Religion's

Win!!!!!!!

 

Whoever picked Hinduism, I must find and hug.

 

Every term is made up somewhere. I feel like one of us just isn't understanding something. I kind of expect one of us to have some eureka moment in a few pages where we just go "Oh, that is what you are talking about"

Anyway I think I can rule the last out two honestly.

Everything can't be absolute truth, because there are contradictions. Christianity believes that Jesus is Christ, Judaism believes he was not. For everything to be absolute truth, they would both be right. If you can tell me how that works let me know, there will likely be a new religion formed from that when word gets out.

On nothing being an absolute truth, that just seems foolish to me. Maybe it makes sense to someone, but to me, who has devoted their life to gathering knowledge, that is just too foreign. Things exist, maybe just as hallucinations or dreams, but you perceive all the same them and that can't be denied. And where there is existence there is truth to guide that existence. What guides you to perceive the text on the computer screen? Your brain receiving signals from your eyes sensing photons emitted from the screen? Fairy dust guiding your thoughts as you sleep? Who knows. But there is some reason for the phenomena because they are there.

I perceive this more as being multiple stages. Before you decide X in "I conclude that X is an absolute truth" You must answer. "Can I conclude what is an absolute truth?" You answered no, Which is not to say that there is no truth, but that you can't determine it. It could be anything someone has thought of or none of those things. That is a decision. Because of that decision you cannot decide X in "I conclude that X is an absolute truth" thus X is undecided, but you actively decided that.

How about another analogy? You wake up and are gathering things for your day. You believe you know where your wallet is but when you look there it isn't there. Your belief was wrong, but it was belief. Now as you are looking around the house you will find several places where it is not. You don't believe it is there because there is no evidence of that (In fact you likely believe it isn't there because you see it not being there). When you do find it you don't hold on to your belief that it isn't there because you can see and feel it. Your beliefs conform to a perceived reality. As I said before when you find your wallet you might note in your head that maybe what you found isn't your wallet, or that your wallet might not exist, etc. This is different that not believing in it. You simply believe that your beliefs could be misplaced.

 

I was always quite positive that Voltaire and Hume held accounts on the forum.

 

Maybe. Let's see.

There is a supposition that states that the universe is the sum of all possible instances. So, time may just be the way that our minds satisfy the contradiction between a rock being there and not being there at the same time. We might say that reality has changed. There is little evidence to this effect.

Knowledge and truth are two very different things. I may read a fictional book and gain knowledge of its contents, but there is no truth involved. The specifics are what I would call truth here. Is it, in fact, fairy dust, or something else? Finding the objective truth of the matter is impossible. So, the position stating that nothing is an absolute truth is hardly fallacious. After all, what you cannot prove must not exist, by an atheist's token. They just use evidence for proof instead of logic, there.

But, nothing was a bad example. Sorry.

On reason, I do not see what you mean at all. There does not have to be a reason for a phenomenon. No cause for the effect. And certainly no purpose exists, and so no guide. The existence of your will makes external reasons irrelevant.

While you may be right about phases, you have those in quite the wrong order. First I must prove that X cannot be proven to be an absolute truth every time that I come into contact with anything that could be X. And then I conclude that nothing that could be X can be proven to be absolute truth. It is a process of elimination at first, and from then on basic logic ensues. Doubt does not start out in front like that, particularly for children.

Like I said, please read my other post on doubt mentioned above. I addressed such belief without faith directly. On faith in perception, that is naïve realism, and I reject it. Not being able to prove a concept true does not stop me from using it, as would be seen with supposed physical objects such as this computer here.

 

No, it's a lack of belief. A newborn baby has no beliefs in religion. Therefore it is without theism. An a-theist.

Firstly, can we get a definition of 'faith'? Would you say it's faith for me to claim 'unicorns and pixies do not exist'? How about the statement 'gravity exists'? After all, everything requires a certain degree of faith. At the very least, it requires faith in our senses of perception. So if you are using that definition of 'faith', then yes, being an atheist does require faith. However it's not the same degree of faith that a religion requires, and it's unfair to state as such.

 

A newborn baby has no beliefs at all. It would default at either indifferent or agnostic in that case. Atheism is a belief in the opposite of theism. It is not a lack of believing in theism. This is true partly because theism is not belief itself, but belief in a god or religion. Absolute doubt and absolute certainty are the same thing, in the end, as I have said before.

Also, by your definition, all agnostics are also atheists, and that is certainly not true, as it has been said here already and many times before.

I would agree, but all faith is the same to me. If you believe something absolutely, you believe it absolutely. Whether or not there is evidence supporting this belief is irrelevant to the faith itself. All of those statements are faith based, if there is no doubt behind them.

 

A lack of theism is a lack of theism. It's in the very make-up of the word. 'a', for 'lack of', and 'theism' for 'belief in a deity'. Agnosticism is a lack of knowing. I would agree that babies are agnostic, but they are certainly atheistic too.

You seem to be confused about atheism, agnosticism and theism. It's not a sliding scale, with agnostic in the middle. It's a square. They're two different scales. You're criticising gnostic belief, as opposed to agnostic. To put it a different way, theism and atheism are your opinions on the matter, while gnosticism and agnosticism are how strongly you believe it's absolute.

 

You don't have Paganism up there...... I'm sad now cos Paganism is one of the oldest religions and no one remembers it..........

 

The term "Paganism" doesn't necessarily apply to a certain specific belief, but is rather an umbrella term for polytheistic religions, which is almost any theistic religion that doesn't fall into the three main monotheistic religions, which are Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. So some of the religions on that list are technically pagan religions as well.

But at the same time, the pre-Christian religion in Europe that I assume you mean doesn't really have another word for it other than "Paganism". Ho-hum. :/ Anyway, be an "Other" from another mother with me. c:

And also, I just found this most awesome religion. I thought I would share it with y'all. It's "Discordianism".

I ****ing like it.

 

I've heard the theory before. There is a near infinite number of realities the correspond to the near infinite number of details that could be changed. Often considered branching realities since it is often then theorized that every instant as time moves forward what we know as reality selects one of the inconceivable number of paths. But even so in the reality that we are in, Schrodinger's cat is either alive or dead. If the theory is to be believed we would conceptually know that the opposite would be true elsewhere and in other realities the situation wouldn't exist at all. But even if you do want to look at all realities and not just our own, this model does not allow the statement that everything is absolute truth. You would need to show that the model can be existent and nonexistent at the same time. No matter how far this goes you still end up the Schrodinger's cat phenomena somewhere down the line.

Knowledge and truth are different. Truth exists regardless of anything else and is absolute. Knowledge exists as a perception and could be true or false. The fact that you exist is truth regardless of how I see it or if I observe it at all. However the knowledge of your existence is fully dependent on me and, oddly enough, independent of if you actually exist. On the topic of reading a fictional book, when you read it it has content and meaning. That meaning might correspond to something that is believed no not exist, but it still has content. It is similar to an argument be valid but not sound. If I say “I have a pet unicorn” the fact that I said that becomes true. I might not actually have one but (casting doubt aside) your knowledge that I said it would be true.

If you haven't read any pragmatic philosophy yet I would recommend it, you remind me a lot of what I know of it. In particular is there version of gathering truth. Philosophers were trying to find an axiom (or indisputable point) in order to build a chain of log from that. But pragmatists believe that an axiom can't be found because of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. So the argument “If my prediction is true, then q will occur. q occurs. Therefore my prediction is true” is not logically valid because there could be other things to cause q than what you predicted. However modus tollens is valid so the statement “If my prediction is true q will occur. q did not occur. Therefore my prediction is not true” is sound, allowing us to determine things that are false. The the pragmatic method is all about having a best guess while all the while knowing that it could be proven wrong at any moment and need to be improved.

You might also find Descartes interesting, though I doubt you will agree with him.

Don't apologize. If nothing else it is an interesting mental exercise.

Not phenomenon (an observable occurrence) phenomena (the observing itself). E.G. the computer emitting light in distinct patterns is a phenomenon, you seeing the text is a phenomena. You can argue a phenomenon as much as you like but the phenomena itself is undeniable. It might be technology, it might be fairy dust controlling your dreams, you still observe it. And phenomena need a phenomenon. It doesn't have to be external as you could be hallucinating or the like, but there has to be something.

That falls under inductive reasoning. Albeit helpful it is not conclusive. I think what happens is that as children you have the preliminary question answered for you. “We can conclude what is an absolute truth, and X is that absolute truth” When you realize that you can't prove that X is an absolute truth your first instinct is to find a new X. Then when inductive reasoning catches up with you you realize the greater question that was slipped passed you “Can we conclude what is an absolute truth?” To which we can answer logically, no.

I am not telling you not to doubt. I agree with you to doubt all things. Even logical forms should be doubted if you ask me. What I am saying is to not reject belief entirely because of that doubt. Maybe as a mental exercise (again, Descartes' works are interesting if you have yet to read them), but holding absolute lack of belief because of doubt leaves you unable to function. And really you can't even do that if you wanted to, your own mind is too powerful of an obstacle to negate all belief realistically. So I guess what I'm getting at past that is that you should stop pretending that you don't believe anything. The art of doubt isn't to not believe anything but to realize that your beliefs can change (and are likely to).

 

Non denominational myself. I don't like getting caught up in the Christian politics

 

But it is a sliding scale. Someone who believes neither statement, 'is' or 'is not', would, by necessity, be in the middle, or drop off completely. What happens if you believe neither with any faith at all?

Oh, you've found me! How long have you been a student, and have you joined a cabal yet? How much do you know of our history? This will be fun.

No, you speak of a different theory. I am saying that this is one universe, and that time only passes because that is how we perceive the concrete image of reality. One reality. But, because this reality contradicts itself, we are forced to filter it as change. Our minds cannot conceive of a world where things are both true and not true at the same time. So, they create time. What decides the order of these frames is entropy, according to most. This is akin to how newborn children see things upside down when they are first born, but their minds soon adjust when they touch something that is not as they see it, and they recognize the pattern.

The problem with this is that the fact that I exist is not true regardless of how you see it. All that you know is that it must be true or false. It is a proverbial coin toss. I hold that what you cannot prove 'must be' or 'is' is neither here nor there. It only seems a certain way to you at this moment. The statement that I exist regardless of how you see it is ridiculous, because, as far as you are concerned, nothing exists without your seeing it as such. Perception is gamble, and all truth is based on perception or logic of some kind. "Who is the master who makes the grass green?"

And that is what I espouse. The problem is in determining whether or not q occurred at all, though, which would be the basis for doubt anyway. As far as I know, there are two sides to that coin that try to justify any given belief; namely foundationalism and coherentism. Foundationalism assumes a point as the origin and works its way from there; "A is true because of B, and B is assumed to be true." Coherentism holds that a line of reasoning must loop back onto itself to be valid. While that is not perfectly accurate, it does line up in the end and is the best definition that I can give here. See the Wikipedia articles for more information here.

Yes... I tend to disagree with the large majority of philosophers and find it foolish to follow after others, particularly in the search for truth. For this reason (among others, such as a lack of money and time) I have not read any formal or traditional philosophy at all, and all ideas presented here come from my own head or other such discussions of these subjects, in person or otherwise.

Thanks.

Yes, but I was arguing against reason, and, more specifically, origin. I do not see why something cannot come out of nothing, if you were going to argue that. I was just arguing semantics there, I guess.

Agreed. This is also known as the regress argument in formal logic. I am glad that we are on the same page here.

But, do you acknowledge the point about this not being an undecided option, or have we strayed too far from the point already? I forgot to mention it in my previous post, but you did not address the argument itself and went on about the two examples I gave. We went nowhere with that, really.

Yes, but the chances of logical forms being false is as close to zero as you can get, because you have to use logic in order to doubt logic. It justifies itself, really.

 

That these posts aren't counting for anything compared to some one-liners in other sections is just criminal.

 

Haha, I was saying the same thing a few pages back. Well, I was asking them to move the thread, but still. I will live anyway.

You might also notice that I am responding with less and less here. We stray too much already, so I feel bad about adding to it. A trait of the section, I think; but that could be just me.

 

Dude, that's how you make a thread last in the Spamzone. You keep piling shit on 'til you forget where you began. Then either myself or P will come in and respond to every possible post in the thread in one gigantic, gestalt super-post, and that's when you know you're a champion.

Can we get a Pin for this sequence of events please

 

Sorry bro, that's against my religion. :c

 

Sacrilege!

/ties a rock to her foot and shoves her into a lake

I sank DPWolf! I sank DPWolf! I sank DPWolf! I sank DPWolf! I sank DPWolf!

DPWolf has been sunk, as decreed by page 00066 of the Discordian handbook, with the Law of Fives from page 00016 applied for good measure.

 

That's what your mother said too, but I had her singing a different tune by morning~