And one can't do otherwise. Hence morally disqualifying system/existence. — schopenhauer1

Not to contradict you but here's the deal.

1. Existence is inseparably linked to happiness & suffering. It's kinda a package deal of sorts: If you wanna live, you can experience happiness, but you gotta suffer too. This is The Hedonic Trinity (life, sorrow, joy).

2. We havta, if we want people to reject antinatalism, cleave The Hedonic Trinity apart so that we can live happily sans even an iota of suffering. This sentiment has a precedence, in almost all religions, goes by the name paradise/heaven/jannat.

The fact that most religions have a better idea of what hell is like (exquisitely detailed descriptions exist, complete with ghastly illustrations) than what heaven is like is rather disheartening; we know suffering better than we know happiness which speaks volumes in re the living conditions on earth (hellish).

Gross :vomit: — Merkwurdichliebe

I don't understand why there's (usually) such a strong emotional bond between mother and child? The mother's immune system attacks (to kill) the fetus if you let it (hemolytic disease of the newborn).

Physical rejection vs. Emotional attraction!

Rabbititis :snicker:

Succinct, but to the point. I like it. — schopenhauer1

:smile: Victim or Victimizer; choose!

Adaptively managing suffering (attempting to do so) is not "justifying suffering" any more than to eat "justifies" hunger or to bury the dead "justifies" mortality. :roll: — 180 Proof

:fire:

It's clear now that I don't know what you're whinging about, man, because you don't know what you're whinging about either. — 180 Proof

:snicker:

The best kind of existence would be one, perhaps, that is suited to each individual tastes/preferences without infringing on other people's tastes/preferences — schopenhauer1

:up:

Live and let live. — SYT

What if your favored existence only is realized by infringing on other people's favored existence? — schopenhauer1

Aut neca aut necare (kill or be killed)

With the idea of only SOME people's preferences satisfied, and those preferences entailing the infringement of other people's preferences, this makes this existence morally disqualifying. — schopenhauer1

:fire:

A person...either gonna hurt or gonna hurt! No point to being born!

The only difference between Covid and Monkeypox is that we have a vaccine that works for the latter (Smallpox vaccine; efficacy 85%, not bad, oui?). Killing two birds with one stone! Way to go, human race!

"The true essence of abortion" (historically in the US +98% occur before foetal viability) is elective lumpectomy. — 180 Proof

:snicker: We were all once lumps then.

You have a point! The placental barrier without which the mother's immune system would attack the fetus like it would any infection! The mother suffers! :groan:

A picture of a hanging is not a hanging. — 180 Proof

True, true! However, that's a poor analogy, oui? It doesn't quite capture the essence of abortion. I could be wrong of course.

There's something fishy about entanglement. Years ago, as a kid fishing in the gulf of Mexico I would experience it often. Why did Einstein make such a big deal of it? :chin: — jgill

Same here! Einstein's worldview didn't allow for spooky action at a distance - it just didn't gel/jibe with his other ideas, whatever they were. The likely culprit was his light speed limit postulate + causality as understood in physics (cause must precede effect); it boils down to the same thing I suppose.

Last I checked, quantum entanglement was, for some reason, not communication-apt i.e. we can't use to transmit info. I was wrong then and so was Einstein. Too bad!

As Jack Cummins stated, the motif of mind-body dualism is apparent in Blake. The dichotomy of reason (soul/mind/nonphysical) and unreason (physical/body) is what I take issue with; in my humble opinion the body has its own internal logic, its own set of priorities, which we experience as bodily desires, likes & dislikes, emotions of all kinds. In other words the body is no fool - the label of unreason applied to it reflects ignorance rather than knowledge.

That said, the mind, prima facie, appears to be going off in a different direction than the body. Asceticism, an extremum case, is when our minds outright reject and neglect the body, the physical as unclean, corrupted, and inferior.

However, there's the possibility that the animosity, the conflict, the antagonistic relationship betwixt mind and body is merely an illusion and/or indicates our ignorance/misunderstanding. Putting the mind on a pedestal and relegating the body to a lower position is, to my reckoning, a mistake. There's a lot we can learn from our bodies - it's been, in a sense, honed to near perfection by evolution and when your body says it wants (say) sugar, you better pay attention, it wants it for a very good reason. That is to say, the body thinks without actually thinking!

Yeah, and one way to do better species-wide is to stop having unwanted offspring by all methods safe and healthy for sexually active or pregnant women to use. — 180 Proof

I agree but I still feel we havta give women a better alternative than abortion which has a likeness to murder! I wouldn't feel good about myself if someone told me I don't have AIDS but I do have something that resembles AIDS.

Your perspective. — jgill

What's wrong with it?

I've always had that Pythagorean feeling :snicker: that something's wrong! Irrational numbers?! WTF? :chin:

Hippasus of Metapontum (drowned at sea for mathematical heresy).

Yep. — Banno

What?

Better the rest of their adult live than the entirety of their children's lives. — 180 Proof

We can do better!

I think the assumption is that the "creator" of the universe must exist outside of time (as from what I understand time as we know it started from the big bang). And this creator, according to some of what I've read, exists necessarily and eternally (at least in the abrahamic religions, where God is often held as the sole agenētos (unoriginated being)). As you said, it doesn't seem like we can regress infinitely (although maybe with universes or god(s) we can). — Paulm12

Well, the Kalam cosmological argument is self-refuting: It first assumes that the everything must have a cause and then it goes on to claim that that would imply an infinite regress. It rejects the infinite regress in favor of an uncaused cause (primum movens). See what happened there?

I do. The fewer unwanted offspring / less-than-enthusiastic mothers the better. :up: — 180 Proof

I beseech you to reconsider your position. While the nature of the issue would require us to compromise on our compassion, we can't be that heartless as to legalize 3^rd trimester abortions. It feels wrong and I'm certain that pregnant women who opt for abortion in the 3^rd trimester experience significant psychological and physical trauma which may linger on for the rest of their lives.

Well, as far as I can tell, the media can take sides and a powerful incentive/disincentive to do that is money!

Remember the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. — Wizard of Id

The dilemma for the media is this: Credibility (unbiased information delivered to the public) or Survival (pick a side in a debate and become a mouthpiece). Tough call and it's obvious, going by what you say here, what the media has opted for (survival).

I prefer to look at most issues from a systems perspective. Any journalist, in my humble opinion, would prefer to report the truth - the pricking of the conscience is no small matter (professional integrity) - but the system is such that this comes at a price that no one can afford (existential threat).

The quagmire the media finds itself in is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to systemic flaws that thwart/forestall ethical considerations in our lives - we want to do good, but give the circumstance, the way the system works, that's suicide; we all know what happens next!

This is the Platonic form of the systemic ills that plague us: Do something bad OR ELSE Die! Worship Satan OR Feel the wrath of Algos/Thanatos. We need to fix that!

I hope to one day have a designer pox. — Hanover

An old story! Biological weapons: enhanced transmission, lethality, and drug resistance! I think, not a 100% sure! Sorry if that's an issue.

It's like Magma Energy - proven by NASA in 1982, a source of limitless clean energy — karl stone

Dig, and dig deep! :up:

It's simply a matter of bad axioms — Metaphysician Undercover

:up:

If a train of logical reasoning ends on a contradiction (paradox), the following possibilities must be considered

1. Fallacies (mistakes in applying the rules of natural deduction)

and/or

2. One/more false premises (axioms/postulates)

If not 1 and/or 2 then and only then

3. The LNC needs to be scrapped + a version of paraconsistent logic needs to be adopted

Arigato gozaimus Metaphysician Undercover san!

:confused:

:ok:

The difficulty I see with any creation story i.e. one involving the origins of our universe having been effected by a deity is this: The problem just shifts one step backwards, who created the deity who created us? An infinite regress immediately threatens, how shall I put it?, our intellectual integrity ($\infty$ is not something our brains were "designed" to handle/process; Georg Cantor went, forgive the disrespectful tone, cuckoo!).

However, like one very astute member once said (paraphrasing) "I'm not at all inconvenienced by the infinite regress; all I want you to do is make you admit that this universe had a creator!" Makes sense in a way, but that the question "who created the creator?" can be asked is not something we can sweep under the carpet; sooner or later it's gonna pop up in a rational analysis of the origins of the universe, if attributed to a deity of some sort.

The alternative - it just happened! (by fluke, for no apparent reason and without purpose) - is what we'll have to go for. This won't go down well with some of a particular bent in mind; the other option (infinite regress) is even more difficult to digest in my humble opinion. An infinite chain of gods creating gods creating gods creating gods....ad infinitum/ad nauseum :vomit: isn't, let's just say, a very good way of solving the problem (reminds me of procastination and/or kicking the can down the road).

Food for thought:

1. Quality: There's happiness/suffering.
2. Quantity: There's amount of suffering/happiness.

Those who'll pull the lever - killing one to save many - are looking at it quantitatively (2).

Those who're are in two minds - should I kill one to save many? - are looking at it qualitatively (1).

This is just a hunch but I have a feeling that antinatalists would give their stamp of approval to abortion in the 3^rd trimester.

I misunderstood you, but it’s a rather tortuous analogy, let’s leave it — Wayfarer

No problemo! Communication gap is a documented malady of communication.

The Condom Principle

Better to have it (condom/gun) and not need it than to need it and not have it.

It appears that many of our maladies, at an individual and at a social level, are effects of some rather "useful" heuristics. The double-edged sword was, in my humble opinion, invented and designed for amateur swordsmen/women.

I suppose this is a textbook case of ignoratio elenchi (missing the point).

The hard problem of consciousness is, in question form, can science (ever) explain consciousness?

"Because evolution created it."

:roll:

It usually requires close physical contact; which seems an unlikely vector of infection given the geography, and so the most likely common factor is the Covid vaccine based on simian disease. — karl stone

We either don't know enough about the virus or we know very little about ourselves. Either way, we're screwed!

Let's wait & watch as the situation evolves, but this time we definitely have no excuses if Monkey Pox snowballs into a global pandemic.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me! — George Bush

:snicker:

You can’t kill a classroom full of schoolchildren with chewing tobacco, although the subtlety of the argument might elude you. — Wayfarer

:snicker: I'm not known for subtleties, they remain an enigma to me. However, in my humble opinion, killing with tobacco is what I would call subtle as hell. The fact that we allow tobacco companies to do their business in the face of respiratory illness and cancer epidemics is something worth pondering upon, oui?

:smile: When one lacks knowledge, one compensates with imagination.

Second post, apologies if it bothers anyone.

Implausibility is a function of an existing, current/latest framework of knowledge at our disposal. If an event X is inexplicable i.e. contradicts the system of knowledge we've vetted and given our nod to, it is labelled implausible.

It appears that the OP is, all said and done, a query about science and its much-extolled method. Any observation that is inconsistent with what we know about reality, instantly renders even our cherished hypotheses/theories null and void. It's back to the drawing board then - replace/mod our theories/hypotheses.

Wait, there's more...

An argument from implausibility for the supernatural is essentially the god of the gaps argument. This particular line of reasoning for theism is a lost cause because it's based off of ignorance and not knowledge.

There's more still...

In my humble opinion, people who use implausibility in defense of the supernatural conflate a wrong hypothesis/theory with science, in its entirety, being erroneous.

It's a truly vicious circle - more guns breeding more fear, spuring more guns. And the NRA circles, feeding off the corpses like the vultures they are. — Wayfarer

If I fight for the sale of tobacco (chewing, smoking them), wouldn't I put myself in hot water?

So animal brains have the basic structure (mirror neurons) for empathy, assuming empathy is so effected. Perhaps an additional feature is needed to, you know, close the circuit so to speak and turn on empathy. Pure speculation of course.

empathy — Relativist

Mirror neurons, those that assume the state of other neurons, hypothesized to be the basis of empathy, do animals lack them? It would be a miracle if animal brains are that different from ours.

The worst part is that even equipped as we are with empathy, we perform so poorly in the moral department. What hope is their for animals if they're empathy-less?

A. suppose idea X ...
B. presuppositions for idea X ...
C. implications from idea X ...
D. negation of idea X ... — 180 Proof

:fire: You should be a billionaire!

"Trust, but verify." ~Ronald Reagan — 180 Proof

That's the kinda talk that separates the wheat from the chaff! :fire:

Danke for clearing that up for me. I'm a buffoon it seems, talking outta my hat like that.

Anyway, here's an interesting thought:

It's permissible to sell guns only for defense.

People buy and use guns for offense.

Something's gone horribly wrong, oui?

Offense is the best defense?

It's basically MAD (mutually assured destruction) being played out at a smaller scale, with conventional weapons. Throws into question the rationale/justification for nuclear weapons!

"There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ...
but not for us." ~Franz Kafka

↪Tate Hope is an absurd (imaginary) response to fear. Courage is the absurdist (performative) response to fear. The latter overcomes 'the utopian consolations' (temptations) of the former. — 180 Proof

Depressing! :groan:

In my humble opinion, hope is an indispensable part of trust which itself is integral to society's very existence.

We've managed, to some extent, outgrow these, unfortunately, extremely unreliable social entities (hope and trust), preferring instead to adopt interactions among ourselves such as tit-for-tat and/or quid pro quo, very effective methods of keeping us all living together in peace and harmony as it were.

Society, despite appearances, isn't built on cooperation as I once thought; it is kept intact by being open/candid about how untrustworthy and how misplaced our hope is.

Nevertheless, being hopeful and trusting still give us that warm, fuzzy feeling we encounter in the numinous, the sublime; it is, in that sense, divine in nature (In God we trust). We mustn't neglect it, we must cultivate, we must respect and honor it; this ain't easy, the journey will be a litany of disappointments and failures, but there's an unspoken/unwritten rule that states if it's hard, it's good.

Good call! Why not just ask someone who's already solved the problem?

Guns have a very high lethality index i.e. if you use 'em, death is guaranteed except in some rarest of rare circumstances. This means guns will top the list of non-illness-related causes of death.

Here's food for thought: The police and the armed forces are equipped with a wide range of guns. Who's done a study on how many lives an armed officer or soldier has saved?

The problem of gun-related morbidity and mortality needs to be looked at from a different angle; better or not, you decide.

I have a feeling that we're, for good reasons of course, hyperfocused...on guns (they kinda jump out at us, hard to ignore guns and what they can do).

I recommend we change tack and put motives for using weapons, guns included in the spotlight. You know, try and solve the real problem - why do people wanna kill each other?