Sure - the gods have not given everyone winning cards. Why should they? The challenge is how to play your cards well, not how to win :) Haha it's a jo...
Well, as I have proven to you that philosophers have actually answered definitely your skeptical problems, I am now skeptical of your skepticism on ot...
Excellent topic! One of the best I've seen lately on TPF in fact! And it's an important problem because everyone would like to do great things, and ye...
There is no question of purpose here. There is a question of what is its final cause - what is it directed towards. The question isn't what SHOULD it ...
I should add that nothing in physics could ever falsify a metaphysical principle. Metaphysics is simply what has to be the case for ANY kind of physic...
It cannot yet be reduced, but according to the scientific worldview it is in principle reducible. Because physics studies the building blocks of the w...
Yes most definitely. There's also conceptual problems regarding how something that is uncaused can even be conceived to begin with. When most people t...
Sure, in order to understand that evolution happens, one doesn't have to understand the genetic mechanism underlying it. So the what and the why can b...
Look at this John. See - the view I'm talking about as the scientific view. Causation as applied to events, not things. A pattern of events governed b...
I did. You said: So I addressed it. It's not efficient causation in the manner the Aristotelian conceives it. So there is no "or in Aristotelian terms...
This doesn't follow because engineering isn't in the business of enhancing the material well-being of people. If it was, then why doesn't it also enga...
:-} No, you have just said that the natural sciences are mostly modelled in terms of mechanistic (Aristotelian efficient causation) - which is false i...
First I never said that, you said it, and secondly, I use physics in a philosophical sense - it includes biology, chemistry, etc, hence my example of ...
Religion has to do with metaphysics and ethics primarily. Religion should understand it has no place in the business of physics. And physics should un...
>:O Yes of course it works. Science was created to dominate and control the natural world - so man would become its master. I would be very surprised ...
Natural sciences, the way they have developed, unfortunately, do not have an Aristotelian understanding of efficient causality. Aristotle understood e...
Yes what's the "mechanistic causal process" needed for? Science has no addiction to mechanistic causal processes at all. Do you live in Descartes' tim...
There's nothing new in this though. When all else fails, brute force will make a way. Always been like this, always will be like this. And I respect t...
The scientific method, in order to be successful, necessarily abstracts away from reality everything that cannot be tackled by its mathematical and qu...
I highly doubt that any social system organised around "the corporation" will ever be good. I am a follower of distributism - lots of small, independe...
Where am I saying that? One always has faith - that's my point. And the faith is either in God or Mammon. Now the faith doesn't have to be conscious. ...
No problem, you're welcome. Yes but the absolute majority doesn't make sense to me to begin with in a country as large as America. It seems to me as r...
I've gone to visit the Eastern Orthodox monks for a short time on Mount Athos, and I have visited and discussed with hermits there, including some mon...
Stranger still... Not only can they find no rational basis for the belief in God, they demand that one is given, and if one doesn't give it then: Comb...
Why is everyone saying Merry Christmas today? :P It's the 24th, not the 25th no (unless you are from Japan?) ? And as far as I know Christmas is 25th,...
Yes and the empirical test concludes that there is actual benefit in its application to cure disease. It follows then that it should be employed in th...
To be knowable to you means to be perceived directly using the five senses. That's not necessarily what being knowable is in the first place. The theo...
Ok so? I fail to see anything that follows out of this. Does it follow that incomprehensible is unknowable? No, because what is incomprehensible today...
Ok, even so, what does that have to do with anything? First you make an unsubstantiated distinction between a placebo in a medical trial, and a placeb...
Yes, the theist will say likewise. As the theist does not believe that death is the end, he has no reason to fear it. Quite simple. Don't you see how ...
It does have something to do with truth, because if I don't have faith in her, I don't marry her, and thus there will be no truth of her being faithfu...
Nope, because I won't marry her if i don't have faith in her. Faith is a pre-requisite for her faithfulness. Faith is hoping and acting on that hope. ...
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your vain philosophy... Alas, you fail to note the category of things for which there ...
Maybe, except they're not used merely to describe behaviour. They're used to look down on behaviour. Eh, that weakling, he believes in God, must be a ...
Likewise, it seems to me that atheists wish theist's beliefs to be grounded in some fear of annihilation... My point is that both arguments are absurd...
His Pensées is one of the greatest books I have ever read. A pity that he died before he managed to finish them - he intended the Pensées as one finds...
But my point isn't this. It's not whether they believe it, because by this logic, neither does the theist believe that death is the end. The atheist, ...
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