Hannibal

No, not because they can't reciprocate the NAP, but because if they were afforded full inclusion they would end up killing themselves/the rest of us. But instead of cherry picking, why don't you address the meat of my post. I still think that you don't understand what the NAP is or where it came from. UPB isn't even required - common sense should suffice. I can't believe we're even having this discussion; it's ridiculous. Can ANYONE who thinks that the NAP includes animals tell me why we even have such a principle in the first place?

Friedman was a good economist, but he was definitely not a free market man. Apart from that little bit of commonalty with regards to at least some market freedom, I don't see why people would suppose that they should be friends. I would think that Milton Friedman would have stood for an awful lot of what Rand despised.

Like many of the other posters, you are entirely missing the point of the NAP. The NAP exists not as some kind of universal constant, but as a principle agreed upon by men who wish to freely trade value for value. The NAP exists for our own benefit - it is rational for us to abide by the NAP out of our own self-interest. The NAP is reciprocal in nature, and to extend it to beings who are unable to reciprocate is entirely illogical. Regarding this bit - you will notice that I actually stated that infants and mentally Ill people are NOT treated 'as full human beings' (by which I assume that you mean afforded full NAP inclusion, rather than moral agency being the delineator of humanity). However, we fully expect infants to grow to be men & women who will wish to trade freely with us (just like the sleeping man, or the man in a coma), and who would bear grudges from the ill treatment, or grow up damaged such that they are less able to participate in a productive and free society. Again, the point is that the NAP exists for our own benefit. It makes absolutely no sense outside of a reciprocal paradigm. My reasoning is not circular at all - you just don't understand what the NAP is. You are plucking the NAP as a principle out of the ether, and then formulating your logic around that supposed constant. You are working back to front - first ask yourself WHY we need a NAP, and only when you understand that will you be able to understand exactly what the NAP is. The NAP is the result of a desire among men to live free from one another so that they may prosper and live as fully as men can. Animals can't even understand the concept of a NAP. The only way you can claim some kind of inconsistency by not including animals is if you pluck the NAP out of the ether as some kind of universal truth - it isn't. I'm not moving goal posts, or post-fact anything. You just don't understand what the NAP is. Let me ask you - where does the NAP come from? Why does it exist? Why are we talking about it now? Pesticides. what about roadkill? surely we should build tunnels to drive through to stop the animals getting squashed. What about bugs on windscreens? We casually kill thousands of bugs each year just because we like to travel to the seaside for an icecream. Is that immoral? etc etc How about clearing land for farming? What about all of the wildlife that lived in those trees/bushes/ponds/whatever?

As a resident Ayn Rand cult leader in training, here's a little snippet : If you've not read any of her work before, I'd strongly recommend it. I think that Atlas Shrugged is a masterpiece. I post the snippet above because in the context of her work in general it implies that you can be gaining pride in yourself - the real source of human happiness - by constantly trying to improve yourself. This productive labour doesn't have to be your job either - you can improve yourself outside of your career, which I think is important to emphasise to people who's short term prospects may be less grand than other's. I also posted the snippet because many people mistakenly thing that Ayn Rand was all about the big industrial powerhouses, and intellectual geniuses, whereas the snippet shows that she didn't really care so much about the degree to which men were productive - only the degree to which they tried and the degree to which they recognised and respected 'better' men's productivity. The characters in Atlas Shrugged are extremes - the heroes are really heroic, and the villains are awful - but it's not meant to be taken literally.

You use force to stop you kid running out into the street, even if he really wants to, right? So restraining him at daycare id no different. The important points to me are: 1) Do you want to force your kid to do things he doesn't want to do? 2) Do you have a choice? If you have no choice then you have no choice - the kid's gotta eat, even if that means you have to go to work and leave him in daycare. If you do have a choice, then it comes down to whether you want to force him or not - I think its as simple as that. I don't think books and research is going to help you much, because what you're facing a question of how you want to raise your son. I'm trying not to put words in your mouth, so to speak, so its hard to articulate, but I think that this isn't so much a question of whether its damaging to use force as it is a question of how you want to teach your boy about the ways people should interact.

I'd like that. I eat meat, but I'm not entirely comfortable with it. I don't mind killing animals to eat them, but it;s the farming that I don;t like so much - it's as though being born to be eaten is horrible, but just getting unlucky and eaten is just nature.

You're working backwards. Property isn't a product of morality - property is a reality of man's nature in a finite world, and morality is build, in part, on top of that reality.

Basically, human values are subjective - we choose them of our own free will. This means that you can never say that someone ought to do something, because something else is. Only that IF they hold a particular value as important to them and wish to act accordingly, then they ought to do that thing.

It means that only humans are afforded the right to live free from coercion. Including babies, because they will grow to be moral agents. Animals are not afforded any protection under the NAP. Mentally ill humans are still humans, and humans as a general rule meet the criteria to be covered by the NAP. Mentally ill people have the potential, however slight, to recover their faculty for moral agency. Plus, we all expect to lose our faculties at some point as we age, so a NAP which only protects us when we are at our strongest just doesn't make any sense. In fact mentally ill people, just like children, are not afforded complete NAP coverage as we cannot leave them entirely to their own devices - for their own sake as well as ours. Animals, as a general rule, do NOT meet the criteria to be covered by the NAP. It would make absolutely no sense to include them because it is of no benefit to us to do so. If this doesn't make sense to you I can only suppose that you haven't researched and understood the genesis of the NAP and it's reasoning.

NAP only applies to moral agents, capable of reciprocation. Problem solved.

The thought of only ever sleeping with one woman for the rest of my life is honestly an unimaginable horror to me. It;s one of the things I enjoy most (not that I do it often - it's the freedom, should I choose to, that I love). If it's not your thing then that's fine - everyone likes different things, but it's definitely not unethical to live that way. I would feel a little jealous, but that's fine. Our emotions help us but they shouldn;t rule us. Our rational mind's should be the final arbiters. If there are other, unhealthy, reasons for her lifestyle choice then they might be valid concerns - but they are besides the point when it comes to ethics. My favourite part of Orwell's 1984 is the fact that the more men his lover has slept with the more he loves her for going against the grain I personally think that many people are uptight about it because they are insecure. For others it's just not to their taste. But if more people valued themselves properly and weren't so insecure, i think it would be much more common (it already is common - it's just that its called 'cheating').

Sorry, been away a while... This is the problem - as far as I'm concerned it's your (or at least the other guys) definition of God that carries no meaning. My definition of god is, as you've pointed out, not explicit. Its use will imply different things to different people, and so I have no interest in pinning it down to something too specific, because that would make it not useful with respect to general claims about atheism. So as your definition is entirely pointless (just like a square circle is, other than when used to describe a contradiction) I see absolutely no value in using it as a de facto standard when defining God - and my own personal experience shows me that that is definitely not how many people would define God. So the result of taking that into consideration is that IF someone claims to believe in a square circle kind of God, then fine. But without that explicit definition then it makes little sense to use the self-contradiction argument as a general argument for atheism, when the improbability alone is perfectly sufficient to claim that God does not exist - just like the very high (but not absolute) probability that a naked human will die when falling into a volcano allows us to claim it as a truth. So I know that our disagreement is regarding our particular choices when it comes to the semantics of divinity, so we shouldn't argue about that anymore. I'm just saying that your argument for atheism is not a particularly useful one (in my opinion) given a very general claim of atheism and a very general, if any, choice of deity. To put it short - one should get the theist to confirm that his definition of God is self-contradictory before that argument is used. Otherwise i can perfectly understand how some theists might claim that atheism is almost religious in itself - in the same way that you say that we should be clear in our definitions, we should be clear as to whether our counter argument is actually applicable in this particular case before we get all 'religious' about it.

I always find coffee pretty hit & miss. I try to time it right to get the same guy or girl that made a good one last time. I wouldn't care if a robot served it as long as it was good.

Ok, that's fine - from your first post it sounded like you meant arguing about the truth of things, rather than pointing out that the believer doesn't understand their own scripture. It was all really meant as a joke though. The idea than the immaculate conception refers to a virgin conceiving is a very pervasive misconception, and it's sometimes amusing to see the "wow" on someones face when they realise that they've thought something else all these years, and to see them squirm when they have to concede that their ignorant atheist actually might know what they're talking about. As to whether it's fun or not? I'm not sure that that is an objectively measurable quality.

Lians, I've just got back from collecting a pizza and a couple of beers, and while I was gone I was thinking about what've we've been talking about. I think I owe you an apology: It was wrong of me (as in bad, also incorrect) to suggest that you don't understand what you're saying. I've also been too quick to suggest that you're being awkward. I've been very frustrated for a while now with regards to people being very quick to pick on people's deliver, rather than addressing the question at hand, and also people's eagerness to sound-off without taking the time to consider the actual meaning of another persons question. It's something that drives me nuts, and here's an example of a very recent linkedIn group conversation which has out me in this mood: Then LOADS of replies, mostly junk with stuff like : ... And when I try to suggest that the question isn't absurd - the commenters have just failed to understand the OP's question, they reply with even snottier and more pointless comments about their years in the industry, and why semantics is important - completely missing the point (which is that the OP wonders why people can't use their initiative to apply high level principles to specific situations, without having to debate what's 'correct'). Eventually the poor woman sends me a personal message, after I apologised in the thread if I was misrepresenting her, saying that she's given up, and will revert to to reading books: So sorry for the spam, but I though it might help me articulate myself. In this case what I didn't like was that you were using a specific definition of god (i.e. an entity that couldn't exist), and throwing that back at the OP as a square-circle scenario which I imagined might not be useful from his confused perspective, whereas you could ask "is your definition of god a being that couldn't possibly exist?", or whatever, and take it from there. So in that sense my existing frustration triggered my perception of you guys throwing around the FDR gospel, rather than reasoning as I would like, with the OP. When I say gospel, I don;t question it;s validity, only the way it is often used an argument in and of itself, without explanatory detail. I see lots of argument here (on the forums) which essentially boil down to "because stef said it's true", and so it's very easy to let that taint my interpretation of the arguments. Anyhow, my poor articulation of how I think the position should have been argued to the OP is not important, only that I disagreed with it and let my frustration, from other examples where I thought the OP was getting an unnecessarily hard time, affect my judgement, and so I apologise for being out of order in my response to you (and anyone else implicated). This is what I meant. It's the only definition of god that makes any logical sense, and so I assumed it as the best meaning of "god". I wasn't especially aware that people choose the other meaning of God, although now that i think of it it does tend to be the typical counter-argument of people not even interested in reasoning.

I guess I should have said (might be clearer) to Wesley that saying that God doesn't exist because your definition of a God is something which couldn't possible exist, is begging the question. So I'm happy with that. That means that for any discussion about God worth having we'd have to assume that that definition of God was not the one we were using. Well this has become more clear to me as we've been talking, and I know what most of the mainstream Gods are exactly those kinds which are self contradictory - "A god is something which couldn't possibly exist - if it could possibly exist then I wouldn't be sufficiently impressed to label it 'God'", basically. I'm happy with that, but would point out that that's a worthless definition of a God. So the only definition of "god" that is worth having is one which doesn't exclude it's own validity by definition. Some people might define God as "a being with powers to do the impossible". Obviously this doesn't make sense, but people believe it all the same. If that "god" revealed itself and did the 'impossible' in front of our eyes, would it cease to be a God because it performed an action which it was required to do in order to be considered a god in the first place? Clearly the original definition is incorrectly formed, but does that change anything? I will get through the debate, and I do have more sympathy (wrong word again) for your position than I did at the start, but for me I still know that most people (most are fairly casual in their faith) define their god by certain things that he's done and does, not by his impossibility, and I don't think it would be of any use when it comes to pointing out their irrationality, to go down that route (it's hard because i know some people do define it like that). So I would like the relegate my objection to a matter of personal taste (although strongly felt), rather than an absolute objection, given your (narrow in my opinion) definition of what could be considered a God.

Ok, I understand what you're getting at, so I don't really mean to be rude there - but I still have a big problem with it. I think though that perhaps it's not a problem worth making anything of because I already think that we both agree that talking about God is pointless. If you suppose that God is logically impossible by definition, then clearly I would also feel that that particular god objectively (wrong word but I can't think of a better one right now) doesn't exist. The only difference is that I've also opened a different level of 'Godliness' to decide is also irrational to believe in, so we're not actually in conflict as such there. So here's the deal - You say that 'God' is a logical contradiction by definition, otherwise it's a meaningless word. I say that in that case the word 'God' is always meaningless; why have a redundant word for a logical contradiction (in this context - obviously there is lots of redundancy in the English language). So rather than pidgin hole "God" into the realms of logical impossibility, I say it has a valid use in the context of God entities which are not necessarily self-contradictions. For example, I'm pretty sure that you could trim out some contradictions in the bible and that God would still be seen as a god-like entity. The result of this might mean that we would consider the fact that we might one day acquire the scientific knowledge and technology to rival God (which would kind of make him/her/it redundant as a god), but does that necessarily make that God not a God? Birds fly? Sure. But the truth of the mater is that men do not. So a flying man would have powers which could be described as godlike. Perhaps there is an advanced man who lives in the sky, and he alone among men has the knowledge to help us enter an afterlife (in whatever form that may be) when we die. The fact that men may one day learn how to reach the afterlife without him doesn't change the fact that to men living now, who face eternal nothingness, that advanced man living in the sky meets the standard of a God. It's not for me to decide what other men judge to be godlike. Most may not make any sense, insofar as if it's just a case of learning the hidden mysteries of the universe then that might not seem very godly to most. But i'm sue there are many Gods through out human history that are, or could easily be tweaked to not be logically impossible. How do we know that there is not some kind of property intrinsic to other kinds of beings, which men could never attain?

I suspect that this would be easier to communicate over a pint in the pub, which is why I said i really didn't want to sound rude - talking one at a time via text is not the easiest way to clear things up, so I'd suggest not taking our objections personally. This is a significant problem for me. I don't now where you get that idea from. It's more like light is massless, so therefore it moves as fast as is possible, and that just happens to be C. I imagine it like this - reduce 4d spacetime to 3d so that you can visualise it. x & y is 2 directions in space, and z is time. If you take a 30cm ruler and suppose that that represents the speed at which stuff moves through space-time (a fixed constant) then: *standing it upright means that you aren't moving at all through space, but the full ruler length through time (z). * now tilt it a little on the x axis and you can see that you are now moving in x direction through space a little, but you've had to sacrifice some movement through time (z axis). * now tilt it the same, but including some y axis. Now you'll see that you're moving through both x and y space, but you've had to sacrifice even more y axis (time). So it's a bit like there is a constant speed which everything moves through space-time, and if you don't move in space at all then you move at maximum speed through time. Or if you move through space as fast as possible then you don't get to move through time at all (like a photon). But really... a physics forum will be full of people that can explain it really well, and so when you put forward your objections they will be able to point out exactly where you've miscalculated. Note: obviously talking about 'moving' through space independently of time is somewhat contradictory as movement by definition implies a before & after. This is just a limitation of the english language.

This is exactly why a claim of atheism is always contained within a particular context. That context might often be implicit, but there is a context all the same. If someone believed in God as an alien who came to earth and created life here, then I might be less inclined to say that I'm an atheist. If the conversation is in the context of what we might consider mainstream religions, then I would easily decide that I'm an atheist. E.g. Alien creator = sounds not too unreasonable = Agnostic. A god that violates the laws of known physics = Sounds totally unreasonable without some kind of evidence = Atheist. A god that is self-contradictory in nature = Does not compute = not worth even considering. Ironically, Lians' & Wesley's determination to force a specific definition of 'God' from me is exactly the kind of child-like reasoning that Christians, etc, use against atheists. Theists tend to ask for disproof of something that cannot be disproved, and these guys ask for the definition of something that doesn't exist. Listen and understand what I am saying, and you'll learn not to make yourself look so foolish. You are the one making absolute statements here, and projecting your own definition of God onto other people. I am simply pointing out that there is a difference between an idea that violates the known laws of nature, and an idea that is logically self-contradictory. Contradictions simply do not exist, while the known laws of nature are subject to change / expansion. My posts here, to which you object, are simply telling truth - something which you seem determined to show that you do not value. I am pointing out to the op that it is a mistake, objectively speaking, to equate the improbable with the logically impossible, and that to argue over that distinction is redundant as improbability is enough, in the absence of evidence. If you've personally suffered because of religious bullshit, then that's sad for you. But truth is truth, and your disingenuous use of nit-picking semantics and word-play used to try to get other people to jump through redundant hoops just highlights that you are not approaching this from an objective perspective. Think for yourself instead of regurgitating Stefan's material. Stefan is right on - but he is able to apply his reasoning to specific or implied context. When you reiterate it as absolute you just show that you don't understand it. The crux of the OPs post was that he hadn't understood the difference between proving a positive assertion, and not being required to disprove a negative one. To start talking about square circles, while being appropriate in general (especially as the OP mentioned an Roman Christian upbringing), is to entirely miss the point of his misunderstanding.

Hmm.... not really. It's not the same at all.

Intuitively Einstein's theory of relativity is completely insane. It would have been even more so before he provided his evidence. I'm not giving people reasons - reality is. You claim rationality yet deny reality. You're speaking in the manner of a man damaged by other people's lack of reason. That doesn't give you the right to tell other people that their observatoins of reality are wrong. You want to mask the one objective truth with your own rose-tinted truth because it makes you feel more comfortable. Shame on you. Nor is your reply that of a intellectually honest person. The thread is about atheism, so choose a deity. ANY deity at all which doesn't also happen to be self-contradictory by definition. Lets invent one - a being who can create new life at will, and is immortal. That sounds pretty godlike to me. Lets make him invisible too.

Easy - any god which is not a self-contradiction. I.e. not a square circle. This has already been covered.

I can relate to a certain extent, indirectly. My grandfather died about a year ago (maybe 2 - i don't have a very involved experience of the passage of time), and I got chatting to an uncle I don't see very often - the youngest of 4. My mother used to get a little upset and put out when he'd mention that he had a bad childhood - i think some of it came out because he wasn't particularly interested in looking after my grandfather when he got frail/dementia etc, which upset my mum. Anyhow, he explained to me how he wasn't really a dad. he just went to work, went to the pub for a drink after, and then came home and sat in his chair and read the paper - or whatever. It didn't sound terrible, but he asked "do you remember you mum and dad taking you on days out? playing games and watching tv together?". I'd replied that yes - infact my parents are too smothering which makes it harder for me to be as close to them. Anyway, he said that he doesn't have any of those memories, and that's when I realised that there is something in his point of view - after it was contrasted with my childhood where i could want for nothing (and as far as i can tell it will be the same for his child, which is great). Anyhow, the point if this isn't to talk about me, but I mentioned it because I think I can understand your feelings. And I also know how my immediate family don't understand my uncle, and think he's just not a very good guy. I'm pretty sure if they chatted it out that they could understand why he's been upset, but knowing my mum I do suspect that it would have to be done carefully because she is very emotionally driven. i don't think that it would go well if he used the word "abuse" directly. Perhaps he could describe it like that after everyone has an understanding of why he's upset. So i'm not an expert, but i would only suggest you ask yourself if it could be constructive to express how strongly you feel, but with some carefully thought language which might give you the chance to say what you need and it actually sinking in? Whats the point of saying it all (assuming you do want to see if you can be a closer family) if emotional reactions mean none of it will be heard for what it is? I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong to call it abuse, but you should choose your language / timing according to which end you're trying to achieve. If it's just carthasis, with little concern for consequences, then fine. But otherwise you might be able to achieve a result that is better for you.

Ofcourse. And I challenge anyone to prove that he doesn't exist. I'm telling you that [a] God *could* exist, so why would I suppose that I could prove that santaclause doesn't? I'm not enabling delusional thinking, I'm encouraging logically correct thinking. If anything your position is enabling delusional thinking, because it is detached from reality - you can't deliberately teach people your own preferred flavour of logical truth, regardless of it's validity, and then complain when people think incorrectly.

I've not watched all of it, so feel free to point me to specific parts... The trouble is that while I agree with Stefan when he talks about consciousness without matter being self-contradictiory, it is so only within the context of our current understanding of the nature of the universe. It's not a logical contradiction in the sense that 2+2=5 is. And the trouble with determining that something is a logical contradiction based upon the known properties of the universe is that it ignores the fact that our knowledge of the universe itself is inherently self-contradictory - Is it endless? That doesn't make sense. Is it finite in size? That doesn't make sense either. So given that the nature of the universe mystifies us, and we therefore work within the parameters of what we do at least know, currently, then one cannot rule out the possibility that those understood and fundamental properties of the universe could change at some point as we learn more. So if we accept that the nature of the universe, and therefore the nature of reality, is open to possible change (as far as our understanding of it is concerned) then we cannot logically use those same properties as absolutes when deciding that consciousness without matter is absolutely contradictory. So again, all we end up with being able to say with absolute certainty is that the odds are sufficiently low that it is rational to consider it impossible. it isn't, though, logically impossible (unless we narrow our definition of consciousness, but that is just using semantics to dodge the question).