Pfhorrest

Yes you are. That's what words mean. You can also be an agnostic. They're not mutually exclusive. That's because that's not what "theism" means. You'r...

If atheism were false and theism were true, sure. Like I said:

Of course. Again, you're diverting the topic into something irrelevant. I never said one could. You asked how someone could be born an atheist and sti...

I'm not equivocating the contents of the beliefs at all. Insert any belief you want into there, serious or frivolous, and the pattern still holds: nob...

This is largely the thesis of my essay Against Fideism that we're discussing in another thread, with an important caveat: there is a difference betwee...

Sure, many people speculate about all kinds of things without being taught them. That doesn't make those beliefs that they were born with. People can ...

Nothing I said has any implications about there being or not being universals. You seem to be talking about something entirely unrelated.

I wasn't arguing against "indoctrination". I didn't even use that word. I was explaining how it can both be the case that babies are born atheists, an...

I'm not having this conversation again, it's dumb and you're just factually wrong. There is "weak", "soft", or "implicit" atheism which is lack of bel...

They easily can. When one is born, one has no beliefs, therefore one has no belief in God, and so is an atheist. In early life, one's beliefs are easi...

You could say the same thing about empiricism with equal(ly little) justification. Hedonism is just the empiricism of ethics: judging assessments of g...

Why would older Democrats’ Medicare be threatened by Bernie?

I would instead say that the highest pleasure is for life to feel meaningful, the feeling I call ontophilia or love of being; and the meaning of life ...

Bernie getting the nomination is the only hope the Democrats ever really had for beating Trump. Winning elections is not about convincing people to ch...

While that's better for accuracy, it's worse for usability (both compared to just "Against Certitude"), so I think it's still a no-go for me. Thanks a...

While awaiting feedback on that "dogmatism" vs "fideism" bit, I've updated the opening paragraph of the essay with some bits that are redundant with p...

I am reading along, but so far no questions, or corrections, it's all clear and accurate as far as I can see. :-)

That's getting into the topics of later essays, but for now I'll just say neither of the two options you present sounds like my view. Yes, though the ...

That doesn't sound anything at all like what I'm arguing against. Or what I'm arguing for, for that matter, if you've just confused the direction.

I want all of the positions to be something-isms, and I'm not certain that I'm completely against all possibility of certainty, when actual evidence i...

I think, as we'll see in the next essay Against Transcendentalism, that the relationship goes the other way. Fideism as I mean it is methodological th...

You asked what good it is to oneself or the world, and ethics is the field concerned with goods, so yeah. But I think it's also useful in non-ethical ...

I think that philosophy has definitely made me a better person, and so enabled me to do better things both for my own life and for the world. Not that...

The two main schools of Contemporary philosophy are the Analytic and Continental schools, of which Hegel and Frege are (at least arguably) the first f...

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not. They were contemporaries of each other, but they are not Contemporary philosophers as in part of the period of ...

It's a mix of both for me, but on the whole I think it comes out on the positive side. Depending on my mood, thinking too deeply or about deep topics ...

As a Bernie fan, what's to say about Buttigieg? He's still better than Biden, and it was really close between him and Bernie, and this is just one sta...

Thanks everyone for the flurry of replies! I didn't expect nearly this much activity after the thread lingered for days with nothing. Just a brief rem...

Maybe it would help to use an example that’s not about belief but about intention, as this principle applies to both. I’m not against doing things (or...

I don’t think I disagree with any of that. I am not arguing against “faith” in the sense that you used the word there, but in the sense I explained ex...

I don't have issue with belief without evidence, because I hold (and elaborate a few essays later) that all belief is held without (sufficient) eviden...

Thank you both for your responses. I'm sorry but I can't quite follow what you're saying or how it relates to the topic essay. Your post is helpful be...

Nate Silver's model expected Biden to do poorly in Iowa, but well nationally, like the polls. Iowa is relatively small as far as the number of delegat...

The rationale Nate Silver gave in that article I linked earlier is that it was already expected that Biden wouldn't have great results in Iowa and tha...

I feel bad for bumping my own thread, but I would feel even worse if I moved on to to the next essay after this one got no responses, and worse still ...

When I was young, my default state of being, when nothing in particular was going on, was happiness. I was never really bored, I could entertain mysel...

Yeah no, you don't seem to understand what contemporary panpsychists even believe. It has nothing to do with quantum woo.

FiveThirtyEight predicts that the fuckup of Iowa (or a hypothetical election where Iowa didn't happen) actually boosts Biden's chances: https://fiveth...

Is this accounting for any superdelegates yet? Are they still a thing?

Care to elaborate on that / quote us a passage? Because from the title alone it sounds like they're not talking about the kind of consciousness that a...

According to Wikipedia, the preliminary results from the 2% of precincts that started reporting before the whole thing got shut down were showing Bern...

Jesus isn't saying anything about who is or isn't happy there. He's saying that various groups of people are blessed, as in fated to receive good thin...

I realized re-reading my passage you quoted there that there is room for misinterpretation of it, so I've slightly edited it (in the post above) to re...

I do. I want to be rationally motivated to do things that will help other people be happy and keep me and them alive to continue being happy, and then...

I've been trying not to participate in or encourage the off-topic digression into the merits of small vs big government, but I have a comment that may...

Yep, that's exactly my point.

I finished adding them at almost the same second you posted your reply. No worries. :-)

Man, what happened in 1994?

Chemical reactions are real. As to whether or not and why not happiness may or may not be a choice, I think it's worth reflecting on the nature of cho...

I assume you're referring to the Problem of Evil here. That argument purports to show that specifically an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God is ...