andrewk

That example is of something nobody would ever say and expect to be taken seriously. I don't regard the lack of applicability to something nobody woul...

My understanding is that the modality the possible worlds paradigm seeks to explain is not the fancy modality of modal logic, but the modality of ever...

Do you feel that religion, as you understand it, deals with facts, or with mysteries? I cannot deny that some religions appear to claim to be in posse...

This strikes me as a terribly narrow definition of religion. I know there's no point ultimately in arguing definitions so I won't say it's wrong. I'll...

If by 'flow' you mean wave height then Yes, subject to irregularities caused by turbulence. Water does not flow in a linear manner when the water has ...

I don't have a clear idea of what you mean when you say time is not a factor. When the experiment begins, there is no pattern on the screen, and when ...

You raised a question, which was whether the particle rate (BTW more accurately characterised as the field strength) determines the degree of undulati...

With the problem as expressed in your quote, the widely-accepted solution is decoherence, which is mentioned later in that wiki article. There are oth...

To get into that I think we'd first need to take a step back and try to reach a shared understanding of what 'the measurement problem' is. It is often...

I've read that blog post by Sean Carroll more than once in the past. As far as I can recall it is about which are the most popular interpretations of ...

The video is a classic example of science being so oversimplified as to make nonsense of it. A number of the key claims are nonsense, including the on...

There are a number of different double-slit experiments, and all of them (or at least, all the ones I know, including several 'delayed choice' and 'qu...

No it does not! Read the article it came from, which you can get to just by clicking on the photo. At no point does it say these people are fleeing. T...

At least most of the terms in the OP are criticisms that by definition can only apply to the left - eg Social Justice Warrior. I dislike the use of su...

I don't see Michael's 'if' as pointless. Faith is usually considered to be believing something for which there is little or no evidence, not believing...

For me the answer is to recognise that religious beliefs are predominantly formed by upbringing, peer group, culture and personal spiritual experience...

What I have said, I have said.

What do you want to know? I am by no means knowledgeable about all types of theism. I am just observing that omnipotence does not logically follow fro...

I have already answered that. Some atheists do and some atheists don't. Just like Christians.

You don't need to convince me that all humans rely on faith. David Hume demonstrated that conclusively in the eighteenth century. Hume was accused of ...

Indeed - that's exactly what I'm angling for. My response is that it is impossible to interpret the 'est' to mean 'equals', because the equals relatio...

On reflection upon Banno's diagram, I wonder what's so mysterious or illogical about the Trinity. Trinities are everywhere. The following one looks pe...

I think that's an excellent position. It was the position of Immanuel Kant, a devout theist who essentially said that we were incapable of doing any r...

Yeah, I don't get the whole authenticity thing either. I've always thought Sartre was gratuitously judgemental about that waiter. To the extent that a...

It is often used by atheists. It is also used by theists that reject the notion of omnipotence, and I have witnessed such people making it. Are you sa...

It is a problem of any set of beliefs that asserts that its god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. That includes the main branches of Chris...

No. It is an argument by anybody that does not believe that there is a god that is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, that no being, created o...

If we are talking about the God of the Bible, which is the god that is almost always the one under discussion when this topic of theodicy comes up, th...

I can do that too. I thought of salvaging the koan by changing it to the sound of one finger clicking. But then I found I can still make a very faint ...

However fancy the long arrangements of words the theologians come up with, they disappear in a puff of shame when watching a mother helplessly holding...

To the extent that I understand your question - which is partially at best - No I don't.

You had better stick to speaking for yourself. It only harms your case to make angry, erroneous assertions about what others feel or believe.

We disagree fundamentally on that. There seems no more that can be said on either side in relation to that. Compassion is empathising with and seeking...

I acknowledge that forms part of the arguments of the less belligerent advocates of capital punishment - the ones that don't keep referring to child r...

No, not then. Neither for Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or Fred and Mary West. Such arguments are based purely on a lust for revenge, and gi...

I read the McDonnell and Abbott paper and was impressed by Cover's switching strategy, which is better than my proposed strategy of picking a threshol...

What Sapientia said! The main reason the death penalty is so barbaric, and so dehumanising of the society that conducts it, is that it is done in cold...

Does believing that make you happy, or in some other way bring you fulfilment? If so, by all means follow that path, and you need no help from anybody...

I think the suggested moral framework, like many moral frameworks, can be accommodated within the broad church of Consequentialism. It distinguishes i...

I would be interested to hear more about this. I'm having trouble relating it to a statement that says something about the constants. GR and QM both h...

Yes they are unique, but the genius of mammalian brains is that they can disregard the unimportant and focus on the important. Someone started a threa...

You are right that we can never get a perfectly accurate sense of the meaning of a speech act without knowing all possible context, which would involv...

I think that's the difference between us. I don't believe that analysing sequences of words devoid of context can deliver any useful insights.

That's a brilliant example of how crucial context and tone are to the function and meaning of a speech act. 'I speak' be anything from a Dadaist's del...

I don't know what you mean by 'chance was more probable than design', but there are plenty of systems with simple or disorganised inputs that have com...

Making presumptive, and completely wrong, assumptions like that reveals the emptiness of your argument. I am completely open to theism, and have no ob...

There is currently no scientific explanation, but it is entirely conceivable that there may be one day. A new, falsifiable, more fundamental theory ma...

It occurred to me that the fatal flaw in the fine tuning argument is right there buried in its name. Where does the term 'fine tuning' come from? It c...

If that works for you, good on you. For other people, going to church, temple or synagogue might work better in which case, good on them as well. That...