Rick Horton

This is an interesting video. I'm wondering what your thoughts are. I'm still parsing through mine. This video discusses probabilities of life happening randomly, and I'm not sure how or if it's using some sort of misdirection or distraction that's easy to dismiss, so I wanted you guys to watch it, too, and tell me if I'm missing something. It seems to make a strong case.

On my way to work now, so I'll continue this when I get home, if you want to argue that point.

You're entitled to that opinion, but it reflects a certain epistemology. I don't share that epistemology. I don't believe we can take the existence or appearance of anything for granted if we're philosophers inquiring into the ultimate nature of reality. So we simply disagree on epistemology. Obviously in the course of everyday life we have to use shortcuts and our best educated guesses. But when it comes to philosophy and truly trying to understand the universe, I think nothing can be taken for granted. It's really going to be tough for you to make that argument. Feel free to, but it's going to be frustrating. You see, I don't have to prove that you are posting. You are posting. I know this.

The existence of some things aren't necessary to prove. Like you, water, the sun, clouds, et...

As far as I'm concerned, everything you said are indeed possibilities, however slight. In fact, the rabbit hole goes even deeper since there is of course the possibility that "you" aren't who "you" think you are. We simply don't know what's going on metaphysically. We only have our best guesses to go on. That doesn't mean my best guess isn't pretty similar to yours. I just recognize it as a best guess given the always limited information available to me as a human being lacking omniscience. If you read my posts on this thread, what I agree is that we should stop focusing on what "atheist" means and speak in terms of what % probabilities someone believes there is that whatever you are asking about is the case. All percentage guesses are made with incomplete information, and all percentage guesses could be both correct and incorrect at the same time. It might be a guess and not a guess. possible and impossible, slight and not slight. You and not you. We know and we don't know, all at the same time. Lacking omniscience while possessing it. Stopping focus while completely focused. We might even understand and not understand each other at the same time. Trippy and not trippy, eh? Correct. I assume you're posting this stuff to try to make the fact that humanity lacks certainty sound absurd because it could have implications that also sound absurd. But the world can be absurd. In fact, many have found that it seems to be quite absurd. Or maybe you're just being playful. If so, enjoy. Well, I may be posting while not posting at all. Correct. May. What % goes into that "may" is another discussion. Anyway, I'll leave you to your repeated postings of seeming absurdities. If you believe something sounding absurd makes it 100% impossible, you are entitled to that belief. No he/she, ( not sure which sex ) is posting. No doubt about that.

Not a chance. You are posting.

Saying Libertarian politician is like saying pregnant virgin, lol

Hear, hear. Reality is very absurd!

I hope you accept my apology. I'm sorry for using the word terrible. . Let me say, instead, it was not as useful an analogy is maybe you could have used... Sorry.

Rape is a terrible example. Physical trauma heels. Psychological trauma lingers forever. Rape is not a physical form of violence that comes and goes. It is an extreme psychological assault. Rape causes (in many cases) self ostricization. I'd much rather get punched in the nose than raped, or assaulted psychologically. Ostracization is worse than violence as a way to enforce. You have just as little chance in escaping either, but physical wounds at least have a chance sometimes of healing without breaking your brain into a thousand bits.

Having a minimum wage doesn't make any sense. It's going to make all prices higher anyhow, and the people that made 9 bucks an hour before, are now making minimum wage, unless they get a "raise" and a LOT of the time that doesn't happen. So it's a pay cut for people who worked their way up to 9 bucks an hour. Lets say min wage is 7.50. You started your job at 7.50 hr. You worked a couple years and now you make 9 bucks an hour. You just received a 1.50 pay cut per hour now that you're back down to min wage. Will your boss give you 10.50 an hour to compensate. No. Probably not. So prices increase, your pay "really" decreases, and jobs hire fewer people. I swear it's unbelievable that raising the minimum wage gets votes, but it still works!!! It's proof that most people don't want or care about truth. Most people are totally brainwashed by either religion, or politics.

Btw, I don't believe claiming property is moral. The only property anybody really has is the sum of the experience of their reality. All else can only be preserved ultimately through the barrel of a gun if there is a refusal on one party's behalf to obey the other, contract or no contract. Or you can show me my error in this statement without detouring from what I said, and adress it in its entirety. Therefore property is a claim, not a thing, and is immoral to enforce, therefore immoral to impose a claim of yours against mine, etc...

Ostracism is probably worse than violence. Free will, freedom, and morals, don't seem to have much to do with popular culture. So with contracts, the most successfull, therefore powerful insurance, dispute resolution firms, etc, will cater to the most equitable segment, the most, the most popular segment in order to stay in business and make money, and again, these arent the most moral just because they are the most popular. But how do you make sure that there is mobility for yourself as a moral, free person, in a society based on contracts that would be based on popularity of wants and needs, and not on your individual freedoms? Whenever many, many people that you don't know, have contracts that you can either sign, obey, or be "ostracized" (which has various results that could cause huge conflict) if you don't sign, you have a huge decrease in mobility, freedom, and liberty to change your mind, grow, be where you want, do what you want, wear, eat, drink, smoke, etc....what you want. That's not freedom. It's participatory intrapment. You end up in the same place, but perhaps worse than if you had a sloppy, slow, beauracratic government in charge. What I do is private to a large extent, and contracts will likely be as invasive in forcing people to behave in ways they don't want because the mobility will be so crushed by so many contractual obligations that if they don't get in with a lot of them, any of them, or most if not all of the big contracts they probably won't have any liberty, mobility, place to live, etc...

I'll go further and say that contracts are immoral. They're not in the moment, they restrict mobility, and prevent the changing of one's mind. Verbal agreements and reputation should be as far as it goes. Trust in people you CAN trust. It's a personal thing. Who ever said we have to control, or trust people that we don't know? Keep it simple, and personal. Sure it could damage many areas like medicine, infestructure, and technology, but personally I think liberty is far more valuable than those things.

This is pretty troubling. We want to be free, right? What good is it to have no government, but "then" have contracts which can limit a person MORE than a sloppy government which tries to use force. A streamlined, efficient, contract based society could be far worse because the tentacles could be unstoppable in limiting freedom. It's when people get nosy in other people's business that problems occur. I haven't heard a good argument for why contracts as opposed to government would restrict people less. In fact, a society with thousands of contracts that weave in and out of everyday life could be terrifying to try and manouver through. I'd rather (untill there were strict limits on contracts that could end up making me immobile) go with a big, sloppy, lazy government than a bunch of intricate hoops that dont use force to make me comply, but use economic pressures that leave me no alternative. Insurance could voluntarily create situations FAR more invasive than government, in order to afford people mobility across geographic areas. I can easily imagine blood tests, drug tests, fines, check ups, psychological examinations that all go totally mad in a contract driven society, and it would have a far greater efficiency in it's terror. If the CORE reasons you want freedom are important, you must be careful NOT to let contracts become as immobilizing as laws, because ending up with something far worse than any society ever imagined could result, instead of something that gives REAL liberty.

Maybe you want me to debate the merits, logic, and morals of being a Christian but since no 3 of those prerequisites exist in Christianity there is nothing to debate. However, I can and did make a statement. It's not a debatable statement because the bar is too high to challenge. So, I know this thread is about God in general but since there is no God in general (that's like debating an unknowable entity of some shape,size, color, that doesn't need a requirement to discuss, which is nonsense) I'll refer to merely one example of God which is the one that has the biggest impact on my life. If God exists (Jesus ), it only exists as an idea, a story, a fiction, a distraction, a fairy tale, and a mechanism for power over other people. The invisible bully in your corner, or the boogie man under your bed depending on which scenario you need him for. Other than that, there is no logical discussion, and no possible debate. The only possible debate is to which "degree" God has done good as opposed to damage, as this real idea, yet fictional reality. And that isn't a necessary debate outside of the atheist community. Inside the Atheist community, especially here in a volunteeryist community where we all understand that enforcing "moral concepts" through unchallengable force is tyrannical, sick, abusive, destructive, and monsterous, there isn't a debate possible here (with each other) about God, either. If God is (like I said) an idea that can conform to any idea or concept than God isn't worth debating because it's too vague a concept to be defined, and you can't define a word without a meaning, definition, shape, form, motive, relationship, or any other possible concrete identity. Let the person first define God, then after THEY/YOU define it, maybe we can have a discussion. Until then it's pretty much pointless unless you are talking about a God that people have a definition for. Christianity is one of those, and I work with that definition for efficiency of conversation.

I put this vlog together about Christian's and morality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnxdPNi3IUc

Debating with Christians is insane. They've already turned their back on reason, so they really don't care about truth. They have turned their backs on the VERY idea that you can even know right from wrong. They read that shit in the bible, follow the orders of the Pastors, and spew the disease to the children. There is no need to debate God in realm of reality. It's utter abuse. Christians are not moral. They are abusers by turning people away from reason, and they can be SHAMED, but not reasoned with. Shaming them is all you can do, because you see, THEY deserve it, like any other members of the human race that try to control your brain by killing your logic.

Yeah. That's true. I use it to mean it's other definitions too, but in this video, not so much.

It's not an admission of defeat at all. It's rude, though.

I'd reverse that. They have plenty of rationality until it comes to their faith.

Well, sure. Honor, meaning: adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct: I must as a matter of honor avoid any taint of dishonesty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdnV6pSJK3U

absolutely! But, and only but, if you put aside the money problem they still fall so far beneath the moral bar that it's just a real bad sign that so many people don't care about that problem with it.

This is a list of questions I asked a guy named Jesse, on Facebook. He wouldn't answer them. He kept distracting, and eventually I told him that if I answer his questions but he wont answer mine then he is not really having a conversation, and the debate has to end. He didn't answer the questions so I ended the debate. Here was HIS question to me: How does your philosophy provide for a moral code? By what point of reference can values be determined? Do you point to reason? I wouldn't think so, since a materialist worldview can't provide for such things. After all, under the materialst framework, we're all just dancing to our DNA. And my dance may be different than yours. According to that worldview, our conduct is governed by a series of impulses; reason plays no role in it. Is it what ever feels moral? Here was my answer: The source of morality? You mean where does it come from? Wow, that's a hard question, but the only real answer I can give you is that rationality is the tool I use to test moral theories. I do however think that humans show great capacity to ignore rationality, and that is where morals get screwed up. My answer is that my moral core comes from my yearning to live a good, honest, honorable life, with dignity, pride, good naturedness, integrity, duty, and reason. The best way for these elements of what I consider to be the most fulfilling way for me to live is by testing them for contradictions, flaws, merit, etc.... by using the scientific method of rationality. Now, here was my questions back to him, which he refused to answer over the course of days, before I just decided to end the debate: How does a belief in an unprovable God lead to better morals? Is it because you require faith over proof, or in other words, that you choose irrationality over rationality. The disregard of scientific method to the preference of a book full of universal contradictions, blood shed, rape, the threat of annihilation in some unproven, un examinable place called hell to all believers in the Jewish faith, and all people of other religions that don't recognize merely ONE of thousands of religious icons? Is it a moral man that tells other men they are going to hell because they don't believe that Jesus, ( a guy that hasn't been around for 2000 years) is Gods son, and that he somehow died by his father's will for us? Are you saying that people of the Jewish faith are all going to Hell, Jesse Craig Dyer? Are you saying that without the belief in Christianity morals didn't exist, and that they can't exist now? Are you saying that only Christians know morality? Are you saying that morals are merely taught by the Bible, and are not inherently appreciated, felt, understood, and recognized by human beings who haven't read the Bible? Are you saying that out of the thousands of religions over time, it is rational to say that Christianity, a 2000 year old religion is more accurate, scientific, reality based, and provable than say Zeus? I know you debate a lot and are into politics so I'm sure you can pacify these questions without taking them personal? I hope so. I'm REALLY not trying to mock you. I'm trying to understand whether or not you are just so irrational that it's no use having this kind of conversation with you. I don't want to bang my head against the wall over and over with Christians in general because they most times want to have it both ways. Science, and faith, They will try and use rational arguments while at the core the line is drawn in the sand with, well, you know that Jesus Christ is the savior, walked on water, rose from the dead, was born of a virgin, etc.... Those are all extremely irrational things to say. So it's frustrating trying to pretend we are in a rational debate when you're eventually going to pin all of your arguments on me by using extreme irrationality. That's not fair to me, and it doesn't get you anywhere either.