@L'éléphant

Can the commandment Thou shalt not kill be rephrased, salva veritate, as Thou shalt save.

God's plan? How does not killing fit into it while saving not?

Atheist public figures like Dan Barker, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett have gone on record that their lot is a bit impoverished in the art sector, the theists enjoying a rich assortment of religious art like paintings, songs, and music. All 3 have also confessed to feeling inspired by religious art, especially the music.

It's not the religious content of music in this case that's having an effect on people - for Barker, Dawkins, and Dennett, the lyrics are semantically empty, meaningless as it were. The power of music to transcend boundaries like that between theists and atheists is art with a foot in both camps, oui?

Scientists too experience music in similar, sublime ways, and it's been repeated often enough that scientific equations when beheld or pondered upon and grasped produce mental states very like ones we see when listening to a favorite song or score.

Western[Reductive] philosophy: Dominate nature (become king, there's no king)
— Agent Smith
Duality (identity (monad)). Transcendence. Necessity.

Eastern[Holistic] philosophy: Submit to nature (become subjects, we already have a queen, mother nature)
~Duality (~identity (relation)). Immanence. Contingency — 180 Proof

:up:

one-size-fits-all solution to moral issues — Alkis Piskas

Not easy!

Here's a riddle.

I hit P hard with a wooden plank and, in an unrelated event, save Q from certain death. I get charged for assault and am given a citation for bravery.

Now, imagine I hit R hard with a wooden plank on his back to disconnect R from a live wire which is electrocuting him, saving R in the process. There are no assault charges filed against me, but I do get my citation.

Eliminating the bad can be considered good but is it? — EugeneW

If nobody falls ill, doctors would be unemployed! :lol:

The Bible supports slavery and supports slavery as property ownership — Gregory

We can pin that on Jesus being semiconscious, ethically speaking. I think there's some truth to the resurrection story: X was zombieish compared to fully enlightened beings like the Buddha (Buddhism) and Mahavira (Jainism); his knowledge of ethics was, unfortunately, incomplete or partial. Between something is better than nothing and a little knowledge is dangerous, I'm :confused:

I'm not interested in conversing with you — Shwah

At this rate Shwah, you'll have no one to converse with in (say) 2/3 moons! :smile:

Another question - Where would I draw the line if the one person in question was my daughter.
— T Clark

You would let a million die to dont let her die, wontya? — EugeneW

That's the reason why Buddhist monks have to literally turn their backs on friends and family, the preferred mindset for a bodhisattva can be reduced to this equation: friend = foe! Good luck with that!

Mulgere hircum! Non sono mica Mandrake!

Human Agency. — 180 Proof

Human agency? Capabilities + Constraints, how exactly does the two link up art, science, and God to produce a pleasing/satisfying, or not, picture (of reality)?

It's not new, you just missed out on it. — Noble Dust

Can you provide a link to a reliable resource?

Forget it, our conversation, as it seems to me, does nothing to advance the OP.

That said, I was hoping to inject mysticism and irrationalism into the discussion if only to broaden the inquiry.

Some questions remain unanswered though.

1. It's simple and I don't understand it while others do. :sad:

2. Comprehension can be delinked from logic. Intriguing to say the least.

3. Noble Dust, you've been for the most part evading my questions. Whatever floats your boat, señor/señorita.

Have a good day. Let's not hijack this thread.

Well...

What's this new system (of comprehension) you have?

Why misquote me? — 180 Proof

It wasn't me, it couldn't have been me! I was dead! I was on the moon! :lol:

Explain to me why logic is the nexus through which comprehension moves — Noble Dust

First off, comprehension and logic go hand in hand; eveey schoolboy knows that. To say "I understand" is to claim I can see how the propositions in question are logically connected. Why would I need to explain this, I frankly am puzzled by this demand!

Second, there could be alternatives to logic, as you claimed in your previous posts. You claim that you understand it. Your task, insofar as the two of us are concerned, is to show me this other way of apprehension.

Let's make progress!

"I winder"... — EugeneW

:confused:

It could be they used their other side, not sure. They didn't tell me about the mechanism of creation, my love... — EugeneW

:smile:

No — Noble Dust

Then explain this apparently novel way of comprehension to me. It, as per you, has nothing to do with logic. What could it be, I wonder?

I don't know what "the essence of comprehension" is, but it's not logic — Noble Dust

You mean to say you don't understand how you understand?

:chin:

No — Noble Dust

What is then?

too logically — Noble Dust

Too logically? Explain that to me, please. How can one be too logical?

No; I understand it but you don't. You think too logically, so you can't understand it. — Noble Dust

So, you're being illogical, but then how can one understand something, even if that thing is simple? Logic is the essence of comprehension, oui?

emanation — EugeneW

Jizz! :lol:

It's so simple that you can't understand it. That's all I have, sorry. — Noble Dust

Are you saying that you too can't understand it because "it's so simple"? :chin:

So our powers of comprehension hit a wall as it gets both simpler and more complex. Why do you think that is? Any ideas?

Why is anything simple? "Define simple". :roll: Anyway, it's a simple description of concepts that people make ridiculously complicated, hair-brained arguments for. I don't particularily care about how simple or not simple it is. — Noble Dust

Well, you claimed that "it's way simpler...". I wanna know how and why, it's that. I'd like to know what complexity and simplicity are, you seem to have a good handle on these matters. :chin:

Let's make progress! Shall we?

Why is that simple? :chin:

it's way simpler than we think — Noble Dust

I hope so. Can you show me how with a good example, please?

Transcendentalia

1. Verum (truth): Science (probably not the whole truth, but definitely a good start)

2. Pulchrum (beauty): Arts

3. Bonum (good): God(liness)

Hindu mantra: Satyam (Truth/scientia) Shivam (Godliness) Sundaram (Beauty/ars).

Not true at all. The assumption here is that whatever it is that science is attempting to understand, art inherently doesn't understand and never will. So the statement is misguided by nature. — Noble Dust

I never said that. Figuring out assumptions is not a walk in the park, something I learned the hard way.

Granted that I'm wrong, what's your take on the issue?

What, in your view, is the nexus between science, art, and god?

The main premise of the Doomsday argument: There's an upper limit to how many humans can live. If N is that number and the current population is n, we still have N - n number of people to live. Using actual numbers for n, N and population growth rate (exponential), we find that N will be attained in 9120 years. Ergo, an apocalypse is due :scream: , in and around the year 11142 AD.

What is your aim in philosophy? – To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle. — 180 Proof

What is philosophy?

To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle...into another fly bottle/directly into the kill zone of a fly-swatter.

:grin:

Western philosophy: Dominate nature (become king, there's no king)
Eastern philosophy: Submit to nature (become subjects, we already have a queen, mother nature)

The answer, of course, is that you cannot have one without the other; an assumption is an opinion, yet an opinion can only stand on that which it assumes. This is not a vicious circularity so much as a holism — Banno

Expand and elaborare...please. :smile:

The potential is virtual. The rooster is real. — EugeneW

:up:

I did, and as so often, you missed it. I'll not do it a third time. — Banno

No, you didn't. Where is it then? Links would help.

lottery — unenlightened

multi universe — unenlightened

:up:

If there are 1,000,000,000 lottery tickets and you buy one, the odds of you winning are $\frac{1}{1000000000}$.

If 1,000,000,000 people buy one ticket each, it's a certainty that there'll be an individual who'll hit the jackpot.

- All of metaphysics is more or less inconsequential because irrespective of the constitution of the universe, as human beings we still need to address the question of how to interact with it — SatmBopd

Whether the universe is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same. — Buddha (the parable of the poisoned arrow)

- All of morality and ethics is subordinate to Neitzsche, because understanding (and shaping) the underlying values which inform morality and ethics is better than asking disconnected questions about people tied to train tracks or trying to come up with/ understand an arbitrary moral strategy like Kant’s Categorical Imperative or J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism. — SatmBopd

Neitzsche comes off as distincly anti-ethics (ethics as a stumbling block for humanity and ergo, bad for us), in no small part due to Darwin (re evolution, survival of the fittest), but Neitzsche's forgotten something important - humans evolved from the tiny shrews that lived among colossal reptiles in the age of dinosaurs) - the weak are basically the strong whose time hasn't come (yet). More to the point, survival of the fittest survival of the luckiest defines evolution, and Lady luck isn't known for her consistency. So much for übermensch!

That's all from me (for now).

I like the OP, an unexpected question as far as I'm concerned and thus that much more interesting.

The way I see it, true that art was more advanced than science back a millennia or so. If the divine were to develop affiliations then it probably was with art than science, the former more advanced (poetry, sculpture, paintings, decorations on pottery, walls, pillars, so and so forth), the latter a fledgeling, nascent and simple, too simple to get anything done let alone be an inspiration for something as sublime as god(s).

In good time however, the duo (art and science) began to forge a partnership, an unequal one, in which science was doing all the heavy lifting and art simply tagging along for the ride. The arts have gained more from science than science from art (metallurgical knowledge could be applied to sculptures, the mathematics of perspective meant paintings could be produced with the illusion of depth, and so on). Are the tables going to turn? Have you seen the illustrations in many books on science? There usually is an apposite work of art, in full technicolor, in each chapter.

Art has evolved from representations of people, objects, and nature where the idea was to create a facsimile to something I call "essentialism", a point of view that captures the essence of things and even if this is subjective, it matters not for the spirit is, all said and done, scientific, in the mathematical sense.

Draw your own conclusions...

Follow my link in the previous post (and further links therein). — 180 Proof

:ok:

Maybe — 180 Proof

Oh!

Can you explicate the matter further for my benefit, if it's not too much to ask that is?

Almost, sort of ... — 180 Proof

Good enough (for government work), would you say?

Do we take a happiness poll seriously? That aside, looks like this one tells us happiness comes from a solid welfare safety net and political stability. It doesn't seem to be about reflecting on evil or facts in the world. It seems to say that happiness is local and politically determined — Tom Storm

How much do polls reflect the actual state of affairs? I guess there are many stages in a poll where mistakes can occur and the common ones have already been discovered and addressed. It's the errors that we're not aware of that can gum up the works. Here we're treading on the frontiers of statistics and study/survey design. I haven't the foggiest as to how we should go about it. For now, let's just accept that, like in all things, there are limitations to polls and we will draw our conclusions cautiously, with great care.

I've read that Scandinavian countries (the happiest nations according to the polls) have a social welfare scheme that's the best in the world and add to that the political stability these European nations enjoy and we have a recipe for happiness. I'm not sure what works for Scandinavians will work for every other people. Will this model also function as effectively in say Africa or Asia? Your guess is as good as mine.

You are missing the importance of interpretation of events in the development of happiness or melancholy. As the cognitive behavioral thinkers suggest it is not experiences themselves which lead to emotional states but the thoughts which a person has about the experiences.

This can be habitual and cumulative, resulting in a particular state of mind and there is the possibility of reframing events in order to change emotions, but it may not be easy to achieve, especially the biological manifestation of unhappiness and sadness into clinical depression. It is this complexity which leads to a need for a combination of medication and other therapeutic options. — Jack Cummins

Indeed Jack Cummins, happiness does have a subjective component and we may be able to make ourselves happier just by recalibrating our attitude but I have a feeling this can't be done indefintely or in all situations. For example it doesn't look like we can maintain a cheerful mood in a war zone surrounded by death and destruction.

Also what of the correlation between objectively measurable parameters such as nutrition, health, political stability and overall well-being of people as found in the happiest countries?

predicates attributed — 180 Proof

:up: Magnifique!

Predicates, essentially properties, entail certain, specific observables. For example if John is good (predicate) then he should be a law-abiding citizen with no police record (observable). If we find that's not the case, say he's been arrested more than once for drug possession, we can safely say John isn't good.

This same technique is employed by Epicurus in his now-famous Epicurean riddle: If god is all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful, evil should not exist. Yet evil does exist. Hence god is not all-good or all-knowing or all-powerful i.e. there is no god (atheism).


Did I capture the essence of your position on theism/atheism?