Simon Paynton

Looking at @popebeanie‘s posted explanation from Quora, I think Wittgenstein was talking crap in this case, because he doesn’t acknowledge that everything has multiple causes, which Buddha knew millennia before.

So why didn’t Wittgenstein just say that in the first place?  Why invoke causality as a special case?

I doubt if the people who built New York gave much of a shit about Ishtar.

I really don’t know.  Click the link to see the public announcement.

what do we know about causality which makes it a fact and not just a belief?

How do we distinguish causality from chance or coincidence?  How do we know that something has been caused by something else?

Everything is caused by multiple factors, we know this much.  So, anything has to have multiple causes.

I think ultimately, a scientific d…[Read more]

Dr. Bob

Maybe he couldn’t work out how X causes Y, so he said there is no such thing.

Is what you mean, “what is causality?”  If B is a consequence of A, then A helps to cause B.

If A helps to cause B, then the causality is a fact.

It’s just a way of looking at two events. Sort of like an opinion.

The two events are linked because one event is a cause (one of many causes) of the other.

A single cause, I would presume, is necessary (but not sufficient, since everything has multiple causes) for a result that forms in reality.  Reality could not be any other way than the wa…[Read more]

A cause is an event, and an effect is a consequence of that event.  Everything has multiple causes.

One event leads to another.  A cause precedes an effect.  A cause and effect form a sequence of events.

We evolved as a highly social animal.

It is evolved behavior.

Never mind God, this is behaviour that humans value – thriving, cooperatively.

I think there is a certain logic to the Christian position that I have heard several times, that God manifests in the behaviour of the human element within a situation of adverse circumstances.  In other words, if Christians say that God is there when people come together to help one another, it makes a kind of sense.

OK, but (speaking as an atheist), Christians sometimes talk about God being in the times when people need help, and help is willingly given.  I know that logically that’s somewhat nonsensical, because God is supposed to be everywhere, but people could think about it as something God finds desirable.

Simon, the notion that the evidence for god is divine intervention? Wherever, whatever are you conjuring?

Sometimes when I go all out to help someone, I seem to get help out of nowhere.  But I’m still an atheist.  The other questions I’ve already answered.

Anyway I think my point is, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter too much whether somebody is religious or not, as long as they have a good head on their shoulders, and have a sound philosophy for living.

But WLC presents potential evidence such as “objective morality”, logic, and reason which for him point to the existence of God.  For me, they can all be explained by other means.

Objective morality is the morality of one’s group (e.g., German nazis believed they were objectively correct) and the various groups mostly overlap in a common core of…[Read more]

I don’t buy into any of the evidence offered by William Lane Craig, for example – I don’t believe we need God in order for logic or reason to exist, and I think that the evidence from Jesus’ crucifixion and reported resurrection is too weak to base a religion on.

The only evidence I have “for” is that we sometimes appear to get divine…[Read more]