Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Liars for Jesus deny pushing religion in schools as the bills to enhance religion in schools spur fights between faiths. Is much of this the fault of those Supreme Court justices who are willing to put their own faith above all else even thought The Constitution explicitly implies that thou shalt not require the Ten Commandments to be posted in public schools.

Then Jesus said “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand” Matthew 7:26.

Biden’s approval rating among Religious Groups in 2023.

Republicans running for governor are some of the most extremist candidates in the country.

World of Woo: Multivitamins are an expensive placebo.

Environment:  How do you make salty water drinkable?

World Happiness Report 2024 in PDF.

Why I am no longer a Hindu.

Rethinking Atheism – 3 Quarks Daily.

What the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy fossil reveals about nudity and shame.

A Bugatti car, a first lady and the fake stories aimed at Americans.

Long Reads: RFK Jr.’s family doesn’t want him to run. The scientist’s 10 commandments. Philosophy was once alive. Is it rational to believe in God? 5 Objections to Pascal’s Wager.  Western civilisation has succeeded because Western Christians have accepted its liberal and secular values.

Podcast: a retrospective of Daniel Dennett on Philosophy Talk.

Sunday Book Club: Demystifying the Sacred.

Some photographs taken last week.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Videos: What rules would govern John Rawls’s ‘realistic Utopia’?  Kathleen Stock and Richard Dawkins question Modern Gender Identity.  Steven Pinker: Why smart people believe stupid things.  Is there a second arrow of time?  New research says yes.  World AI Conference in China.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a great week!

[unapologeticParticipant]

In the clip of the Oklahoma Schools superintendent. His first mention of the bible, he said “… the (pause) bible …” You could tell he was about to call it ‘The Holy Bible’ and caught himself.  🙂

[unapologeticParticipant]

Rethinking Atheism
Problem 1: we’re Arrogant
Me: So what. You can’t shame me, or gilt trip me out of my position.

Problem 2: Myopia.
I don’t see the good in ‘faith’. It builds community, promotes pacifism.
Me: I see the bad outweighs the good.
‘Faith’ pits believers against other ‘faiths’. Makes them ‘sheep’, subjects of an anti-human despot. Makes them victims of self appointed “god’s representatives on earth”. Compels them to ignore the problems of this world in favor of an unseen, unproven ‘next world’.

The sheep are more myopic.

[StregaModerator]

Thanks Reg!!!

[_Robert_Participant]

unapologetic wrote:

Rethinking Atheism Problem 1: we’re Arrogant Me: So what. You can’t shame me, or gilt trip me out of my position. Problem 2: Myopia. I don’t see the good in ‘faith’. It builds community, promotes pacifism. Me: I see the bad outweighs the good. ‘Faith’ pits believers against other ‘faiths’. Makes them ‘sheep’, subjects of an anti-human despot. Makes them victims of self appointed “god’s representatives on earth”. Compels them to ignore the problems of this world in favor of an unseen, unproven ‘next world’. The sheep are more myopic.

Agree. I still have a hard time taking any fully formed adult seriously if they mention talking snakes, world -wide floods, dead people rising, etc…….

And yet men in suits and ties, endlessly regurgitate these myths.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Philosophy was once alive.

This article is super-interesting.  If I had to spend my life doing that kind of philosophy, I don’t think I would do it.  It would make me feel like shooting myself.

Their whole problem is, with their meaning of life theories, is that they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, in the sense that they don’t have any basic theory of what the meaning of life is – what kind of thing it is; or what meaning in life is.

I believe that meaning in life is when things affect my goals, so those things are significant or have meaning for me.  I attend to those things that affect my goals and that therefore have meaning to me.

The meaning of life?  What does that mean?  The purpose of my life?  Living a worthwhile life?  Living a life full of goals, or a few big, worthwhile goals?

What is value?  It’s the quality of a thing that helps us to thrive.  The thing that helps us to thrive, has value.  These people should study evolutionary ethics, it would answer a lot of their problems, and it is actually interesting, vivid and vital.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Simon Paynton wrote:

The meaning of life?  What does that mean?

I have a kind of dismissive opinion on these questions, although like wrt free will, I just go with my instinct to act in life as though I have it. I definitely feel I have a purpose, and that life has meaning. If those feeling are just delusions or illusions, then they’ve emerged “naturally” in any case, and I find I’m most comfortable going with those feelings.

It’s the philosophical debate over how “true” or “real” those feelings are, and how they fit or don’t fit with nature that often feel like useless distractions. Just as is the suggestion that we all just live in a simulation.

That said, cognitively, I’m pretty sure that we’re poop guns, but that’s basically an irrelevant metaphor. All life, even bacteria are metaphorically poop guns, but we’re a million kinds of other things as well.

I only came here to express why I think we probably feel we have purposes, and value systems. The simplest, reductive answer is that these feelings drove our species, as they’ve driven all species, to act in the benefit of the species. Simple as that.

What seems most profound to me is that sometimes it’s easy to presume that our minds are the center of our universe. In a sense, they are, while when we die, it becomes suddenly irrelevant, except for what parts of us live on as memories in other people still living.

In a somewhat darker, bottom line profundity, our minds have only ever existed to further the spread of our seeds. It’s all about the gonads, and that is the sole “purpose” of our brains. The role of our brains has expanded to make us positive influences on the efficacy of the gonads of others. Skills like teaching, arts, cultural norms, ethics, and other human products are just emergent behaviors that are more evolutionarily impactful in positive ways than in negative ways.

I won’t go so far as to say that nature or God had these intentions all along. We’re just the result of billions of years of accidental survival, and replication, that happen to feel profound. Which I’m happy with.

[_Robert_Participant]

Only people who get recorded into popular history before they died have meaning, LOL.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

We’re just the result of billions of years of accidental survival, and replication, that happen to feel profound. Which I’m happy with.

Exactly.  We can’t have truth without a knower.  What is truth without someone to judge it?  When I say, I ought to help this old lady across the road, I am saying I feel I ought to do it.

[UnseenParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

I believe that meaning in life is when things affect my goals, so those things are significant or have meaning for me.  I attend to those things that affect my goals and that therefore have meaning to me.

The philosophical question is not about what your life means to you.

The meaning of life?  What does that mean?  The purpose of my life?  Living a worthwhile life?  Living a life full of goals, or a few big, worthwhile goals?

In the end, the meaning of your life comes down to what you have left in your wake. Thus, I agree with Sartre that a life only has meaning upon death. Just like a painting isn’t finished until the painter puts his brush and paints away for the last time,

What is value?  It’s the quality of a thing that helps us to thrive.  The thing that helps us to thrive, has value.  These people should study evolutionary ethics, it would answer a lot of their problems, and it is actually interesting, vivid and vital.

Value is not just one thing. For starters, philosophers distinguish between intrinsic value (knowledge, truth, beauty, and love are often proffered as examples) and extrinsic value (monetary value, status, academic grades, are common examples).

So, one must be clear what one would count as a valid answer.

[UnseenParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Exactly.  We can’t have truth without a knower.  What is truth without someone to judge it?  When I say, I ought to help this old lady across the road, I am saying I feel I ought to do it.

If something is true, it’s true even if no one knows it or will ever know it. If no one had ever discovered the Higgs boson, the thing would still exist.

The nondiscovery of many things is no doubt holding back science in many fields.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

If something is true, it’s true even if no one knows it or will ever know it. If no one had ever discovered the Higgs boson, the thing would still exist.

Yes, but is truth the same as existence?  Surely truth is a quality of a measurement of existence.  This measurement is an accurate representation of existence; or not.  This proposition (that there exists the Higgs boson) is true, or not.

So, someone or something has to do the measuring, and consciously process the measurement information to turn it into knowledge: i.e., truth.  I know there is a Higgs boson, because the unique signature of its existence has been measured.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Simon Paynton wrote:

We can’t have truth without a knower.

Unseen wrote:

The philosophical question is not about what your life means to you.

I hope the following, self-referencing logic doesn’t sound too convoluted.

We could just presume there’s a consciousness or two, e.g. God and/or humans, that know truth. But sans either, before the word “truth” is invented by any being or consciousness, the universe wouldn’t give a damn about truth. The universe just is what it is; without self-reflection.

We, alone, invented philosophy, because we endeavor to understand how we, and the universe work. As this understanding grows and can be written in textbooks, it becomes science. While topics like free will and purpose in life might never become relevant, except as speculation in conversations between gods, humans, and AI bots. (In chronological order of which presumably evolved first, of course.)

Too many words. This is shorter: “Truth” is a human concept, otherwise irrelevant in a universe before any consciousness in it has emerged. Much less “philosophy”.

Will these concepts still exist, after AI takes over the universe, and until the universe dies?

Sorry. Perhaps I’m only amusing myself right now.

[UnseenParticipant]

2-2=4 (base 10) was true before the universe came into being and will remain so after the last atom falls apart.

The simplest definition of “the truth” is “the truth is that which is the case (whether you know it or not.”

[Author]

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