People can't just declare themselves something and insist that the world changes its definitions to suit them. If you do not believe God 'exists' in t...
Theism - "Belief in the existence of a god or gods, specifically of a creator who intervenes in the universe." (OED). Theists must either have no defi...
Here's the anthropologist David Eller on tribal religions; "Every religion does, of course, contain ideas of and about nonhuman and superhuman agencie...
That's what I meant, without UBI we can get these jobs done for a pittance, with UBI we're going to have to pay people more and improve their job sati...
You're consistently repeating the same nonsense over and again; 1. Atheists are not allowed to draw any conclusions about theists because they have no...
Oh, well in that case I apologise for misrepresenting your argument. I thought you might have some logical point to make that had not been properly un...
Yes, that's the point. The dilemma you're outlining arises because there is no such thing as free will by the definition you are using. No-one could e...
Show me. Either quote me the passage from my posts that offered an explanation for their actions or stop making convenient straw men because you've no...
What I took issue with in your post is the use of 'most religious people'. I agree that there are some religious people who rationalise their belief i...
At the risk of sticking my neck out into dangerously un-PC territory, I think maybe what WfPOMO might be saying is that there is arguably a male role ...
I don't think any determinist claims to have 'solved' the puzzle of the ultimate cause, but that doesn't make determinism wrong. No metaphysics solve ...
One's utterances can reduce to their causes without being vacuous. Even under causal reference, if we presume that the 'baptism' and affirmations of m...
Yes, I see how you arrived at your statements with regards to reference, given a causal reference theory, what I'm saying is that you do not have to a...
Not sure how you've derived this, so you might need to expand. There are many critics of the causal theory of reference who are determinists, John Sea...
Yes, but they'd still have to have some reason to do so wouldn't they? Maybe they think it would be beneficial to choose the 'worst' option just to pr...
You seem to have misunderstood the scientific process. Theory - Try to disprove theory - If unsuccessful, maintain theory. The evidence you cite is no...
I think you might make that statement about the fact that religious beliefs exist, but not about the actual religious beliefs themselves. 'Religious b...
I'm hugely in favour of UBI, but I don't think it's without its serious problems, for example, how are we going to get all the less desirable jobs don...
I think discussion of the uncertainty about what represents the 'best' choice is missing the point of the OP. The point was not to say that free-will ...
As I have outline repeatedly, philosophy is about finding coherent justifications for beliefs, if you think you can actually 'prove' a metaphysical po...
You do realise how utterly pointless it is on a philosophy forum to just say, "you don't get it, it's all written down here" and then point to your pr...
I'm not claiming it is information, as opposed to physics, in the same way as my example with the sentence would not be considered either information ...
You seem to be confusing determinism with omniscience. No-one said anything about a human being ever actually knowing what is going to happen next, on...
The French for "how many?" is 'combien', one word. The French for "why?" is 'pourquoi', originally two words. "What?" doesn't even have a direct trans...
There is not information in that sentence to tell me what the next word you're going to write is, the information to tell me that is in your brain and...
I imagine in much the same way as the sentence "the next word I'm going to write is the word 'tells'", tells you exactly what state my post will be in...
I didn't speculate on their motives, only reported their actions. Again with this? Show me where I claimed that theist beliefs are all undefined. I cl...
Thank you for re-asserting my intention. I sometimes wonder if I'm typing in a different language from the extent to which my comments get misinterpre...
As JSG says, violence is justified in hindsight, which is why I'm no utilitarian. To my mind one has to ask oneself whether the act is an example of a...
It strikes me as odd how readily some issues seem to get divided into being dealt with by one of two approaches. We either take a deeply metaphysical ...
Oh well, if I'd known that the Oxford University journal was silly I wouldn't have been citing it all these years How about this one, specifically sta...
OK, he's basically written exactly what you've just suggested (if I understand you correctly). He outlines the way in which the earth can be considere...
You're missing the point of what I'm saying entirely. The simple fact is that some equally intelligent people have come to an alternative conclusion, ...
No one has proven anything, it is a perfectly legitimately contested theorem http://m.oxfordscholarship.com/mobile/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/97801995774...
We hear a lot of this kind of nonsense from conservatives. If someone were to invent a completely useless gadget, whose properties were such that it c...
I'm not making any claims, I'm trying to understand yours. Determinism is a belief of mine. As with any reasonable belief (in my opinion) I test that ...
I understand the position you're arguing from, and the aim of such a position, what I'm lacking is the actual argument. How is the brain's model of th...
When we use the terms 'selfish' and 'selfless' it seems that there is an inherent meaning to both terms that we rarely have to come to terms with. Con...
See this is why Truth and Reconciliation won't work with regards to the Catholic Church's history of abuse. With slavery, apartheid, even sectarian vi...
No, many other animals have language and culture, chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants and rhesus monkeys have all been shown to have both language and cu...
I think the problem is best resolved with the dispositionalist approach to belief of people like Ruth Marcus. By this approach, people do not believe ...
I agree entirely but it raises an interesting question of whether any one could actually believe in a creator God at all. Sure, they could 'say' the w...
I agree with your exposition, the logic is infallible, for your definition of God, but I don't agree that such a definition is ever the one we're usin...
You've pretty much nailed what I am trying to say (although I personally have jumped the other side of the fence on the use of the word omnipotent in ...
This is begging the question. That's what we're trying to find our, if it makes any conceivable sense that God is both omnipotent and unconstrained by...
As I said, if you are testing an hypothesis that we have free will, the experiments will be meaningless as their results can be explained some other w...
But then I'm omnipotent right now. There's nothing I can't do right now until some of the Atoms in the universe organise themselves in such a way as t...
This is brilliant, I've spent the morning reading this instead of preparing for work, it's like a real life version of 'Lord of the Flies'. Start an a...
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