Wayfarer

Very good book - very difficult in places but overall first rate. I've also been reading Peter Woit's blog Not Even Wrong, and various pieces from Qua...

That’s over and above ‘falsification’ into the general aspects of scientific method.

It's simply that if you can't falsify it by an objective observation, then it's not an empirical hypothesis.

Call me pessimistic but I just can’t see Bernie beating him.

Should be impeached immediately for ‘degrading the office’. The only reason he hasn’t been is because he has succeeded in so doing.

It's the whole 'observer problem in quantum physics.' It leads to many acrimonious and also unsolvable debates here and on other forums. Suffice to sa...

https://nyti.ms/2ZJ0myS ...and the whole world suffers the consequences.

Try this. Also speculative, you might say, but in a register which I personally find more congenial.

One of the things that occurs to me is how much 'elbow room' speculative cosmology and physics now provides. I read a 2013 book by Jim Baggott called ...

:lol:

Philosophy can be a kind of spiritual discipline, conducted by dedicated students supervised by experienced teachers. That at any rate is the descript...

They have zero visibility in Australian politics. One of the most well-known fundamentalists, Ken Ham, is an Australian, he had to relocate to Kentuck...

Spirituality is a slippery concept. There are those who claim to be 'spiritual but not religious'. This is generally said to be because 'spirituality'...

I think another issue here is that 'form' (morphe) is not simply 'the form a thing takes' or another word for 'shape'. It's similar to the issue that ...

If you're not familiar with it, google Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, and have a read about it.

Well, let's look at it in terms of Richard Dawkins' books. Fundamentalism takes a 'literalist' view of the meaning of sacred texts; that they are to b...

I think the problems that underlie this point start with Descartes, who, because of the way he conceptualised ‘res cogitans’, made it appear as ‘disem...

It's a Buddhist school. I can't see why it wouldn't be. Granted that Zen teaches 'transcending discursive thought', it's still thoroughly embedded in ...

Now there’s a clue.

Any relationship to the ‘arche-fossil’? Am I getting warm?

I have a feeling this whole story is a parable or a metaphor, but I can’t see what of. However seems far more germane to a biology forum than a philos...

Completely incorrect. The Japanese warrior class and 'bushido' were deeply grounded in Zen Buddhism. Rinzai Zen, one of the two main schools of Zen, i...

The argument is like this: to believe that science disproves a religious myth then you have to believe that the myth in question was true to begin wit...

It makes no difference to me, but it explains everything you say about the topic, so you will understand if I don't engage further with you on this su...

If you don't realise how far ahead of Aristotle Terrapin Station is, well, you haven't been paying attention. :wink:

Yeah but if you never believed that Adam and Eve was literally true, then the fact that it's *not* literally true doesn't 'prove' anything. That's why...

I had the idea it was ontologically rather than temporally prior i.e. the idea is real whereas the particular is only an instance of the eternally-exi...

Quoted in Wikipedia entry on Active Intellect

Do you understand what ‘positivism’ is? Or ‘scientism’ Do you know why Dawkins/Dennett are accused of ‘scientism’? It’s a myth that ‘science disproves...

This often also applies to anti-religious fanatics.

:ok:

It’s been normalised. If Sandy Hook wasn’t going to change things, then it ain’t ever going to change.

You could probably just as easily use them.

So, while we're at it, let us place our hand on a copy of Sam Harris's The End of Faith, and solemnly affirm: I believe in a single substance, the mot...

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/03/us/el-paso-shooting/index.html

As do I. I don't think it is meaningful to speak in terms of absolutes, but many of those who deny the possibility of free will, seem to me to deny fr...

In the Vedic religion, 'karma' was something regulated through rituals and the correct performance of sacrifice. The Buddha adapted the term and broad...

There is a lot of debate amongst Western adherents of Buddhism about whether, or in what sense, ‘the wheel of rebirth’ is real. Sometimes it is said t...

Spectacular nickname given in that article - Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaff...

Experience doesn’t amount to data unless it is interpreted. Besides, ‘experience’ is too broad a word in the context to really mean anything. You coul...

Ideas are what things want to be when they grow up. :wink:

Sorry, I had misread the point that I was responding to. Should have read it more carefully. (My partner often complains about my 'playing with my inv...

Mathematicians will sometimes speak of 'beautiful' equations. There are principles in geometry, maths and science which explain all kinds of things in...

Except I don’t see how mysticism equates to fundamentalism.

Asceticism - Buddhism is traditionally said to be a 'middle way' between the extremes of 'sensory indulgence' and 'asceticism'. The Buddha is said to ...

I’m afraid that is not true at all, but I can’t respond further until much later as I’m on duty.

There was a well-known academic by the name of Paul Williams who after having written some textbooks on Buddhism, announced that he was converting to ...

Check out the paisley gate.

Hence my first remark in this thread about 'domains of discourse and practice'. Western culture defines that in a particular way. and then we 'map' ag...

That's where the cultural conditioning shows up. One way in which Buddhism differs from mainstream Christianity is with the emphasis on practice-insig...