jakelafort

@jakelafort – I think that’s very true.  Self-reporting is unreliable.  Atheists “would say that, wouldn’t they?” because they are against religion.

Dictionary definitions are a lazy way to analyse something complex like atheism or religion.

@jakelafort yup.  My mom wanted Emma and my dad wanted Emily so now I’m Emma Leigh.  People call me both

Davis wrote:

Strega wrote:
@jakelafort saying the universe doesn’t care, is another way of saying it is unaffected, unmoved, and oblivious to the thing being referred to.

^^^^^^^ What Strega said ^^^^^^^^^

Makes sense. And then there is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The observer matters. Also when one says the universe doesn’t care, are t…[Read more]

Strega wrote:
@jakelafort saying the universe doesn’t care, is another way of saying it is unaffected, unmoved, and oblivious to the thing being referred to.

^^^^^^^ What Strega said  ^^^^^^^^^

@jakelafort saying the universe doesn’t care, is another way of saying it is unaffected, unmoved, and oblivious to the thing being referred to.

@jakelafort – I think you could say the same about God.

I disagree that without a human observer then mathematics is absent.  The potential for mathematical entities exists, in the same way that the potential for real phenomena exists.  But yes, mathematical entities require an imaginer to imagine them.

@jakelafort – as Robert said, they’re Platonic forms, they don’t exist in real life.  They exist in the realm of the logical imagination.

@jakelafort – “Says he believes in hell”

– he says he believes in “hell on earth” – that one’s living experience can be a living hell.

He’s talking about many of the concepts that are used in Christianity, but that doesn’t make him a Christian.  I do exactly the same things but in more atheistic language.

@jakelafort –

in an interesting way.

“In other words the pawn acts not out of good conscience but selfishly.”

– I agree in one way – this can go badly wrong, as we see with Isis.  But much of the time, it motivates people to act well.  Self-interest is at the heart of morality anyway.

But with Jordan Peterson’s back-to-basics version this d…[Read more]

@jakelafort –

Logos – 1) the word of God, 2) principle of reason or judgement.

@Jakelafort

– Logos = the word = rationality = reality.

@jakelafort – you don’t want to believe everything you hear.  It’s more scientific to go straight to the horse’s mouth.

@jakelafort – why don’t you watch the half-hour interview he did for British TV, which is on Sunday School May 6th.  Instead of what other people have to say.  That will give you a good representation of what he’s about – you may be surprised.  He doesn’t mention God once, and morality maybe glancingly.

@jakelafort – “a fair synopsis of Peterson”

– from what I’ve seen, it’s more “using psychology to better yourself”.  The religious part probably comes from Jung and his archetypes.  I’ve barely seen him mention religion or morality at all.

The famously painful interview with Sam Harris was a mismatch between different definitions of truth.  Ha…[Read more]

Personally it gives me feelings of Freiheit and Freude.  In fact, I might have a Feier.

@jakelafort – here‘s an excellent related article from Sunday School December 3rd 2017: “Does Religion Make People Moral?”

@jakelafort – “if Germans felt what they were doing was right, then why was there so much widespread denial of knowledge of the holocaust?”

– that’s a very good point, that shows the way to a universal morality or ethics.  They knew they would be condemned by pretty much the whole world, forever, as a definition of evil.  It’s interesting how I…[Read more]

@regthefronkeyfarmer – I agree, a concept doesn’t have to match up with reality.

@unseen – I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

@jakelafort – there are two classes of ethical principles: interpersonal, and cultural.  The interpersonal were the original ones from small groups before culture and religion, which is why they are shared by…[Read more]

@jakelafort – I was agreeing with you.  There are factual aspects of an ethical judgement.  First there’s the action itself, which is is a given fact.  Then there are judgements of how the action fits various ethical criteria – how did it score on fairness, reciprocity, unconditional harm, whatever.  If we understand what these are about, we are…[Read more]

@jakelafort – “BUT it is amenable to reason, so much so that we will find near unanimity as aforementioned.”

– we can say things like, fairness consists of x, y, z concepts, reciprocity consists of a, b, c concepts, and so, act A meets x, y criteria for fairness and b type of reciprocity.  Each of these moral phenomena can be spelled out and…[Read more]