Jake

Bravo, applause from here.

This claim can be measured. Catholic Charities is the second leading provider of services to the needy in the United States, topped only by the federa...

I have no objection to this decision, but still feel that a logical case for Nazism can be made. As I see it, the value in such a discussion could be ...

Surely this is a big factor. An essential purpose of religion? Ok, agreed. But the primary purpose of religion is ultimately personal. Religions don't...

To address the illusion of division which is a fundamental reality of the human condition. By finding those aspects of religion which one can personal...

Dear Professor Dimwit, Are there thousands of hydrogen bombs on hair trigger alert poised to erase at least Western civilization at the push of a butt...

This is much of what I'm attempting to address in this thread. There is no reason for you to be intimidated. Well, ok, so it depends... HISTORY: If yo...

Ok, now you're getting deep in to dishing out the BS.

That seems good advice for you to follow.

You aren't actually interested in the topic you wish to discuss, that's the problem. To disprove this, show us the threads you've started on nuclear w...

Ok, thank you for engaging, but you're clearly not qualified to participate in this conversation, at least not to a level that can hold my interest. S...

There is no meaningful difference between 2,000 nukes landing on a country and 20,000 nukes landing on a country. Even a handful of nukes on key trans...

Again, your point is... Our game of nuclear Russian roulette has worked out so far, so why worry? - You don't understand that so long as we have nukes...

It's going nowhere because my honorable fellow members along with the intellectual elites and most of the rest of society all insist that it not go an...

Yes, and by doing so successfully sweep all those threats under the rug where they can remain intellectual abstractions which won't impact us emotiona...

Yes, if one were incapable of ranking threats in order of importance, by scale and potential immediate impact, then one could get lost in an endless o...

It's an illusion in the sense that we tend to confuse it with the whole. For example, when we look at the world with our eyes we typically think of th...

I think you're on the right track in shifting the focus to the nature of thought. I'm not fond of the words "stupidity" and "triviality" as they seem ...

Perhaps it would be better to say that we see only a tiny fragment of reality, and so the image we have of reality does not accurately represent reali...

So, really, to be clear, what I'm really talking about is that we philosophers are morons with a rich fantasy life. As example, my fantasy is that typ...

Your point is irrelevant to the subject I'm discussing, the collapse of civilization. Your point is however indeed relevant to my claim that philosoph...

I refuse to think about any problem due to the existence of other problems.

Thanks to all for the ongoing commentary, and responses to my posts. It seems how we answer this would have a lot to do with how we measure intelligen...

I didn't make this point. Here you (along with almost everyone else) are counting on two fantasies. 1) People are rational. 2) There won't be any mist...

To be hopefully more helpful.... If you don't yet know about the following site it may prove useful to you. It's a group blog of philosophy academics ...

Hi Ole, Well, if you couldn't make a case as to why you should pursue a degree in philosophy that would remove the need for question, achieving releva...

I'm unsure of the continuing purpose of the thread honestly. If someone proposes spending a million dollars to study the brain-in-vat possibility and ...

Why? Before you and everyone else dives in to the details of various arguments etc, it might be wise to first make the case for why you are seeking a ...

Hair trigger. It's not about you. It's about the billions of people who created what we enjoy. It's about the billions of people alive today who would...

You're proposing that a God, should one exist, would be bound by the rules of human reason. Human reason is the poorly implemented ability of a single...

Ok, what is it that limits God's ability? In any case the point stands. Trying to analyze some intelligence so large that it can create galaxies with ...

You're right, because philosophers (along with most of the rest of us) aren't rational enough to focus on a hair trigger gun aimed at their heads. Mea...

Nothing would be incompatible, illogical or impossible etc. with a being of infinite ability.

It may help to consider that hell can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Bible writers were attempting to teach profound topics to masses of largely...

Yes, and what keeps it going is that love (ie. morality) works on both the personal and social level. Well, "the" cause of morality may simply be that...

I agree with this, but... There is something to be said for the influence of marketing. The Catholic Church dominated western culture for 1,000 years ...

To correct the record, I've never complained, which is why I'm sick and tired of all these other people who are complaining day after day after day.

Thank you!

Hitchens was asserting, without credible evidence, that something as small as the rules of human reason would be binding upon something the infinite s...

Others above have commented that those in depression suffer from low motivation, and thus meet any constructive plan with a lack of enthusiasm. Can dr...

It seems a successful life requires some balance in how we are intelligent. As example, our culture is brilliant at technology, but idiots when it com...

Bitter Crank hits the nail on the head, as he so often does.

analyze = thought disidentification = thought depression = thought You're trying to cure alcoholism with a bottle of scotch, so to speak.

1) Bleakness and apathy = thought. 2) Turn down volume of thought. 3) The intensity of bleakness and apathy are reduced.

Thank you. You said it better than I did. Yes, if plumbers and cocktail waitresses aren't focused on nuclear weapons, that's not too interesting. But ...

Let's observe how S has completely ignored all the real world evidence presented above. This is just what I'm talking about. I'm assuming that S is an...

Blah, blah, blah, blah etc etc etc. If I was holding a gun to your head you would have no problem at all seeing that as the highest priority issue. Bu...

Point of the nuclear tirade being... We can't correlate philosophy with global intelligence. Philosophers are instead, like pretty much everybody else...

WTF!!! You're calling me a joke??? :smile:

To educate yourself, watch the excellent documentary Countdown To Zero. Available on YouTube for $3. (May still be on Netflix, not sure.) https://www....