Looks very Mayan! Perhaps its just the combination of color and the swirling motif.

Holy mother of God!
— Agent Smith

Grandma of JC! Could it be that God Himself fertilized the egg from which He sprang? Could we call it an immaculate conception? Retro-Sex maybe? In Vitrus Sanctus? — Haglund

Aye! God was/is genuine as for as motherf**ckers go.

primal fear — Haglund

Fear, bewilderment, awe, wonder, excitement, thrill, all rolled into one! Holy shit! Oh my God! Holy mother of God! Holy cow! It's that simple and yet, not!

Re Aporia & Ataraxia.

What's the value of hygiene or fitness (or any adaptive practice)? — 180 Proof

They're keys to survival, reducible to 3 primary goals:

1. Finding food
2. Fleeing predators
3. F**cking suitable mates

3Fs :chin: I'm bad at all three. I'm a genetic dead end! :grin: and bear it!

Kant's pirmary objective is to make moral laws as immutable & universal as the so-called laws of nature. Have you seen anything, anything at all, violate the law of universal gravitation? In Kant's eye an inanimate object obeying every law of nature applicable to it to the tee is perfectly moral as it has, and probably never did and never will, make an exception of itself (re the categorical imperative).

Worth noting is that miracles are, as per Hume, violations of the laws of nature i.e. the divine/god(s) have, for the most part of recorded theology, been associated with, let's just say, illegal activities such as resurrections, walking on water, so on and so forth.

God(s) is/are outlaw(s) in Kantian ethics. Loki (the god of mischief) comes to mind. We need to make (an) arrest(s), pronto!

God is soul without a body, like a dead person. — praxis

:clap: Gott ist tot (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Most intersting! — Ms. Jane Marple

Once the creator gets the ball rolling - the first spark - the process is self-sustaining or self-rejuvenating (Phoenix). In a sense then, God didn't create this universe, directly that is. A question on where, in the chain of causation, does responsibility terminate, arises.

Fairness? I was under the impression that everybody knew life isn't fair. A few ideas that seem to be relevant:

1. Deservingness

2. Equality

We seem to have fixated on equality; hence, to some, life isn't fair.

Deservingness is a double-edged sword: sometimes it seems to misfire so to speak (bad things happen to good people, that sort of thing), other times, it works perfectly (some do get their just deserts, what goes around comes around, karma).

The long and short of it, fairness needs to be labeled FRAGILE. This side up $\uparrow$

More or less. — 180 Proof

Why is it like that? I mean are we machines used by...?

No sensory organs (or pain receptors) inside the brain; so yeah, it is "impossible" for the brain to "feel" itself doing anything — 180 Proof

Thus, our bodies are like the contraptions/machines we use everyday of our lives, from your humble toaster to an advanced F-35, we can use it without having to know how it actually works. Like how birds fly by instinct alone, with zero knowledge of aeronautics.

What's the point of a person's aeuronautics enginering degree when a 15 year old can fly like an ace whild s/he can't even pilot a model airplane? What's the value of knowledge?

Phenomena are not words, nor noumenon referents; so I've no way to make sense of this — Banno

It's an analogy, that's all.

The bottom line is this:

1. Philosophical definition (used by philosophers and other thinkers who mind their ps and qs)

2. Non-philosophical definition (used by ordinary folks)

The two don't match; hence the confusion which Wittgenstein attempted to dispel/remove/address.

Is the unpredictability absolute i.e. is it impossible to predict or is it just that we don't have powerful enough supercomputers i.e. unpredictability is relative, possible but not with current tech?

Thanks! I believe I have that book in my e-book library. Will read it.

I don't feel how my kidneys produce urine, but I do bleed the lizard at regular intervals. The same goes for my other organs, but the one that has the spotlight on it is the brain - it seems impossible to feel the action potentials that light up our brains like a Christmas tree, and yet we're able to think. I can't wrap my head around that. It blows my mind.

Okay. How does science examine the existence of God. You're much smarter than me. Explain. — Jackson

You homed in on a very important point. I congratulated you on it. You went berserk! Nec caput nec pedes.

You've really misunderstood Wittgenstein. And the OP — Banno

Well, that's a possibility that I can't rule out. However, it seems the two of us are converging on the same spot. Words and the things they refer to are entirely different things. I would like to introduce the Kantian notions of phenomenon (words) and noumenon (referents) as they seem apposite. That phenomena/words fall short of accurately describing/pinpointing noumena/referents doesn't say anything about the nature of noumena/referents. To illustrate, yep, the word "religion" is no good for philosophizing but that, in no way, means there's no such thing as an essence to religion.

Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.

We seem to be able to download the thoughts of other folks; that's what we do, absorb information from books, articles, essays, papers authored by other peeps. There's no obvious reason why this is a one way street. We should be able to, in principle at least, upload our minds onto something :meh: or someone :scream: Socrates lives on in me! :scream:

From some aspect, you might be right. Although I have a difficulty imagining God being examined under a microscope or measuring its electic field as it is done with electrons ... — Alkis Piskas

Point made, point taken. It's just that for some folks, God isn't just a concept like Darwinian evolution isn't just a theory. There have been attempts, successful/not, you be the judge, to prove the existence of God à la how experimental physicists did for the itsy-bitsy electron.

A modern-day reenactment of the Old Testament? :chin: The horrific experience of the holocaust seems to have been forgotten? :chin:

Well, I definitely support instead rational thinking and argumentation, as imperfect and versatile as these can be among human beings ...
(BTW, don't forget that God is a concept created by human beings, anyway.) — Alkis Piskas

God is as much a concept as an electron is in my humble opinion.

Did I mention the following?

1. Mill's 5 Methods

1. Method of agreement

A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
A, E F correlates with X, Q, R

X $\to$ A

Thus,

A is a necessary cause/effect of X

2. Method of difference

A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
B, C correlates with Y, Z

~X $\to$ ~A

Ergo,

A is a sufficient cause/effect of X

3. Joint method of agreement & difference

A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
A, E, F correlates with X, Q, R
B, C correlates with Y, Z

X $\to$ A

~X $\to$ ~A

So,

A is the cause of X

4. Method of concomitant variation

As A increases/decreases X increases/decreases (direct variation)
As A increases/decreases X decreases/increases (inverse variation)

Hence,

A is the cause of X

5. Method of residue

A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
B is a cause of Y
C is a cause of Z

Therefore,

A is the cause of X

2. T is the cause of U

IFF

1. T is correlated with U
2. There is no V such that V causes both T and U (rule out third-party causation; use one's background knowledge)
3. U is not the cause of T (rule out reverse causation; the cause must precede the effect)
4. The correlation between T and U is not coincidental (persists over time; background knowledege will come in handy; mechanism of causation identified)

Chaoskampf. The thirst for order; the alternative is insanity.

you sound as if you've been inhaling nitrous oxide. — Wayfarer

:rofl: I wish...haven't laughed in a while except yesterday when watching They do it with mirrors (Ms. Marple), a TV adapatation of an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel. There's this part where Chief Inspector Slack has a conversation with Dr. Maverick (vide infra).

Dr. Maverick (deadpan): In their subconscious every male wants to kill his father and marry with his mother (a reference to Freud's Oedipus Complex)

Chief Inspector Slack (mortified): I beg your pardon! :lol:

:up:

Not after losing Crimea without one bullet fired. — ssu

Putin was probably hoping for a repeat of that when he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022 - an analysis of Russian preparations and the current status of the conflict might throw up clues as to how short the war was expected to be in the eyes of the Russian top brass. They seem to be at their wits end now that stiff Ukrainian resistance has prolonged Moscow's annexation plans.

Jung — Jack Cummins

I read his biography & life's work on Wikipedia. He comes across as a genuine person - did extensive research on subjects that interested him, formulated his own theories based on that, and so on - whose mission it was to gain insight into the human mind. Like his estranged mentor, Freud, his focus seems to have been the unconscious (that part of the psyche that exists below the threshold of awareness, I like to call it the autopilot - reminds me of God somehow, hidden, behind a veil we can't hope to penetrate, not anytime soon that is). Leibniz was of the opinion that minds were little gods). Just speculating but my hunch is that an aspect of the unconscious is probably like a computer compiler/interpreter that translates high level language code (thoughts) into machine language (action potentials or bioelectric currents) and back.

Does physical acuasality lead to (a) contradiction(s)?

What does it mean when Hume claims that a (billiard) ball could do anything (attain any velocity or even vanish into thin air or transmogrify into Ivanka Trump for all we know) when struck with a cue or another ball? The takeaway being there's no logical necessity to causality

Point of interest: The word "anything". Are contradictions included too? Apparently not. So, our job, to prove causality is logically necessary, is to show acuasality implies one or more antinomies. Can we do that? It's back to square one, I've circled back to Hume's dukkha (dissatisfaction)...or have I? I went through all that for nothing?! :sad:

Goodbye — Jackson

Stay safe :mask:

Not in the mood for jerks. Debate or keep quiet. — Jackson

Sorry. Carry on.

Science can only address the world as physicality. Since God is not asserted to be a physical entity, science would have nothing to say about it. — Jackson

That's deeeeep, dude! Deeeeeep! :up:

:up:

How to draw:

Step 1: Draw the form/structure (circles, straight lines i.e. math/science?)

Step 2: Flesh it out (the imperfections, too Platonic?)

The OP's concern can be rephrased as is a world without causality possible? Let's put on our thinking caps.

A world in which there's no causality would be chaos manifest. Nothing physical would make sense. To give you an idea of what this would look like, slap on the face would be painful, pleasurable, neither and it'd be impossible to predict what would follow a given action.

Furthermore, events would occur spontaneously e.g. one would feel pain, one would burst out laughing, drop dead, etc. for no reason at all.

In short, a world where causality doesn't exist displays

1. Inconsistency in "effect".

2. Spontaneous/uncaused events.

1 & 2 is a description of chaos.

Some creation myths claim that the universe began as The Void (Chaos). Check Wikipedia out for more. In other words, chaos/The Void (spontaneous randomness) is the primum movens (the uncaused cause, the prime mover). What happened after that is a mysterious transition from acausality to causality...true if and only if cause and effect isn't an illusion.

@Banno This just crossed my mind. Being of Wittgensteinian bent (language games, meaning is use and all), I'm quite taken by surprise that you would want to delimit philosophy of religion to certain topics and areas in Theology. It's a distinctly non-Wittgenstein in character as far as I can tell. Remember you accused me of stipulation in this other thread on religion in which I mentioned how it could be defined with precision, avoiding the pitfalls that are part and parcel of bad definitions (family resemblance, and nebulous meanings). Looks like you too are guilty of stipulation (imposing your definitions on others for no rhyme or reason).

:ok:

All I did was provide a (rational) basis for an age-old explanatory model viz. one God, to the Saracens, Allah. The argument gains strength under Idealism im which god is the all-seeing eye and things are the way they are for a very simple reason - God thinks them!

:ok: It's kinda sad that beauty, all things fun and enjoyable have such a bad reputation: they're, by and large, seen as the glowing escae at the end of the illicia of anglerfish (femme fatale).

Why, in your opinion, is the real on every occasion, portrayed as being worse than the illusion. Too good to be true is the taekeaway here, oui? You will recall that drop-dead gorgeous platinum blonde with an hour-glass figure dressed in electrifying red in the training program developed by Mouse in The Matrix?

Damned! And I always thought why I have such a small penis! I'm a woman! — Haglund

:smile:

Indeed, the kill switch. I completely forgot about that! Always comes in handy when things go sideways! :up:

In other words, "belief" seems a developmental and atavistic vestige of childhood magical thinking in adults — 180 Proof

I feel sometimes that humans are Peter Pans (re neoteny as seen in salamanders). We never achieve maturity. I suppose we did get our wish, even Tithonus, for eternal youth. I wonder what an adult h. sapiens actually looks like: we should be hairier I suppose, but beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

I recall reading an article about a paleontologist who said something to the effect that other paleontologists had made the quite silly mistake of misidentifying the fossils of juvenile dinosaurs as a different species altogther. So, in a way, velociraptors could actually be young T. Rexes. :chin:

This, I guess, isn't related to anything you said; nevertheless, it's in need of some pondering. Why do men have nipples? AND Why do women have clitorises (partly-formed penises they are as per biologists)?

These organs (fully/incompletely developed) are, I believe, strong indications of ambiguity in sex/gender at a very fundamental level, oui? People getting mixed up about their gender shouldn't come as a surprise given the above. I'd say it'd be more astonishing if homosexuals and transexuals didn't exist.

Have you looked into

1. The Principle of Plenitude

2. Modal Realism

Both, more or less, claim that possibile worlds, all of 'em, are actual. If it could be shown that possible $\to$ actual, our job is done, si?