Tom Storm

You misunderstand me. I am asking how it is possible for us to build a robust case (the least 'messy' case possible) in this space. I am not saying th...

I agree with you. Can we even talk about this subject without being hopelessly enmeshed in strictures of experience and our conceptual schemas? Even l...

Nicely summarized. :up: I avoid strong metaphysical commitments by claiming a form of pragmatism. I don't need to know what or why just how. No matter...

For sure. But this was often at play, Pauline Kael made a similar argument over 40 years ago in 'Why Are Movies So bad? Or, The Numbers'. She was poli...

I think the beetle/box language game thing can be parked, but I guess you are saying that although humans 'create' green - it is not out there in real...

Is it not the case that humans experience specific light waves as color? Color is not a property in the world so much as a constructed perception, bas...

I appreciate Rupert Spira's description of god as 'old language' for the transcendent and 'oneness'.

He had an astonishing mind.

Cool story. I think you need to change your name to Kantian Stargazer. Thanks, so it was Cook's ship. I was trying to recall the details of this story...

Indeed. I think this is a similar point @"joshs" makes in relation to how people assimilate (or fail to) unfamiliar information or fresh worldviews. W...

:love:

:pray: :wink: Did you ever see that film 'Round Midnight with the great Dexter Gordon? I used to watch it regularly at an arthouse cinema near me, a f...

I know this is to someone else but it interests me to some extent. I think causality is a provisional human understanding which seems to fit some matt...

Temperament is very important. In my case I think experience does play a role, - I have been around too much suffering and death. But I am grateful fo...

To be honest I thought it we were just shooting the shit in the shoutbox. It didn't occur to me to take your comment seriously, just as my original co...

I can't imagine thinking this. To me the world seems an amoral and dangerous place (at best). But there are some people I would thank for their sacrif...

Fool mostly and wannabe thinker. That's really important. The internet gets a lot of flack, but access to decent thinkers and communities has never be...

Interesting. Until this site, I had no idea people outside of an institution actually read academic philosophy and took it seriously. I'm delighted th...

Everything you've argued could also lead to 'so who cares?' I guess the next part of this is establishing what faith and intuition actually mean. Ther...

Yes, and it involves an entity for which we have no actual evidence in the first place - or a series of entities, or an advance alien species. Even if...

And includes what I said. :wink: Indeed.

I never said it was. I said you were making a fallacy from incredulity. Might I say, a textbook example. That's an example of a false equivalence fall...

Most atheists I've encountered these days say they are agnostic atheists - for reasons I described earlier. I think this makes sense. One claim goes t...

I know the argument, but such hearsay actually runs the world and our belief systems. How would governments, a military, corporations, social groups f...

Your points are interesting to me, I think it 's certainly possible to see similarities in things if you choose too. I'm neither a philosopher or scie...

:up: :up:

I was simply responding spontaneously to your question about what is evidence of intelligent design. I think my answer is pretty sound, but I never pr...

Plenty of books on this by people like Paul Tillich, David Bentley Hart and Shelby Spong and the like. I'm not a progressive Christian, so I'm not inv...

I grew up in the Baptist tradition. We were taught that the Bible stories were allegories to tell a broader truth about the nature of god and man. Lit...

I would say a beaver dam, spider web or a bird's nest are designed too. Maybe not in the same manner as a car but certainly planned and contrived for ...

I'd be interested to here more what are a couple of examples?

I'm not the one making the claim, so I can't provide an answer. Usually the reason we know something is designed in life is because we already know it...

I think that should be Yahweh, the Hotel Manager theodicy.

If you are desperate to make intelligent design fit, then sure - chaos and misery might be part of the plan. But in debates with intelligent design pr...

Nicely summarized. I'd probably remove the 'just' from before 'happen.' An issue for me is it is humans deciding upon what is order and what is chaos....

Not a great analogy given that prior or jiu-jitsu there were other marital arts that Helio knew of and unarmed combat had had a long, long tradition w...

Then Aquinas and Christopher Hitchens are not so different. :joke: Beyond the boxes? Sounds like an old movie of the week title. If you are referring ...

Indeed. I include that in what I said earlier. Perhaps an unintentional straw man argument. Depends who you talk to. I'm not in the worship business s...

I find this very interesting. Do you think this comes from a Jewish perspective? Fair. Also interesting. I know Christians who hold this and think all...

That's an important point I wasn't aware of.

I think this works - TC seems to be saying that atheists twist ideas of god into distortions and then use those distortions as evidence that God is a ...

Given how often we come back to this key conceptual frame there really ought to be a simple 'sticky' on it here. Many people find it hard to conceptua...

I've seen it. Not sure how sound he is on philosophy but I know he draws from Susan Haack and David Hume. But as an autodidact, he can be a bit cocksu...

Does this mean that you think answers are unhelpful? I guess one might ask, about what matter? I agree that questions are important but do we need to ...

Makes sense. Cheers.

That's good! Thanks.

I completely failed to answer this. Sorry. This definition is important to me because of the endless confusion people have about agnosticism vis-à-vis...

Really interesting. Do you believe that from this position there is a 'reality as it is in itself' or do you consider such a term incoherent - 'realit...

Interesting. The latter would be idealism, wouldn't it? It seems that the issue is where do we draw the line between indirect and the idea that 'mater...

That seems to match my experience. How many times have I seen something and realized a second later that it was not the thing I thought I saw? Heaps. ...