You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Paulm12

Comments

For sure, and I apologize for not being clear if I implied that evolution or evolutionary history was somehow not reflective of reality. What I meant ...
May 22, 2022 at 21:00
Thank you, I really appreciate your insight. I agree with what you’re saying about the militant neo-darwinians like Harris, Dawkins, etc. To me, their...
May 22, 2022 at 09:10
Yeah thats what I think as well. Whether it’s natural interest or some combination of that and social conditioning it’s unsure. But also like you said...
May 19, 2022 at 19:31
No I’m saying I feel like I’ve been indoctrinated into this idea of the separation of church and state being a “good” thing because I live in the US. ...
May 18, 2022 at 21:34
I'm curious what the difference between a Theocracy is and a country that has a "national church" such as Finland or Denmark. Because some of the happ...
May 18, 2022 at 02:21
This is actually why I'm for teaching about religion or using religious texts in public schools. It is important for people to understand what others ...
May 18, 2022 at 02:04
That's why I said "our," as in each person's interpretation of what is right and wrong. The interesting thing about that that situation is it could go...
May 18, 2022 at 01:43
The interesting thing is, the way we currently have it, some religious and non-religious people feel slighted. Some religious people are afraid that r...
May 18, 2022 at 01:23
Excellent, well said. I think there can be a good balance between allowing the discussion of religious ideas (even explicitly) without having a theocr...
May 18, 2022 at 00:16
Sorry I was probably unclear. I think any moral system that claims life has any cosmic value is making a claim about what is worthy of reverence, sacr...
May 17, 2022 at 23:51
I totally agree. But people wanting their morality to be objective (or claiming it is objective) does not necessarily make it true. To me, this is a h...
May 17, 2022 at 23:19
I think you are misrepresenting the design argument. The design argument simply states that the universe seems to be governed by simple consistent law...
May 17, 2022 at 22:52
Proof of God is very interesting thing. I don't think we will ever find it except in the case of something like defining "God" like the Kalam Cosmolog...
May 17, 2022 at 22:34
To me, this would imply morality is subjective. If we take objective to mean it does not depend on the mind for existence, then if it depends on who y...
May 17, 2022 at 22:29
Great topic. One particular challenge when it comes to morality is establishing a basis for which to judge moral codes and statements. For instance, w...
May 15, 2022 at 15:41
Very good point, I think logic would have been a better way to say it. For instance, I was taking the 2nd definition of reason (not the noun one) that...
May 15, 2022 at 15:15
I don't think so. The definitions of reason in the google dictionary are Note that this has nothing to do with truth necessarily. For instance, mathem...
May 14, 2022 at 01:04
In this case, the idea of “reason” I had in mind were things like modus ponens, avoiding what are defined as local fallacies, drawing conclusions from...
May 13, 2022 at 20:05
Very interesting point; I never thought about this before. I actually think it does, but to a different extent. You say but I’d disagree. If a woman i...
May 13, 2022 at 07:51
that’s actually an interesting concept, I’ve been reading a few articles on it now that you brought it up. Often when we use “reason” to find an answe...
May 13, 2022 at 06:43
That’s a good point. Imagine if people could kill their children after they were born, and then claim it was their right to choose. Maybe there are op...
May 13, 2022 at 06:07
I will say as with any set of academic fields, they tend to be delineated based on the research that people who self-identify in the field (or who are...
May 12, 2022 at 19:07
I read in an economics textbook that the average predicted value of a human life in the US is around $50,000, despite the fact that we like to think o...
May 12, 2022 at 08:03
This is something that bothers me about the stance of (some) conservatives. It doesn’t make sense to me to campaign for anti-abortion/pro-life and als...
May 04, 2022 at 22:28
This is why I am sympathetic to the conviction of pro life. These people literally believe the government allowing access to abortion is them legally ...
May 04, 2022 at 19:59
I actually see this as a good thing. From what I understand, the legality of Roe v Wade was always a bit sketchy. Even RBG said “the court ventured to...
May 03, 2022 at 22:52
Hmmm maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean when you say For instance, if we said that all parts of the house were made of wood, or that all parts o...
May 03, 2022 at 18:53
Bringing this back to the OPs original point, in my city there’s a secular humanist “church” that I’ve been meaning to go to and check out. They meet ...
May 03, 2022 at 16:08
One potential challenge to your objection is that you differentiate However, the "universe" is defined as Meaning if you accept that matter and energy...
May 01, 2022 at 23:06
Agreed. I think what convinced me of this was a version of Plantinga’s free will defense, which follows in the lines of Augustine and Aquinas. In fact...
April 30, 2022 at 20:41
Epicurus's quote does nothing to suggest an omnipotent, omni benevolent god (or a God as in the Abrahamic religions) couldn't logically exist. Especia...
April 30, 2022 at 05:21
I actually think the argument that mathematics is somehow rooted in "white supremacist culture" (as the article claims) falls apart when you realize t...
April 29, 2022 at 23:54
LOL, now that’s a good point It’s interesting, because in some ways I think the progressive left would actually consider (Neo)-Nazis to be an oppresse...
April 29, 2022 at 18:25
It’s an interesting question. Here are some ways I’ve thought about it. When the question was traditionally asked, I think it was implied that the que...
April 29, 2022 at 18:12
Did the article always make such broad claims without citing sources? I like the beginning but I quickly got annoyed with statements like with a citat...
April 28, 2022 at 22:41
To go back to your original point, which is a good point, say I am a white male. Then I can say that I have the epistemological experience of a white ...
April 28, 2022 at 22:07
I think your idea of objective knowledge is too strict. We could also say philosophers have been arguing about the existence of the external world, ot...
April 28, 2022 at 21:44
Thanks for your insight. What bothers me is that metaphysical naturalism seems to imply that all (not just some or many) of our thoughts and actions a...
April 26, 2022 at 18:45
In: Atheism  — view comment
Yeah, and I didn’t mean to imply that there aren’t Christian biblical literalists out there (as there certainly are). It is more that the version of C...
April 26, 2022 at 09:11
In: Atheism  — view comment
I thought I'd step in and say I don't think I know any Christian or Jewish believers who literally think the Bible fell out of the sky, literally tran...
April 26, 2022 at 02:43
Would prayer and meditation necessarily have different origins? Studies suggest both reduce stress, increase forgiveness, increase self-control, etc. ...
April 26, 2022 at 01:13
Yep, this is a documented disorder and it's not just for legs (although legs may be the most common). It's called body integrity identity disorder (BI...
April 26, 2022 at 00:52
I think you are missing the point. The value of Holy Books or religion isn't only tied to the reliability of their supernatural claims. Like I said, I...
April 21, 2022 at 03:54
I couldn't disagree more. Most religions have some canonical figure or text(s) that forms the basis of their religion. Take Christianity-I'd say with ...
April 21, 2022 at 02:15
Yes, I was actually going off of some of the ideas in these threads. In particular you say Which I do very much agree with. Anything to associate it w...
April 21, 2022 at 01:40
Exactly. Under the assumption that God exists he can bend/break the laws of physics at will. One analogy that comes to mind is a programmer for a simu...
April 21, 2022 at 01:01
In: Atheism  — view comment
In this case, would you also hold that religious fundamentalists who believe that those they are preaching to could spend eternity in hell are also ac...
April 21, 2022 at 00:41
To me, there is a very clear distinction between (as you say) God existing and someone having free will to "piss in your milk and steal your honey." I...
April 20, 2022 at 22:32
In: Atheism  — view comment
This is a good point, and there seems (to me) to be tension around whether the definition of athiesm is a denial of the existence of gods or an assert...
April 20, 2022 at 21:41
If you believe the universe was created by God, then I think it is pretty easy to believe It/He/They are fair. In particular, the same causal, natural...
April 20, 2022 at 08:12