards God or towards another person among other things. — BitconnectCarlos

And then you say:

Faith is also the Hebrew אֱמוּנָה (emunah) which is a dynamic and fluid concept that's also multi-directional — BitconnectCarlos

This collapses the two concepts of faith and trust (emunah and bitachon), which are obviously related, but I see them as differing, although faith is required for trust. I have no doubt that these arise from free choice, meaning you can choose to have faith and choose to have trust, but I don't think the choice of faith is non-rational. It's a matter of what you want to believe and the repercussions of that choice. From my perspective, there is no greater positivity that flows from bitachon, and I wonder how people navigate the world with a belief that all is random and meaningless and subject to a sudden collapse at any time.

I'd argue that it's just as rational to ignore the Humean rejections of causation (i.e. every event has a cause) as it is to reject scientific rejections of purpose (i.e. every event has a purpose). I impose my faith and trust in the latter, and that leaves me with the position that we're not just a random dropping of dominoes, but we're a purposeful movement toward meaning. I trust that my conversation with you right now is exactly as it should be, even including any reservations I might have with it. The comfort of every crisis is that it is there for a reason.

So, to the OP, faith is a perspective, valid as its opposite.

After the exchange I had with Janus in the previous thread I planned to start a new thread discussing the two major issues I raised with him, i.e. 1) Are faith and intuition the same mental process and 2) Are they valid ways of knowing. I tried to write the OP for that proposed thread. I wrote it and rewrote it three times but I couldn't get it to come together. That's because my own thinking on the subject is muddled. I have lots of ideas but I can't get them to come together. — T Clark

Intuition to me is an unprocessed reaction to an immediate set of circumstances that arises from ingrained experience and probably some genetic survival instincts. Particularly with social interaction, which is incredibly complex and nuanced, but which is a fundamental part of what it is to be human, requires that we immediately assess and respond. It's that feeling when we don't fully believe someone, we sense kindness, we sense danger, we feel an incompatibility, yet we are unable to know what has caused that feeling.

So when you're thinking should I take that job, marry that person, walk into that bar, or even type that post, your intuition tells you to stop or to go. We then stop and intellectualize, think of the pros and cons and then we arrive at a solution, oftentimes inconsistent with our intuition and convince ourselves (with the intellectual self debating with the instinctive self) to go in the opposite direction. We often make the wrong choice when we just should have trusted our gut because we overrode that powerful intuitive evaluative tool. For some matters we are designed to react, not to deliberate.

I knew a woman once who I would never describe as tempered, deeply thoughtful, and certainly not deliberative, but she ran circles around me picking up on every cue, knowing every motive, and navigating social interaction precisely as if it was as clear as day to her.

Faith to me has a religious context. It's the belief there is a higher power in charge of the world not supported necessarily by empirical or rational grounds, but it might entirely be a choice. My intuition doesn't tell me there is a higher power. It's not that I believe in God but I'm just having trouble putting my finger on why (as with intuition), but it's something wholly different. It's a foundational element required for making sense of the world.

Pretty simple syllogism, but the proselytizing on this platform by "believers" runs rampant in the constant defense of fallacious arguments. But know this... all of you who do require reason-based thought, have a severe lack of faith in God. — DifferentiatingEgg

Your argument fails under an equivocation fallacy. "Logic" references deductive (syllogistic) and inductive arguments and pragmatism. That is, even if you believe reliance upon a syllogism for God's existence is proof of lack of belief in God, it does not follow that any reliance upon reason (in terms of informal or pragmatic bases) amounts to lack of belief in God.

Your argument leads to an absurd result, suggesting that a logical basis of any type eliminates a meaningful belief in God (and it seems you define "faith" as the only way to have a meaningful belief in God). For example, if the ancient Hebrews believed in God because they observed 10 plagues, water from rocks, splitting of seas, and manna from heaven, they lacked faith, and therefore didn't have a meaningful belief because they relied upon empirical evidence? Is it not logical to rely upon such things?

Where do you think ‘caring’ comes from, a mysterious substance of ‘fellow feeling’? I like the enactivist definition of caring: — Joshs

I suspect it comes from the brain, which like every other part of the person comes to be through the evolutionary process. By definition, if caring offered no survival advantage, we wouldn't care about others. There are organisms that lack the abiltity to care about others or that even have the ability to comprehend anything at all, including humans.

I don't suggest caring is a substance and I don't think you can sprinkle it on a piece of bread.

Your definition describes what caring is, not where it comes from.

I also think empathy is a certain type of caring, not caring generally. Sympathizing and empathizing are caring behaviors, but not the same thing.

We can’t function in society without an ability to anticipate to at least a minimal extent the behavior of others. — Joshs

Anticipating how our actions will be reacted to by others beings or even inanimate objects seems a necessary ability for any higher organism. That isn't what I mean by empathy though.

The weakness of the sociopath is in the anticipatory modeling , not in a mysterious deficit of ‘fellow feeling’. — Joshs

Sociopathy doesn't relate to someone's ability to calculate outcomes. It relates to whether they care how it impacts others. Sociopaths often are very calculating and devious, fully appreciating how their behavior will lead to a particular result. A tree, for example, is not a sociopath, despite it fully meeting your requirement that it have no anticipatory modeling.

We don’t want to treat the other as other. It doesn’t occur to us to do so unless a barrier rises preventing us from being able to assimilate their actions in a way that is recognizable to us and that doesn’t seem threatening and chaotic. — Joshs

A baby fully understands what "Mine!" means. She knows herself and you as the other. Anyway, if you're going down the road of describing childhood development and how all children are innately empathetic until they are taught otherwise, you're going to need some sources. Sharing is an important lesson we try to teach in childhood, meaning this idea of perfect citizens being born and only later corrupted is doubtful.

We didnt evolve to have this capacity, as though empathy were a physiological gimmick. Empathy is just a sophisticated example of anticipatory sense-making, which is present even in the simplest organisms. To be a living creature is to function on the basis of norm-directed purposes, which requires anticipating events relative to those goals. We care about others to the extent that they are implicated in and enhance our purposes and goals. — Joshs

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. If you want to say an amoeba can "understand" and "share," and that they have any "feelings" in the sense we're using that term, then I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

I take empathy to mean that I don't burn down your house because I know what it would feel like to have my own house burned down. It's a cognitive function that places me in your shoes so that I don't treat the other as the other, but I treat him as my own. Whether a dog actually empathizes is doubtful. It is more likely she cares for her puppy out of an innate desire to protect, not out of thinking what pain her poor puppy must be in and that she wouldn't such pain on herself. But I could be wrong, not being a dog and all.

The ability to empathize is heightened and lessened in different people, and some actually lack the ability entirely (sociopaths). It is not entirely a product of nature, as you can choose to empathize or not. It is entirely possible, however, that a society of sociopaths could exist, and, if that were something that would increase their survivability, then we'd have such societies, but we don't. Sociopaths exist in low enough numbers that I think it's something that isn't advantaged, although arguments have been made that it CEOs and the like are better if they have less empathy.

The point being that I don't think we can talk about why humans are as they are without reference to evolution (or creation, if that floats your boat). It's not like we can say we do things just because. We either do it because millions of years of struggle have forged us this way or because the good lord fashioned us this way.

Using evolution to explain empathy is one way to blame the other for what we see as inadequate empathy (biological pathology). — Joshs

I'm not suggesting there is no free will, but the ability to empathize has to have come from somewhere to begin with. Argue evolution or the Garden of Eden, but it's a reasonable inquiry to ask why humans have it. That is, I'm not suggesting it's ok to murder because murdering is something humans are programmed to be able to do, but it is a legitimate question to ask why humans evolved to have this capacity.

This opposite condition does not have a classification yet, mainly due to it being mostly just affecting the individual, compared to psychopathy which is mostly harmful against others. — Christoffer

I knew a woman who claimed to be an empath, highly sensitive to the emotions of others. She was actually borderline, but that's a whole other story. To the extent there are those whose empathy levels are off the charts, I agree that it can be limiting. There are instances where hard decisions have to be made. People have to get fired, be imprisoned, and sometimes wars must be waged. It's not that these tasks must be reserved for the psychopaths and the cold hearted, but they should be reserved to those who have taken the responsibility to protect an even higher good.

Pacifism doesn't work in a world where there are hawks. To the extent the OP suggests everyone will be a dove, I don't know the world would work with all doves. It seems like evolution didn't send us in that direction at least. So maybe that's the question: Should there be no hawks? What would they eat?

Essentially we choose, and are genetically inclined, to empathize with some and not with others. — Metaphysician Undercover

Our empathy typically occurs more naturally towards those most like us. We are kind to our kind. Who our kind are is easily identifiable. They have our skin type, our facial features, and they speak in our accent, to name a few. It's not hard to figure out who the strange stranger is.

If evolution has implanted within us all these cues to identify the foreigner, the question is why and the further question is what happens if they are suddenly removed with this empathy chip. Has our ability to identify those different from us become a maladaptation from a more dangerous past or does it still offer us some degree of safety from far away travelers?

I'm fully aligned with the OP's suggestion that greater empathy will yield far greater harmony, but I still have the Chesterson's Fence question. Why was the evolutionary fence of tribalism erected and what truly happens when it is removed?

think Holocaust denial is an oblique attack on Jews. It's meant to show disrespect. Climate change skepticism isn't an attack on anyone, though the deployer may be aware that it's a good way to get someone's goat. — frank

I'd also add that we look to the rules to determine if there is a violation, and we try to make rules explicit as needed so that we don't have to rely upon general principles of right and wrong to determine if there were a violation.

It's for that reason I asked for citation to a rule for justification for modding on the basis of whose post we find more justifiable.

A Holocaust denier would be in violation of the rule:

"Racists, homophobes, sexists, Nazi sympathisers, etc.: We don't consider your views worthy of debate, and you'll be banned for espousing them."

That is, it's a black and white rule that is clear for posters and mods. It's much more difficult to enforce a "rule" that is implied because it's debatable even what the rule is.

As an example, when AI became prevalent, a rule was then created. We didn't feel we could enforce something we never made clearly a rule.

The point being is that an argument for a rule violation is far more persuaive by reference to the rule violated as opposed to what one thinks the rule ought to be and enforcing it upon general rules of fair play.

That is, expect there to be legalistic enforcement of the rules as the ordinary course, but expect equitable enforcement of general principles of fairness extraordinary.

Not offered as anything authoritative - I think they are both wrong. But they are not the same. — Banno

I don't find the ChatGpt response persuasive in its identification of distinctions. It seems to argue that Kant considers time a non-relative absolute and a feature of reality. I take his view of time as a form of idealism, with time being necessary for understanding, but not a feature of reality.

The ChatGpt reference to time being emergent seems to contradict what else it says of time not being absolute. I take emergence to be the creation of a whole greater than its parts (as in consciousness) arising from various other interactions (as in brain states), but nothing suggests an emergent property is less real because it's origin is emergent.

I know little of Rovelli, but I can say it sounded a whole lot like Kant from @frank's short blurb. I'll trust the two are not identical, but they're surely within the same family.

Carlo Rovelli is right that time is coming from the way we perceive the universe, then time exists, it's just not what we often conceive it to be, that is, independent of us. — frank

Time is a category of the understanding, not a property of the world.

The mind shapes objects in space and time.

I call this theory transcendental idealism.

It doesn’t seem surprising, given the range of hugely popular nostalgia-driven projects offered by figures like Jordan Peterson, Dr Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke. Isn’t there a recurring trope that since modernity the West has lost its way, thanks to humanism, scientism and post-Enlightenment decadence (particularly the dreaded post-modernism), and that we need to reacquaint ourselves with 'proper thinking' though the classical Western tradition and its values? — Tom Storm

Liberal arts colleges and liberal arts professors tend to be very left of center. The move toward STEM subjects was presented as a rigthward pragmatic solution for how the US would be able to keep up with the rest of the world, particularly Asia. There was a also a rightward push toward tech schools, suggesting that education without application was not much worth pursuing. The right is also pushing back hard on loan forgiveness, questioning why the tax payer should pay for the many liberal arts degrees that have limited financial worth. The right presents the view that college professors are elitist liberals, particularly those in the liberal arts' fields.

That is, I don't see a move toward a liberal arts education as a rightward shift. I would think that the future Republican leaders of America would come from the business schools as opposed to the medievel literature departments.

To the extent you're correct that the shift towards liberal arts is really just a move toward religion, then that might be a rightward shift, but I don't consider a college program centered on the great works of Western civilization particularly consistent with a Bible based religious college. The former I would expect to be located in a quaint New England town, the latter in the hills of Southern Appalachia.

My two cents worth...

The request doesn't seem to be for a debate thread, but for a thread that accepts certain studies as authorative so that you can learn along with like minded folks what those authorities state and perhaps imply might be in the future.

As in, if you were taking a course on Kant, your task would be to learn what he said, perhaps realize some inconsistencies, but being disallowed outright rejection and questioning of his project.

Or, another analogy, Sunday school class is set aside to extract the wisdom from the Scripture, not to challenge the very validity of it.

So, if I've charecized the inquiry correctly enough, i turn to our guidelines. It says nothing about an OP being necessarily phrased as a debate, but it does say this:

"Evangelists: Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having."

So, to open the discussion...

Do you guys think the thread suggested demands an acceptance that one's ideology is the only one worth having, or do you distinguish it from this rule?

Trump isn't ending democracy. He's dismantling every policy and institution he disagrees with with reckless abandon, precisely as his supporters want him to do.

His supporters comprise the majority. Such is democracy. To the victors go the spoils.

"Elections have consequences" as Obama noted.

I don't understand what you mean by eternal being and state. If the act of creation is necessary then the scenario in which the existence of God and the act of creation lay at the same point is feasible otherwise we are dealing with a scenario in which God as an agent is able to not create and this means that there is a situation in which only God exists. — MoK

This is your point:

Let us suppose that God creates the universe on 2/11/25 at 3:22 p.m. If God made that decision to create at 3:21 p.m., you argue that God changed from 3:20 to 3:21. At 3:20, his mind was clear of any decision. At 3:21, his mind had a decision within it. God therefore changed from a non-decision making thing to a decision making thing, and so God changed between 3:20 and 3:21.

This is my point:

God's decision to create the universe on 2/11/25 at 3:22 p.m. has always been a part of God and when it occurred on that date and time, nothing changed in God. It was always his decision within him. The decision didn't occur at 3:21. It was always there, forever and ever, just like everything else about God.

P3) If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists
P4) If so, then the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state — MoK

You are assuming that a decision making process must occur that didn't previously exist and then concluding what you've assumed, which is that the entity went from State A to State B. That is, if you assume that God is in the undecided State A at T-1 and then he moves to the decided State B at T-2, then you're assuming your conclusion, which is that there is a change from A to B from T1 to T2 and thus the entity is different and changed.

If you assume though that the eternal being God is so constructed at his inception that he will decide at T2 to create the universe, then nothing changes in God over time. Every instance of behavior of God could be posited to exist eternally within God within his initial constitution and he would not be changing.

If you're going to creatively construct what you believe is the constitution of God, it seems easy enough to create it however you want it to be.

Greatest dance video ever.

What I'm saying is that in order for there to be something good, there must be something. If there is nothing, there is no good, but that doesn't necessitate it being bad. It just means the weight of nothingness is undefined, but not that it's zero. To be zero presumes a scale, but we presume no scale in nothingness.

And let's not pretend we have a conceptual grasp of nothingness. We must impart existence upon any concept for any understanding of it, including the concept of nothingness.

To the question of is something better than nothing, I can't evaluate the something universe from the nothing universe to compare them.

All moral questions boil down to one fundamental question that must be answered first, "Should there be existence?" — Philosophim

If the answer is that it would good for there to be no existence and bad for there to be existence, then the best scenario would be for there to be no good because once you eliminate all existence, you eliminate good too.

And this is just to draw out the absurdity of suggesting nothingness can have a value, as if there can be an evaluator or evaluation system in an otherwise empty void.

If you eliminate all things to be measured, you also eliminate the measuring sticks.

Ok. And what of a tradition which finds Justin Bieber referenced throughout the entire Bible? My question is: Are all interpretations equally valid/equally grounded in a reasonable interpretation of Scripture? Scripture that was written in a certain time and place. — BitconnectCarlos

The eating of the apple as being the impetus for God to cause Mary's immaculate impregnation so she could give birth to a messiah to rid mankind of all its inherented sin is no more or less a better interpretation than positing it means Justin Beiber is God if one thinks the text is what is to be referred to for interpretation.

But not to pick in Christianity, Jewish midrashim are stories built seemingly from scratch in efforts to interpret biblical passages.

https://jewishcurrents.org/midrash-the-stories-we-tell

And not to pick on religion. Did you know that for 50 years, the following meant that a woman had diminishing rights to abortion based upon a trimester framework?

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

We establish an authority and then we attribute our norms to that authority.

Job never says that God is unjust or bad for the misfortune that befell him. He suffers acceptably. — BitconnectCarlos

That is obviously your narrative, but not the only one that would flow from that.

Judaism rejects the corporeality of God. Regarding whether God makes verbal utterances we'd need to go the text on that one. I'm fairly certain he's described in the Bible as having a voice and I've never heard of any branch officially denying that he makes verbal utterances but I could be wrong. — BitconnectCarlos

You only go to the text to search for literal meaning if you think that literal meaning of the text is truth. Liberal traditions view the text as allegorical and orthoodox traditions consider many passages as entirely metaphorical. Orthodox Jews, for example, reject the notion that God speaks in a literal sense (because he has no vocal cords, for example) even though the text references speaking, and they do not consider the written text as a stand alone single source document of authority unimpacted by oral tradition.

See:

"Maimonides thus contends that even the greatest of all prophets, Moses, through whose agency Israel received the Torah and the mitzvot, did not really hear a voice speaking to him in the inner sanctum of the miškān. The Torah is not to be taken literally when it speaks of a divine voice emanating from between two cherubs on the ark cover. The notion of a talking God is – for the enlightened – as preposterous as the idea of a God possessing form or composed of matter."

https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-lord-spoke-to-moses-does-god-speak#:~:text=Maimonides%20thus%20contends%20that%20even,inner%20sanctum%20of%20the%20mi%C5%A1k%C4%81n.

The meaning of certain passages varies significantly depending upon tradition. Christianity finds foreshadowing and references to Jesus in the Hebrew bible, where other traditions do not.

The point here isn't to reject any one particular interpretation of the Bible, but it's to point out that anyone who says "this is what the Bible means" is asserting an ideology, even if that ideology is that Bible is just an over-rated meandering of stories.

I meant epistemic humility, as demonstrated through the book of Job. — BitconnectCarlos

Is this humility of understanding peculiar to the Bible or is something that you'd assert exists with any ancient writing? Claiming that the Bible is shrouded in some degree of mystery incapable of full understanding suggests an ideological bent toward the divine nature of the book, which would be a religious assertion particular to certain traditions.

But to judge God is a different matter. — BitconnectCarlos

Job 9:19 to 9:24.

19 If it is a matter of strength, [God] is mighty!
And if it is a matter of justice, who can challenge him?
20 Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me;
if I were blameless, it would pronounce me guilty.
21 “Although I am blameless,
I have no concern for myself;
I despise my own life.
22 It is all the same; that is why I say,
‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’
23 When a scourgel brings sudden death,
he mocks the despair of the innocent.
24 When a land falls into the hands of the wicked,
he blindfolds its judges.
If it is not he, then who is it?"

Psalm of David, 22:1:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?

God provides divine revelation in the bible that we can all work with. E.g. he interacts directly with Moses and reveals things to him. — BitconnectCarlos

You'll have to define "directly." The text references God speaking to Moses, but not all traditions accept that God actually speaks in a physical sense, particularly Orthodox Judaism that rejects any suggestion that God is corporeal and actually speaks.

So the biblical worldview requires humility. — BitconnectCarlos

You'll have to define "humility" here. The Christian concept of humility that centers around meekness and the fallen state of the soul is very different from Judaic concepts of humility which do not hold meekness a virtue nor that the soul of man is inherently flawed and in need of salvation.

My point isn't really though just to get into a back and forth about what the Bible says, but it's just to point out that it means very different things to different people and its meaning and use has changed over time. Our use of the Bible today as a definitive documentation of social norms is not the way it has always been used, but is a product of societal decisions and changes.

It's for that reason I have a problem when someone wants to declare its universal, non-contextualized meaning. It means different things to different traditions, and I understand each tradition wants to declare theirs correct, but I don't think there's a solid basis for that.

The basic idea of the Daoists was to enable people to realize that, since human life is really only a small part of a larger process of nature, the only human actions which ultimately make sense are those which are in accord with the flow of Nature — Gnomon

I don't understand this. The naturalistic fallacy (which this position seems to celebrate) holds it's a fallacy to equate is with ought, as in, it must be the way things ought to be because that's the way things are. In order to avoid the truism that everything is moral because everything is as it is, you must position something outside of nature, which I assume are humans. That is, unless you grant that a human can act unnaturally, you can't designate his behavior as immoral because it is by definition in accordance with nature. If we go down that road, then we've granted special status to humans and we've apparently given them free will. If we're now going to judge people based upon how they otherwise interrupt nature, then I wonder why have humans at all. Wouldn't the world be better off without the potentially disrupting influence? But then if you say that humans are obligated to facilitate the flow of nature, that creates the odd suggestion that nature is behaving more naturally when unnatural humans are there to assist.

My guess is that this boils down to just another ethical system based upon humility, kindness, acceptance and such. If that's the case, let's stop being so vague and just enumerate the things I need to do in 10 simple commands. I've been following these taoist threads a bit, and I'd rather someone just speak in prose and not poems and lay it out.

God, like the universe and all that occurs within it, is beyond our understanding. God is understood as being both transcendent and immanent. A "God" that falls within our rational understanding would be an act of hubris effectively placing ourselves as judges and evaluators of God. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't know that it follows that an understanding of something dictates that we be judges of that thing. I also don't know why a religion couldn't hold that humans have the ability to understand God. I'm not saying your views aren't valid, but I don't think your description of religion is necessary. If you're going to allow that religion be beyond empirical and rational discovery, you've sort of opened the door to the concept of us each having our personal religion else how else do you intend to persuade me to your position?

That is, I fully accept that there are those who reject religion outright and would not find any greater happiness turning their brains off to scientific reasons just due to the fact that they're not wired that way. It's for that reason that I find proselytizing offensive, as it fails to take seriously someone else's justified rejection of that viewpoint.

I'd also admit as well that my objections to proselytizing are rooted in my religion, which forbids it and openly discourages conversion to it. This admission is just to state the obvious, which is that social norms are learned and gathered from the community at large, which none of us have ever avoided, regardless of how free thinking you might be. Everyone has drunk the Kool-aid. I advocate for choosing the flavor that you like best.