Will Torbald

I read a post somewhere else about Islam that really sums up the Religion of Peace nonsense. It said "If Islam were a religion of peace then Islamist extremists should be extremely peaceful". The evidence is clear that the opposite is what happens.

Einstein was an atheist. When he referred to god he meant linguistically, not formally. He believed in Spinoza's god, just the harmony and order of nature, not a deity. You also didn't understand my refutation and mischaracterized it as the argument from a lack of evidence. I didn't say there was no proof. I'm not interested in that discussion. I said that agnosticism is to consider the impossible to be possible. If you can't argue what is being given, please take a second to understand it before launching non sequitors.

The logical error of believing the impossible to be possible.

The debate is not about "the very existence of global warming". It's about how intense it is, how worried we should be, and whether we should do anything at all about it. Like the video I post explains, the real fraud is in the estimated feedbacks, which when actually measured in the real world it shows a decrease in warming rather than a catastrophic increase. So much for predictive power of a politically manipulated model.

Have you read Stef's book on atheism? Or any book on atheism at all? Regarding your title question, I don't see how it would be unacceptable. Anarchism is just a political theory. If you wanted to be a philosopher it would be unacceptable, however, but you didn't ask that.

It's only going to get worse from here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vzMNG2fZc

Will and your idealism are completely incompatible. There is no line of reason joining a universe that splits a pear in two and a person willing to cut the pear with a knife at the same time. It's completely opposite.

So you're saying that when the knife cuts the pear, actually what happens is that the universe wanted the pear to open up and by coincidence it also wanted a knife to move in the same space the pear was occupying - and it only looks like the knife is cutting the pear, but it is actually an optical illusion. As I understand, this is a rejection of causality. Events don't cause other events, they just happen simultaneously with the appearance of causality, but it is a "harmony" that it looks like it is. Another example would be if I were to throw you over the roof of a skyscraper. It only looks as if I am throwing you, and it looks as if you fall on the ground and splatter and die. It also looks as if I just committed murder, but in fact, it was the will of the universe in accordance to the harmony of the monads that you would die by high speed concussion with the concrete of the ground. Again, you can't prove that I caused your death because there is no causality. It was just the movement of the simultaneous fracture of your craneum with the ground, and the ground being very hard against your head. But the ground the never caused you to die, nor did I cause you to fall. It was all a convenient convention.

You said you could interface with all monads, so you can affect me. Although you also said that you can affect machines since that would be you affecting yourself. Well, I'd like to see you trying to affect machines with your mind. Isn't that another conclusion of your idealism? How about this: Alter the servers of the forum to display images of unicorns, but only do it with your mind.

Alright Mr. Mind, use your powers to make me do something outside of my will. It's easy for you since I am just a figment of your own mind. Go ahead.

Since you used your brain to think and write this, you shouldn't trust this argument as true if you believe in it. So it is false and a self detonating complaint. If you used anything other than your brain to think please let me experiment on you and probe you with machines. Or, well, maybe another scientist in a research center. Like a neurologist. If this idea came to you as divine revelation, you would contract the James Randi Foundation, prove it is divine, and get the million dollars price. And call the Pope while you're at it. He could make you a Saint, or even better, a prophet.

To say that everything is god is equal in practice to nothing being god. But you don't earn a get-out-of-jail free card by making that assertion since you haven't proven a positive claim. At least, I admire your honesty in how this is just comforting for you to think about. At some point the training wheels have to come out, though.

The fact that there is support at all for it brings to mind images of witch hunting and inquisition.

Great, at least you know biology. But you forgot to bolden the "actual evolutionary biology" next to scientists. You also forgot to read all of the article, and all the sources of the each point, then you forgot to integrate all of them under one theory to explain all of them at the same time. Because only evolution does that. How easy it is to dismiss it without actually studying it, so easy. One simple misconception you make is that fossils are dated with the isotope concentrations inside the fossil when in fact what arechaeologists do is date the rocks and samples around the fossil of the same geological age. Yes, biochemists need to understand evolution because only though evolution does biochemisty makes sense. A physicist that doesn't believe in evolution is completely lost in the middle ages. Nowadays even physicists have documentaries about evolution, because physics underlies all of science. It is a disgrace that a medical student is saying "it is a theory" as if he didn't know what a scientific theory means. And I know you know what it means, you can't be that ignorant. I expect that from religious people, not students of science, or worse, people who will have other's lives at their hands.

It is understandable to have doubts when insufficient information is had. I don't think you are doubting evolution from the perspective of a well knowledged, thoroughly investigated, no nook left uncrannied person. It is almost impossible for a lay person to know and understand every single evidence for evolution without an academic knowledge of it, at which point you would be an evolutionary scientist. It would be as if I, with no knowledge of advanced mathematics, went to a physics college and yelled that general relativity is difficult to consider as more than a working theory. Since you don't have sufficient knowledge, it looks as if people believe this religiously - perhaps because you incorrectly assume that all the knowledge you have is all the knowledge there is, and others know as much as you - and since with the little knowledge that you have it would be difficult to believe, they must be religious! Indeed, if it were true that they only know as much as you, they would be. But they don't know as much as you. You know much less than scientists, actual evolutionary biologists, and all other branches of it. If you wish to know as much, learn it. http://ideonexus.com/2012/02/12/101-reasons-why-evolution-is-true/

Why should it be left out of the question? You are making predictions and assumptions about people with your "I can tell that most of you atheists would be theistic if you were born in medieval times" comment. Well, what kind of atheist? Why medieval and not pre medieval? I pointed out that it doesn't take modern knowledge to be an atheist, that it was well established before medieval times, and that the nature of the character you are predicting is important. What you're doing is a broad shotgun method of lumping people together with no regard to accuracy. I would not want to be lodged in with an agnostic atheist like you, nor would I like to be told what I would do in a situation without any relevant parameters as if you knew anyone outside of you. As far as your hypothesis goes, atheism has been increasing due to the spread of science into the popular culture, stronger evidences for evolution, big bang, and so on. People no longer need to wonder in the dark and turn to religion for answers when science already does that. Also, it is growing in countries were separation of church and state is somewhat respected, but everywhere else is still stuck in the 15th century. It could be that some people are getting smarter, but it also is that smart people have better answers now.

Philosophers were destroying theism before the medieval times without the modern scientific knowledge we have now. An actual "god doesn't exist" atheist only needs philosophy to support his position, the rest are either agnostic or undecided. The second sentence however is very strange: "very real spiritual" is a laughable oxymoron. Are you honestly suggesting that schizophrenic people are actually in contact with spirits rather than having brain damage?

This is exactly why I stopped talking to him.

So the parent in question should either lie about their sacrifice, or not sacrifice at all in the first place. Since they have already sacrificed, and the author is lamenting the revelation of their sacrifice to their children, then only lying is what is available in this case. Or the mother could have had the children, and then not sacrifice at all for them, and not give them any sort of quality education or food because that would be sacrifice. Or she should have aborted and ended the deal then. Or she should have not gotten pregnant twice in the first place. Or she could have - and inifinite regression of different outcomes from an infinite set of probabilities in the past. Isn't that guilt justified, though? It's instantaneous. Someone does something for you, and you just feel it, the need to reciprocate. Otherwise we would call that sociopathy or any other sort of lack of empathy state. Is it really a guilt trip to tell your kids that you did things for them? Not rhetorical either, I am asking. Because the alternative is to say "I've done nothing for you! That job I gave up? I just wanted the free time. That career I didn't pursue? I wasn't good at it anyway" - the message intended to convey is "I love you, and that's why I spared time for you. Don't think that I don't care about you". To me it says more about the children when they heard “If after all I have sacrificed for my children at least one of them cannot retire me by the time I reach the age of fifty-two, then I have not done something right.” because it is true. What can a mother do that would make her children abandon her after taking care of them for their entire young lives? Even after they admit it "I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my mother" they still don't want to actually do anything in gratitude because it was a 'guilt trip'. The real guilt crime would be if the father had come back and asked for retirement. That would have been a massive fail.

If telling someone that a mathematical error is wrong removed my credibility, I would endorse your comment. If the answer to 2 + 2 were Infinity, it would be wrong. Since the answer to his disertation is Infinity, I believe it to be certain that it is wrong. If his comments were about a fluid, subjective, aesthetic, or any other matter of opinion, I wouldn't dare tell someone they were mistaken as there is not even a chance to be right.

Lay off the strawmen for once. I'm talking about degrees of irrationality and control. You are right that both are breaking the NAP, but the degree to which they are pernicious is important.

You shouldn't waste your time with this idea. Because it is a waste of time, and a very bad idea. Also, it's nothing new. It's as old as dinosaurs. Finally, infinite regression isn't just unpopular, it's wrong.

It's not only Occam's Razor, but it also creates an inifinite regression of origins. If you need something before the universe, and call it origin, you also need an origin for the origin of the origin for the origin of the origin. Then you have to use special pleading to say that there is only one origin, and it doesn't regress because this origin is very special and nice and it doesn't need another origin to exist.

While we have a rather structured definition of morality, what is traditionally meant as morality is general benevolence, non violence towards others, lack of prejudice, and so on. The kind of philosophical regime such as UPB isn't really useful in this case such as the behavior of children who are clearly not murderers, thieves, or rapists. It could even be called a matter of aesthetic morality on the practical field of every day life. A person who is racist towards black and chinese people wouldn't be considered moral next to someone who treats people with respect on their character, not their race. Arguing about the initiation of force in a relatively free environment in a secular society with division of state and religion - and saying that it is just as wrong as a theocracy of sharia or inquisition is extremist and fundamentalist. Pure black and white, no nuance to it. Ask yourself, in this false dichotomy, where would you rather live? And if the answer is that you don't care either way, then go to Iran or Saudi Arabia and open shop, open your mouth and speak logic and reason, and see if it's just as nice as where you are now.

And when you deny something based on incredulity, you're just not using reason. The proof is in the literature. Since you wishfully remain ignorant, you can't make the case that the burden of proof hasn't been met. I am not going to educate you, that's something you have to do before denying the evidence.