Tom Storm

Yes, that seems fair. I guess the more observant among us would probably say: surely no one would willingly go against God if they had certain knowled...

Absolutely and it's clear that this is your argument. No problem there. Yes. For me, it has always been a question of whether we have good reason to a...

Now, I’m no Thomist, but if goodness flows from God’s very nature, then, I suspect, normativity isn’t removed because acting rightly is acting in acco...

Forgive my meandering response. From what I read, that all seems fair and seems to come down to “a book says a thing”. I wonder though, even if there ...

Well, if for classical theism this is how God is understood then some of the traditional arguments put forward by atheists fall short. A theist might ...

There’s probably a more charitable way to look at this: if we read it as suggesting that the origins of moral behavior may be found in our evolving to...

Can I check something with you? Whether we ‘ought’ to obey God could be held to depend on the language game we are playing. The original claim assumes...

Interesting this hasn't come up. Can we say the same about God? Even if we could demonstrate that God exists, it does not follow that we ought to act ...

:up: :up:

A digression, perhaps and forgive my tone which is not intended to be strident. Are there not innumerable contributions on variations of this matter a...

I think this is understood. I have also learned this from some people I know and how different they are on line compared to real life. Anonymity promo...

And part of the problem is that so many members of the public no longer seem to care for truth or accuracy, or only in 'my truth,' while the rest seem...

:up: :up: The idea that formed the basis of our discussion, that empathy came first and then religion, doesn’t really hold up as a critique or as an a...

Where did I say they all blindly follow Dawkins? I’ve been involved in freethinker atheist circles for 40 years; there is a significant percentage who...

I like this formulation a lot.

I am an atheist, I am not saying this as a believer. I am trying to provide a basic sketch of classical theism’s understanding of the good. It's usefu...

There's not staggeringly different, that’s why I mentioned famous and popular publishers from 100 years ago who printed lies and defamations every sin...

I don’t think that’s right by their reasoning because under this view (Calvin, Anslem, Aquinas) all goodness, in whatever form it takes, is grounded i...

Yes, although some religious folk will say that since goodness emanates directly from God’s nature, we are good because it reflects God’s nature, with...

There's always been a war on truth in the media, a feature I’ve observed for decades, and it was even worse when we had consistent enemies like godles...

Yes this would seem to be right but I suspect cunning arguments are available against this position. They may already have been stated, but I dip in a...

Got ya. :up::up:

Nice. Thanks.

That's a bit pf a tantalising idea. Are there 2 or 3 aspects of this particularly you can dot point?

As far as I can understand this I would be sympathetic to Hegel, a less essentialist perspective. Was this view a refinement built upon Kant?

So are you saying this is your interpretation of what you saw? Or are you saying that your church members and church leaders also aimed to provide fal...

I have done more than read, I've seen it. And as I said, there are some who behave as you say but it often goes in reverse. No, it isn’t different wor...

I don't think religion tries to achieve that; that’s a specific description a sceptic might provide. Firstly, there are religions that do not work aro...

Ah huh! Good line by the way. These days it seems that some people are more uncomfortable with golden retrievers on fire than people.

Is that accurate? Is that Black Notebokk stuff? Well if God is happy with this who are we not to share the enthusiasm?

Yep, there's a power in shared worldviews, motivated reasoning, and magical thinking. I can think of subcultures here (I’m sure you can too) who claim...

Tribalism

Baptists are a broad church unto themselves. They allow individual churches to set interpretive values. I grew up in that tradition, and my Baptists w...

Is that yours? I like it. The interesting thing is that we don’t agree on those partials. Maybe if you put everyone's partials together, you get the w...

Let’s hope so. Would your assessment be that the President and his backers are working on complete military control so that he/they can retain power i...

So are you saying that Trump does not currently have enough key military personnel aligned with his administration to enforce his authority beyond con...

Me too. Not sure if they make them well or not. I think I don't watch them as well as I used to. I think so. I was 45 when I turned 12...

How long do you think some parts of the US military elite will hold out against a maverick US president? As far as I can tell, apart from them, there'...

That’s more my speed.

To some extent your response here also seems pragmatic.

Reading Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. A fairly easy read, although I can’t claim to remember it all as I go along. It reads like the eccentric lect...

But as I wrote, it doesn’t matter if you are part of an intersubjective community. Perennialism doesn’t avoid this either - the work of finding the On...

Why do religions fail? I am not sure that they do. Much depends on what “failure” is taken to mean. Does it matter, for example, that within Christian...

That's a nice way of framing it.

Yes, this tension could label Kant as dogmatic on noumena: he is meant to remain entirely agnostic, yet he slips into asserting what the noumenon cann...

I screwed up the sentence. I meant that phenomena are the product or our sense and cognitive apparatus. I fixed my syntax.

That's a lot to get one's head around, thank you. This may be a naive question, but it sometimes seems to me that noumena represent a compromise betwe...

Best wishes, Joshs.

Fair enough. My instinct is that separation of powers only work by agreement. They are not magic spells and in the end what the military chooses will ...

Do you think America has become an autocracy (with more to come) and that Trump and/or his cronies are here to stay? Either ignoring future elections ...