tom

I seem to recall Nietzsche also observed that Christianity bears the seeds of its own destruction, in that it recognises two roads to the truth: faith...

Well, a physicist would certainly seek to explain the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and in doing so may achieve a reduction or a unification. Quantum mec...

Reductionism has been an extremely successful methodology, but even a reductionist must be puzzled that there are so many branches of science.

Maybe you would be willing to accept that that particular branch of mathematics studies, essentially, the Turing Machine, which is a purely abstract e...

Whooooooaaaaaa! Strictly speaking the the instances of replicators that occur in the Earth's biosphere are genes - portions of DNA that have specific ...

You think "replicators", "variation", and "selection" are not abstract? Computers are real things, and the theory of computation has been a branch of ...

But can you construct a perpetual motion machine of the second kind? Can you improve on the Carnot Cycle?

Perhaps you should try the reduction? Take a physical theory and demonstrate that replicators, variation, and selection can be reduced to it. If you m...

You will find nothing equivalent to the Sermon on the Mount in the Quran.

In that case, reductionism is simply a mistake and obviously so. Some examples: NeoDarwinism - the fundamental objects of study are replicators subjec...

Hence the violence. Islam's power rests in the use and religious justification of killing.

I think there was an opportunity lost in 1960s and 70s. Google "Afghan/Iranian women 1960s" etc and you will find photographs of beautiful, liberated,...

You've got to be joking! There was once an Islamic empire that stretched from the borders of China and India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, No...

This is C21. If reform of Islam was possible, it would have happened by now. Instead Islam as a whole is becoming increasingly fundamentalist, and yes...

And you can rape a child in many Muslim countries. There is no minimum age of "marriage" in Saudi and Yemen for example. The perfect moral example mar...

What do you think is worse, having sex with a goat or raping a child?

According to UNICEF 100,000,000 of these girls and women are from Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia. FGM is also banned in UK. There are 1000's of cases o...

No such prohibition is to be found in the Quran or the Sahih. The Quran does contain 109 verses that call Muslims to war with the kufar though.

Actually there is, it's called the Ahmadiyyah Community, though membership of it risks you being murdered in Pakistan and UK.

Anywhere near Rotherham?

This is just tragic. The rule of hadith dictate that if it is not mentioned specifically or if the pronouns do not point to a certain gender, then the...

FGM is mandated in the Hadith. It's one of the fitra, and is referred to in many places across several books, most notable Sahi Bukhari and Sahih Musl...

Sure, nothing is to do with Islam, even if it is mandated in the Hadith.

Speaking as an atheist, no one seems to care, though there are 13 countries in which I would be murdered by the state for declaring atheism.

According to UNICEF 200,000,000 girls and women alive today have suffered FGM. According to UNICEF 100,000,000 of these girls and women are from Egypt...

The conceit! The narcissism! Next time you take a quiet stroll round the back streets of Pakistan or Iran, while deluding yourself that because no one...

Islam divides the world in two: dar-al-harb (House of War), and dar-al-Islam. It is the duty of all Muslims to wage war against the infidel. There are...

In UK Muslims comprise ~5% of the population, but 20% of inmates in high security prisons. And let's not forget, there is only one way to guarantee pa...

My goodness, something actually interesting! (and challenging!) "Modal collapse" is intriguing.

Because they will be objectively advanced as a civilization. Human suffering is objective and real. They will be our descendants. Morality is objectiv...

It's not an attitude, it is a feature of reality.

Moral relativism cannot apply to an advanced civilization. What are the scientific achievements of those cannibals by the way? Any top universities in...

Animals don't have qualia, simulate them as much as you like.

So you think a civilization advanced enough to perform a vast number of computer simulations containing us, our universe, and our qualia, will perform...

There can't be scientific progress in the absence of certain values. In order to survive and become advanced, a civilization would require an advanced...

An advanced civilization would not simulate this reality because it would be utterly immoral to do so.

Probability calculus cannot be applied to explanations: Take for example the explanation of why the sun shines - that the pressure in the interior of ...

Unless the coin, or some aspect of its flipping, is biased.

It is however mildly ironic that the atomic concept of an atom isn't atomic any more.

I'm still intrigued whether there is a set of atomic concepts or not.

That used to be my nick-name at school, to differentiate me from the tom who didn't like tuna salad.

A question: Is there a set of all atomic concepts?

No. Do you think "quantum mechanics" and "general relativity" compose to "quantum mechanics general relativity"?

Perhaps the concept "dog" is actually made up of all the atomic conceptions of a dog. We could list a few of these atomic conceptions: 1. The black do...

You haven't shown this. You haven't even shown that concepts can be composed or that they can't be composed under different conceptions of "concept".

Jesus didn't walk on water or rise from the dead.

There is no such thing as a good reason. Belief is counterproductive. I have outlined arguments that panpsychism is wrong. These arguments highlight a...

Panpsychism is refuted by the knowledge argument.

It was never a secret. The point is that now other states and even private individuals have the ability to crash cars, eavesdrop on the world, and mas...

Actually, you are wrong. It's about: You can buy the entire CIA cyber-warfare arsenal, that the USA developed at the cost of $100Billion if you have t...