This particular sub-dlalogue started around the idea that humans are an animal species. That is what I was responding to. It is true, from the viewpoi...
Actually I'm Buddhist, and Buddhism doesn't believe in a creator God at all. But the cultural situation of the West is that it is animated by a kind o...
The thumb allows us to be technical beings, achieving a somewhat 'godlike' control of nature and language enables us to conceive of gods. The step to ...
But isn't the idea of 'a beginning' analogous to the question 'what came before the BB? To which the answer was, there was no 'before'. The notion of ...
'One reason for the initial resistance to the Big Bang theory was that, unlike the rival Steady State theory, it proposed that the Universe had a begi...
1. I'm always open to the possibility that there's a lot about this stuff that I don't get. 2. The story of how the Big Bang theory was published and ...
I agree with you that philosophical questions are in an important sense prior to scientific ones, insofar as they're concerned with a different sense ...
And we can transcend suffering because we're not only that. This is the peculiar inversion of thinking that has happened because of biological materia...
I admire vegetarianism and go through spasms of wanting to be vegetarian. I have actually succeeded for some months at a time in being vegetarian, but...
However Buddhism like ofher religions is concerned with the ending of suffering altogether, in toto, for keeps. That is the meaning, or one meaning, o...
What I was trying to say was that there's an element of religion you can only learn by doing - what it means in practice might be completely different...
I think the issue gets too much attention, and it's because of a misreading of Descartes, or perhaps because of some lack in Descartes' development of...
I am not atheist, although I sometimes think that the God many atheists don't believe in, is also one that I don't believe in. I think that many theis...
My view is simply that the basis is not 'it' but 'you'. I think Schelling said something similar. So there's no ultimate thing whatever, all things ar...
~ Darth Barracuda What does that actually mean? Nirv??a is elusive and indeed ineffable, but many a practicing Buddhist will know it regardless. That ...
I don't know if mars man is still on earth, actually. His very last activity, which was a long time ago, was 'going to hospital for tests'. No, I'm be...
She says I'm 'playing with my invisible friends'. I demur that debating philosophy is much less pernicious than almost anything else that people get u...
Hey I've decided not to post here. Great people and all but there's a limit to how many forums one can contribute to, especially considering that hono...
The point I'm simply making is that unless you're nomadic hunter-gatherers, there will be some form of state organisation. And as simple as that point...
Moliere But were there any agrarian or pre-industrial cultures that didn't have some form of rulership, (generally tribal monarchies, to begin with)? ...
But surely something like 'the state' had to emerge with agriculture and animal husbandry. Why? Because that required pooling of resources and coopera...
That anti guv'mint attitude seems very strong in the USA. A lot of people seem to think 'they' are the enemy, and that it is up to 'us' to 'keep ourse...
I have had the depressing memory of the speech George W gave after 9/11 to the US Houses, with Tony Blair in attendance urging him on. The world was s...
It's pretty sad that in an educated and purportedly developed nation, there is a pervasive feeling that weapons are necessary for safety. I would have...
Nonsense. People have to be able to express whatever ideas they want - well, provided they don't scream 'fire' in a crowded theatre. But if some crank...
I discovered I could disable the upvotes and downvotes feature at PF about two months ago, and did so straight away. I would have done so the moment I...
- Bittercrank I think 'the teaching of creationism' ought really not be compared to 'beating people to death'. I personally think 'teaching creationis...
In the relationship between Western liberal democracies and Islamic culture, a general point that comes to mind is this. Liberal democracies went thro...
The new ownership at PF did announce themselves a couple of weeks back, and I am prepared to try and give them the benefit of the doubt, but the place...
Why do you think that 'perception is an activity of the body'? It would be quite feasible for, say, a mathematician to fall victim to an accident or i...
I think the problem with this passage is that it attempts to treat the mind, and the images in it, as objects, in the same way that it treats the tabl...
Your problem is your definition of 'rational'. If someone pressed something sharp into your flesh, it would be 'rational' to ask them to desist or to ...
Comments