uncanni

Are you saying that I'm casting pearls before swine?

Now THAT is a very good oxymoron.

There's no way around crisis, death or despair for humans. The way I see it, we had best find the "healthiest" ways we can manage for dealing with the...

If illegal drugs were legalized, numerous problems would disappear, not the least of which would be the drug cartels. If free needles are made availab...

Nobody assumed the irrelevance but you.

I assumed that everyone participating in the discussion understood this, but you chose to chastise the discussion as if it should not have taken place...

Sarcasm or irony? Are you being sarcastic or ironic about the entire discussion? The statement, "Climate is a matter of faith and ideology," is vague....

I agree: this is the realistic view of what's happening. So I'm quite pessimistic unless power can be confiscated from those people. I can't imagine h...

It's painful and liberating, as you suggest. I am quite isolated where I live--there are absolutely no old leftie hippie intellectuals around these pa...

Now that is a profound statement, with multiple resonances or over-determinations: * to force others into some kind of rigid structure; * to reduce al...

Lovely. The quintessence of Bakhtin's dialogism: interlocutors understand their own ideas from different perspectives by listening to how the other us...

What I understood you to be saying is that there's always a "countervailing," a "disproportion" between issues of faith or mysticism and those of reas...

I've often felt this, just not on a philosophical level. Observing people all over the place who don't love or take proper care of their children, are...

Then i agree that zero humans would definitely be a fast way to fix a lot of problems.

There's something mighty liberating to admit that our family acted despicably, and that the people all around us act despicably. I think that a surviv...

IT seems the problem of evil to which you refer is a human-made problem, primarily--not so much about volcanos and earthquakes. Humans inflict infinit...

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my sweeping generalization. I try to avoid anthropomorphizing the cosmos; I'm even trying to stop thinking o...

And they can kick it all day every day. To defend objects of faith is a perfectly respectable occupation. I repeat: Probability and reason can't prove...

I think I got two different topics confused. Sorry for the confusion. The other topic mentioned intelligent design, which is an irritating term for me...

That's awesome. Really and truly.

And do the other species project their beliefs and thoughts onto the universe? Do we have a way to know that?

I'd have to say that all aspects of human thought and belief are unique to humans: what are you suggesting??? Giving the universe anthropomorphic char...

It's been very useful to me all my life, and it finally helped me to come out of the atheist closet. My nebulous conception of whatever Oneness or Who...

Do you mean, a non-fit, an impasse? If it is a non-fit, then explanation creates a story which claims to represent the action as true. If it is an imp...

Jane Austen said all there is to say about it.

I agree; the old ideological sleight of hand, wizardry. I want to add that the elites are essentially sociopathic--little to no conscience or empathy,...

The Reproduction of Evil. A Clinical & Cultural Perspetive, Sue Grand The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, Bott Spillius et al., eds.

God is the percocet of the people...

I agree with this statement, and its truth distresses me every day, but when I ask myself if I would give up all of the extraordinary pleasures of bei...

Welcoming hatred: that's a rough one. No good. Gotta stay away from those Mein Kampf reading fascists; they will kick you to death.

It's nice to be understood sometimes... :victory:

In 66 years I have not found a way around it. If you are not one of those people who can't lull or distract themselves from what you understand as a f...

I just want to point out that this quote isn't in the TANAKH; just in New Testament. This seems correct: magical thinking, which is an infantile mode,...

China and US are certainly doing all that they can to guarantee it.

So did we ever decide which topic to focus on? The discussion seems to meander all over the place.

Just because Tom Aquinas says it doesn't make it so. All of these arguments are easily deconstructed these days: probability and reason cannot prove t...

I think assertion would yield fruitful discussion, but in line with the concerns expressed in your OP, I think we'd need to narrow the focus, or there...

no longer relevant to the discussion

I don't know if we could win the Most Hypocritical Country" award, but we'd definitely put up a good fight. The United States has never kept anything-...

It's delicious!! I like it a lot.

Been reading philosophy since my teens, got a PhD in humanities with a minor in Critical & Cultural Theory, most of which I read on my own, not in cla...

I think it's perfect: intelligent design, in my mind, is physics, is what is. "Intelligent design" is a bit too anthropomorphic of a phrase for my pre...

I ask my students if they know what Woodstock was, or who Freud was. Most of them say no. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my trouse...

I absolutely agree: they are not the same thing; I see no argument demonstrating in the least way that they are interchangeable terms.

I appreciate the clarification.

I wrote, "When a person chooses a moral code...": I had in mind the kind of person who takes philosopy seriously and thinks issue out--not someone who...

Now you have changed your wording, from love and hate to good and evil. These categories are not the same thing.

When a person makes a decision to adopt a moral code, clearly it's because they believe it is "right," and because it makes clear what is "wrong" or "...

no longer relevant to the discussion

This is the only case where I would hold neither nature nor nurture responsible for bad humans. Mother Nature didn't physically, sexually or verbally ...