guitarstring87

Yes it was a very good video! Thank you!

Yeah I should have made it more clear. Thanks for the feed back. Are you an atheist?

The callers main issue was that he didn't want to give up his community. So the 3rd option for the caller Scott, was to take god out of it and use religion for the moral principles. That way he can still keep his family and community. There is no false dichotomy in my post. Either there is something more when you die and superstition is real or there is not. I would also like to point out that the absence of hope does not equal dispair. What i am saying is that Atheism and Religion cant both be the truth. Logic and reason lead me directly to atheism, hope for life after death leads me to religion. An atheist cannot have hope that there is more when they are dead or that there will be some form of eternal justice or he would not be an atheist. There is no 3rd option. So what I am saying, is when the terrible things in life happen... Atheism can offer no hope in regards to death or justice. So to accept atheism (reason) means to deny religion (hope) in regards to death and in regard to justice. The first objective of the post was to point out that the loss of hope is painful. Either there is an afterlife and religion is right or there is no afterlife and religion is wrong. You can't have both. The implications that there is no afterlife hurts deeply. The second objective of the post was to ask the question... When the worst things in life happen to you,would you give up reason in order to have hope? And to get introspective responses from atheists on how they deal with extreme emotional pain and loss. Not hypothetical pain and loss, but personal experiences.

Mormon here. Also trying to reconcile the same issues brought up in the recent podcast "An atheist Apologizes to Christians". I mean this to be an honest and heartfelt discussion. Please think deeply about your responses before posting. In my experience the pain felt by so many to leave religion is from the loss of hope. Religion offers hope that there is more after death... That you can see your family again. If the superstitions aren't real, the people who are dead are dead and there is no more hope in seeing them again so letting go of religion is like letting go of the people you have loved all over again, but permanently. I used to think that living in a pretend reality is a small price to pay for hope. On the other hand, I think the pain of loss and the finality of death pushes me to live my life more fully. If there isn't more after i die, I had better make the most of my life. But how can you cope with the pain of death and injustice? I imagine this is exactly why impoverished or repressed populations are also usually deeply religious. As a parent I have not had to deal with the death of a child, or another person that is so close to my heart. I cant even imagine the pain. I am sure I would trade all of my "reason" for just a shred of hope should I have to deal with something so terrible. Really. How can a person deal with a loss like that without hope? Life is a hard place. I am having a difficult time giving up hope too. It is definitely a painful process and giving up religion has far reaching ramifications, not just for hope, but justice. Is it worth it? Honestly? Would you sacrifice reason for hope? It seems as though the two cannot coexist.

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So if you say some people can morally eat meat, and others cannot and remain moral. Ok, since we can get down with double standards now... I have a WHOLE BUNCH of double standards that I want to put on everyone now that Universal ethics is done away with. First of all... Effective immediately, only I can be right and you have to be wrong. Also it is bad for any of you to be rich but it is good for me to have all the money. No one can marry girls except me and the rest of you all must be celibate. This is just the best. I LOVE double standards. So lets say we do accept your "double think" (George Orwell 1984 if you didn't get the reference). Who decides at what point a man is poor enough to partake in meat morally? Or when the soil is to barren to grow crops? Or if a man has enough access to other nutrition? You perhaps? The government? Why not... You have no problems with double standards and surely you must need a framework that is the epitome of a double standard to carry out what you want. Can you even give me a clear answer of who are "desperate people in desperate conditions"? There is no use for morality in your framework. Life is just a fog of gray. You have absolutely no idea what life is like outside of the states do you? You haven't seen the struggle of life and death with your own eyes have you? You haven't ever watched people starve while starving yourself for weeks and months have you? I have lived in shit holes for the last 7 years of my life from the horn of Africa to far eastern Russia. I have seen scarcity brother... in fact there is nothing scarce about it. People everywhere are hungry and you would take away a food source or call them immoral for feeding themselves or their children. DON'T say you would not because they are “desperate” when you can't even define “desperate” as it relates to food. What applies to me just as well applies to them. Unless of course we use a double standard. In which case it is good for me to murder them and take their food and bad for them to murder me and take my food. If you have been around the world like I have, if you are currently watching your children go hungry on a daily basis, if you walk outside your door in the morning and are surrounded by gaunt faces, AND you still hold to your position... You my misguided friend are the immoral one. You are dead right that it doesn't fall under UPB. Because what you are proposing is immoral and illogical. In the future would you please refrain from asking people to please refrain from anything? You live in double standard world now. No rules buddy. What is bad for you is good for me. Welcome to this living hell called "Post Modernism". I hope you enjoy your stay.

Haha. Oops... You know its only at the bottom of every single page... and I have only been following Stefan for 4 years now... There is another philosopher I follow closely named Stephen Hicks. I guess the two first names got together in my brain and had a baby. Good thing Stefan doesn't look at these damned things anyway

Well I wasn't trying to set up a lifeboat scenario. I was just trying to keep the example situation as simple as possible so as to avoid tangents and still show the VERY real struggle for food. The fact is animals are a valuable food source and a wealth of hard to come by nutrients and other products. The human body requires fats and proteins to survive and those nutrients are not easily found outside the animal kingdom. For example you can and will quickly die in the wilderness without an extremely high caloric intake. Animals, and especially animal fat has an EXTREMELY high caloric value. Even today a man can seriously injure himself or die on a vegetable diet if he does not carefully study and understand complex nutritional factors. Sure... maybe no big deal today when we understand nutrition and you can drive to the grocery store and buy an avocado from California for your fats, and some rice from Taiwan and beans from Mexico for your protein... but supermarkets have only VERY recently become available and still, for only a small portion of the world population. The point I was making about the man in Africa was that many of the people living in the 3rd world are barely living AT ALL. But you would call them immoral for sustaining their lives. Speaking on the note of universality your moral framework not only has to extend to ALL humans, but to all humans throughout ALL TIME. So for you to tell a man in 2015 that he cant eat an animal because it is immoral, then you must be able to tell a man living in 800BC the same thing. To tell a man even 100 years ago living in america that he can't eat meat or use animal products would have been a death sentence. That is why I made reference to Rand's argument. I think the concept of scarcity has been nearly entirely lost on our current generation. People seem to be of the opinion that nature just a wonderful abundance of fruits and berries that it is just crazy that people would EVER consider eating a cute little cow. To those people... Come on out here and join me in the mountain deserts of Afghanistan. Come tell this goat herder that the goats he is raising for food is an immoral act. Spit on him. Call him a murderer. But here is the thing about animals... They take something that humans cant eat, and turn it into something humans CAN eat. So seeing as this Afghan goat herder can't eat sagebrush and thistles... and that is pretty much ALL there is in this god awful place.... but goats CAN eat sagebrush and thistles.... Can you see where I am going with this? It is not just some BS life boat scenario.... When it comes to food... LIFE IS a lifeboat scenario for the vast majority of the earths population today, and throughout the entirety of human history. The concept that animals are an immoral food source is anti-life... not for animals... but for humans. If you understand this concept and still hold to your pro animal opinion, then you are a “human hater”. Go out into nature for a bit. Go on. Don't take any food or water. Don't bring any sort of animal product at all. Go out into nature and see how long you last. You will quickly find out scarcity is real. Animal activists are disconnected from reality.

BAH!...hahahahaha. Hey man, we can be friends We must be careful as to not anger the man with our shenanigans... I have heard things... Terrible things... In fact, legend has it there once was once a man who was said to have lured the exalted being into an open debate... The remains were never found.

Mr. Dean... You sir should be knighted for such and act of bravery. I am sure you would agree that you cherish your now continual world of darkness due to the over exposure of awesome and would gladly trade your other 4 senses for a forum comment from Him (with a capital H).

Ok I see your point. So maybe survival of the "more fit".

I have been following the forum posts for quite some time and haven't seen him respond to forum topics (not to say he doesn't... just that I haven't seen it). So I have generated 3 hypotheses to explain this absence and they are as follows (1 being most likely and 3 being least likely): 1. He uses a different screen name and floats around the forums like a faceless angel, sprinkling us with wisdom glitter that falls from his philosophical unicorn... which he rides... majestically. 2. He is actually a hologram created by space pirates meant to guide humanity, however, due to a horrible oversight, he cannot depress keys on a keyboard to respond to forum posts because, as a hologram, he is only a realistic digital portrayal of a human but does not have a body with which to interact with the physical world. 3. He is a super busy guy who is preoccupied thinking about important things and giving us a seemingly endless stream of awesome content like books, pod-casts, and giving out free psychological counseling to listeners who call in. (but come on... seriously guys... who HONESTLY thinks this could be the reason...) Anyway, if you ever see the guy (and live to tell the tale), recommend to him that he should explore human cloning and make a copy of himself who's sole responsibility is to hang out in the forums. Oh and make sure the clone has hair... like a lot of hair... so we can tell the difference.

Fittest also implies competition and resource scarcity. I don't think "fittest" is a misnomer or an oversimplification as organisms compete for resources to survive. Those that survive have a greater opportunity for reproduction.

Stephan uses likes to use the scientific method as a base for UPB (seeing as this is his forum I like to tie everything back to his concepts if possible). In the book he stresses that the first step in testing the hypothesis is that you test it against its own framework and make sure it doesn't self destruct. If it passes you move on to the next step which is to test the hypothesis against REALITY. If it passes that test then it may proceed. Therefore logic, and reality, are the two most important gate keepers that a hypothesis must pass. The entire concept of empiricism is that the abstract [hypothesis] MUST submit to reality in order to be tested and validated. That is not a baseless assertion, it is fact. So then, I am using that same concept that empiricism trumps mysticism, reality trumps abstract, and the present trumps the future. The present can be empirically tested and observed, and the future cannot. Therefore “what is”, or “the present”, or “reality”, must trump “what could/should be”, “the future”, and what “has not entered into reality” Like I said. I don't like this. Not at all. I agree that things ideally SHOULD be different. But this argument is pretty solid and I dont know how to overcome it.

Lol... well... you could take the more cynical approach... Economic collapse in a mathematical certainty. There is no turning it around, so you might as well cash in while there is cash and help the system towards its eventual demise.

Listen Factoid... You are in a philosophy forum. Instead of blurting out "facts" about how humans are ruining everything, maybe devote some time and energy to actually refuting an argument with logic instead of overly emotional digital vomit. I was trying to guide you back to first principles by use of Socratic Reasoning. I gave an example of a man in Africa eating a rabbit to sustain his life and supported it with a logic chain (quite politely i might add) that justified WHY it is moral to eat and even gave you a resource (The virtue of selfishness by Ayn Rand) for further study. In order for you to say "eating animals is immoral" you are tasked to logically refute my argument. So quick recap of my basic argument goes like this: Man is alive> Man must eat to stay living> Animals are suitable for human consumption> Man can choose to eat animal OR man can die. So your argument requires that eating and animal is immoral. If there is no other available food source for a man, and he must eat to live, then you are saying that-> Living is immoral<-. Which is the EXACT principle that Ayn Rand refuted extensively in her book "the virtue of selfishness". Your comment was abrasive and condescending to say the least. This is nothing new to animal activism. I watched a YouTube video recently of two guys capturing and relocating a badger NOT KILLING it as CLEARLY stated in the video description. I started reading the comments and noticed a couple trends about the Animal Rights activist comments (of where there is an overabundance). 1. They thought the people were killing the badger which means they didn't bother to read the video description. 2. They spewed a nonstop stream of hateful bile about humanity. 3. Many of them recommended twisted killings of the men who were trying to relocate the badger. One such example sticks out in my mind where the commenter said something to the effect “you should be cut 1000 times and chained to the bottom of a pool full of lemon juice till you drown”. It occurred to me that these people don't want to think... The process goes like this: Feel>Rant>Repeat. Logic, or even READING is nowhere to be found. All they want to do is speak. If you prefer a cleche, "Those who know the least, know it the loudest" Take a deep breath and relax. Instead of looking down your nose thinking you are the only one in the world who "gets it"... Try closing your mouth and opening your ears. Read some books. Talk to experts. Use logic. Lastly, no one is worshiping Stephan. But considering this is HIS FORUM... you ought to check the tude bro. The link to the badger video if you want to post self-righteous comments there too.

You know... I have to agree. I definitely think Stephan's argument has some holes. That is why I gave the example of a baby. They do not comprehend the non aggression principle, but it is not ok to boil them alive and eat them. So i will give arguments for and against. Personally, I can't stand animal activism as a whole. Most "animal lovers" are actually just "human haters" filled with venom and disdain for human existence. But I dont think the point has been logically made yet as to why we shouldn't eat other animals. I think there is something to be said for genetics. It is in our make up to like meat. We are built to digest and gain nutrition from BOTH meat and fruits/vegetables. It is part of nature and maintenance of human existence. As part of our genetic make up, and being physical beings that require maintenance to survive, I dont think you can make the moral argument as to why eating is immoral. It is just nessary. You wouldn't call me immoral for taking a poo... because our body has to poop or it will get sick and die. There fore taking a poop must necessarily be a-moral at worst. It is in our genes. It is just part of being human and living. You will probably argue that "science has advanced to where we no longer need to eat meat"... Well... I am sure science will advance to the point SOMEDAY that we will learn that plants have a preference NOT to be chopped down and eaten. In which case, if we have decided that eating something that doesn't want to be eaten is bad.... what are we going to eat the buddy? I think it is safe to say that most things don't want to be cut up into pieces and eaten, plant or animal. If you believe eating is evil, and we need to eat to live, that must necessarily mean you believe LIFE is evil. Ayn Rand talks about this very thing in "The Virtue of Selfishness". So if you maintain the stance that eating, or specifically eating certain foods, is immoral, the burden of proof falls on you as to why it must be so. If you take up that position then you must explain how a starving man in africa should mortally choose to die before eating a rabbit because soy beans exist somewhere in the world. And that is a helluva task. Whether eating meat is immoral is an interesting question. I dont think stephans explanation of NAP and moral agency is acceptable or satisfactory with the given the necessary exclusion of a human baby.

That is a fantastic answer! Wow. Good stuff. I will read it for sure!

Well I guess I won't fault you for not knowing Good deal man! I am from southern Utah. My parents live up on the other side of Utah lake.

I like that. That seems reasonable and I can accept that answer. What have you to say about the origins of life and how/why it came about? On a separate note... are you from Utah? Or do you just like the sound of the word Wasatch...

Man this is a rough one. I know how you feel and that is a tough situation. I would say the most moral thing would be to only extract what you have put in... or will put in. So stay as close to NET ZERO as possible. People can argue "well what about the roads and the garbage and other public utilities". Yeah... what ABOUT the roads and garbage. You don't have any other option do you but to use a road or have your garbage picked up. Therefore you are absolved from moral responsibility. Be fair in your analysis and judge it the best you can.

Right. And I agree that is a problem. That is why I am having the discussion. However you still have not refuted my argument. Again you are rejecting the fact that reality must trump future possibility without addressing the issue. To make that argument you must address the questions: What is "better", "Why change is necessary", "Why are minds not products of events", and “Why WHAT IS is less desirable than what MIGHT BE. Stephan would call it “arguing from first principles” I don't see how it necessarily negates free will either. I can still choose not to sit in the chair, however when I choose to action on that thought, that reality is real and the one where I would have sat in the chair is gone because it never existed. I am still making the choice about what I do. The future has a selection of possible events that is restricted by past events. So for example, I am sitting here in Afghanistan, in the next 10 seconds hugging my children is not possible because previous choices have lead me down this branch of reality. I still made the choices out of millions of alternate possibilities though. I could have chose to become a doctor or anything else. But the fact that I AM here means that this reality must be the best possible reality because it is the ONLY reality. If you try to retort with quantum theory and parallel universes I will refer you to Stephan's book "Against the gods" Don't get me wrong... We are on the same side, but until I get an argument that refutes it then i cannot rule it out as a possibility. I have chewed on this for a while now and have not found a satisfactory answer. That is why I am bringing it here. To let smarter people than me give it a whack.

I was referring to inter-generational modification of genetic structure. Mutation is what is strange to me. So say there is the first one cell organism that ever figured out how to divide its self into two organisms... why would genetic code change? The cell has reproduced. Why does it not just continue to reproduce with the original genes?

but how could it be living if it couldn't evolve into a living organism? At that point it is like atoms smashing around randomly into each other. I am not a creationist, but it seems like a stretch. So say it was just atoms smashing into each other... that ONE organism would have almost surely died without reproducing (even a-sexually). So that means that basic life forms are just poofing into existence all the time from atoms colliding. So how many trillion random instances of life poofing into existence before one lived long enough to reproduce? Separately, reproduction is an evolved trait. The point is... why isnt the universe sterile of life? If it was at some point... how/why didn't it remain so?