Intelligent Design or Evolution?

[Contra Mundum]

No synthetic proofs? I have to disagree there, an understanding of reality must have some logical as well as scientific and observable proofs. If we let metaphysics to the domain of observation it is at risk to all the fallacies of observation. I mean how do I experience a lack of god? You can't experience a negative anyway. The answer is to apply logical reasoning. It has to be.

Hegel's okay in small doses, in large does he's just pure mindf**k. Philosophy if anything has to be accessable and logically coherent, Hegel for a large part is neither. Germany produces its fair share of thinkers, it has produced the most, yet Hegel is not one of their best.

He is boring as batshit - Sokol's postmodern generator made more sense than anything he wrote


Absence seems to speak sometimes

 

[skilts]

Karl, I have long-admired your capacity for self-regard. I fear in the quoted passages below you may be displaying a dimunition of tendence to critical thinking.

Yes, but the example I'm using increases life expectancy of an individual. IMO that makes it fair to say its the optimal result for an individual.

Inherent in this statement is an an unexamined assertion that a longer life is, by definition, a better or somehow more valuable one. This is a begging of the question. It also pre-supposes that you are in a position to judge the worth of a life, especially one of which you know nothing. If I were of such a mind, I could easily assert that to live a life embracing an other, nether world is to miss the point, and would constitute no life at all. It could be construed from this that the encounter with what is for twenty years, would be more significant than resiling from what is for 100 years, in the hope of an extended misanthropy.

Well, existence itself is only perception. Even scientific facts are only facts because of the way we percieve the measures we use to define them.

The bolded is 100% possible, and very likely.

Scientifically, in this thread, we have established that the atoms that make up the body are eternal, right? And if those atoms are responsible for the 'soul' or consciousness, then that would mean that consciousness must also be eternal, evne if it is broken up or ceases to function in the way we are aware of it right now, no?

To say that, "existence itself is only a perception", is to deny the evidence of your own existence. Do you believe that the reality of your existence is open to doubt? If so, there is no point in any conversation with you, because you're not sure you're here.

If the bolded bit I wrote is "very likely", why would you cling to the idea as fact that everybody has a soul? Other than sheer bloody-mindedness of course.

The outrageous claim that atoms have been proven to be eternal constitutes yet another begging of the question. We have done no such thing. You have asserted such, for no sustainable reason.

I am fully open to the theory that all spirituality is merely a mechanism to make sense of the world, and the gaps in scientific explanations.

I don't subscribe to this theory, and fully believe we have souls and are effectively eternal, and that human life is merely a "diet" version of our full consciousness, given material form.

Please define 'spirituality'. There need be no reference to religion, as it's not an attribute ascribed to a deity.

Is your 'diet' interpretation of human existence merely another version of life being a rehearsal?

 

[Richo83]

He is boring as batshit - Sokol's postmodern generator made more sense than anything he wrote

I should admit though, the man did produce Hegelian leftism, which produced some of the best criticism of Christianity going around. That's the thing though, his followers wrote better stuff than he did! Speaking of nonsensical gibberish, po-mos and french philosophy. Am I right or am I right?

 

[skilts]

I should admit though, the man did produce Hegelian leftism, which produced some of the best criticism of Christianity going around. That's the thing though, his followers wrote better stuff than he did! Speaking of nonsensical gibberish, po-mos and french philosophy. Am I right or am I right?

Excuse my ignorance, but I don't know what "po-mos" are. I have some understanding of French philosophy though. Sartre basically wrote four important ideas:

1) His destruction of the alleged efficacy of psychology. He skewered the idea of an unconscious with a devastating understanding of the way the mind really works.

2) His very interesting take on the importance of being the very best you can be at what you choose to do in life.

3) His denial of the possibility to elucidate the idea of selfless love in language, thus calling into doubt the whole enterprise.

4) His exhaustive examination of 'the other'. A remarkable treatise which speculated about everybody's effect on the world, as it's really lived, and our encounters with those with whom we share it.

The rest was shit.

There was another tart, who wrote sociological theories about crime and insanity. Foucalt I think it was. He wrote interestingly and with some panache, but essentially he thought sloppily.

Everyone else was a self-proclaimed 'academic' looking for a root on the way to creating a cult. Despicable.

 

[Richo83]

Post-modernism skilts. The French are alright but they'll have one good idea wrapped up with five bad ideas and a whole lot of rubbish. People like Derrida I can't handle, and people think Hegel is bad...

Infact, that pretty much sums up France, a few good things, a whole lot of rubbish.

 

[Mario the Lothario]

The outrageous claim that atoms have been proven to be eternal constitutes yet another begging of the question. We have done no such thing. You have asserted such, for no sustainable reason.

When you break an atom down to it's smallest point, it contains nothing.

Nothing is eternal.

 

[dardy_7]

Evolution five!

 

[skilts]

Nothing is eternal.

That's true. The eternality of nothingness.

 

[Qsaint]

Pretty weak argument, "The Earth is Flat" as an argument lasted a lot longer before it was challenged.

Nevertheless, evolution.

For 150 years every one's contested it and no ones even put a scratch on it.

 

[Mario the Lothario]

That's true. The eternality of nothingness.

.

Not necessarily.

Quantum physics would hint that we are collapsed wave functions. If a collapsed wave function requires an observer to exist, then who or what is doing the observing?

 

[FIGJAM]

For 150 years every one's contested it and no ones even put a scratch on it.

But it's now not even the same!

Gradualism is long dead (see Punctuated Equillibrium). Gould and Co. are still Darwinists, but to suggest that it is an untouched theory is ignorant to the extreme.

 

[Contra Mundum]

I should admit though, the man did produce Hegelian leftism, which produced some of the best criticism of Christianity going around. That's the thing though, his followers wrote better stuff than he did! Speaking of nonsensical gibberish, po-mos and french philosophy. Am I right or am I right?

I used to slag in mercilessly - and then I actually read some of the primary texts. The books where foucault was actually paying attention rather than shagging young Algerian men [like discipline and punish] are fairly easy reading. Derrida and Baudillard were great early on - but fell away when they started to get American worshippers.

I teach it the po-mos to the law kiddies now and I reckon they are misrepresented a lot. The classic is "there is nothing outside the text" ironic that it was taken totally out of context!!!!

if you want to read a great book which shows that American idolisation killed them read:

French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co transformed intellectual life of the United States by Francios Cusset – University of Minnesota Press 2008 ISBN9780816647323

The frogs has already abandoned a lot of their work as lightweight by the time they had become rock stars in the States


Here one designed to shit you:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=270045

As Marx tried to say in his theses on Feuerbach - the Hegelians including the big F where too soft core in their critique of religion

 

[skilts]

.

Not necessarily.

Quantum physics would hint that we are collapsed wave functions. If a collapsed wave function requires an observer to exist, then who or what is doing the observing?

This is a non question. If we don't exist, I...

Sorry, got carried away with not existing there for a moment.

 

[Contra Mundum]

That's true. The eternality of nothingness.

Being and Nothingness baby

 

[FIGJAM]

That's true. The eternality of nothingness.

Religion and atheism always meet up in an interesting place, but the point of view is always at opposite ends of the scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain_Soph

"Ain" literally translates to "nothing". This is the Abstract Unmanifest Absolute. The ultimate 'Godhead'. Also known as 'Sat' in the Brahman religion.

But it does not mean nothing in terms of a vacuum as atheist view it. The 'nothing' more translates to 'no-thing' in that it is formless.

Nothing as a vacuum devoid of anything; devoid of potence, simply cannot be, otherwise nothing would exist. Nothing can come from nothing.

As our understanding of energy evolves, we can see that there are no vacuums. What we view as empty space contains a whole bunch of energy that we can't see, including what has been dubbed the Higgs Field, dark matter, dark energy, strings and whatever else is currently unmeasurable.

There is always an underlying field of pure potence, with enough energy to boil dry all of the Earth's oceans within one cubic centimetre. Why is it that we assume that this energy is unorganised?

 

[Mario the Lothario]

This is a non question.

Dammit, and even after I went to the extent of putting one of those squiggly lines with a dot underneath it at the end of my sentence.

If we don't exist, I...

Sorry, got carried away with not existing there for a moment.

skilts is just a figment of my non existent imagination?

Yes, well we obviously do exist, and observable physical matter is a collapsed wave of potential..............so, back to my question.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Religion and atheism always meet up in an interesting place, but the point of view is always at opposite ends of the scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain_Soph

"Ain" literally translates to "nothing". The is the ultimate Abstract Unmanifest Absolute. The ultimate 'Godhead'. Also known as 'Sat' in the Brahman religion.

But it does not mean nothing in terms of a vacuum as atheist view it. The 'nothing' more translates to 'no-thing' in that it is formless.

Nothing as a vacuum devoid of anything; devoid of potence, simply cannot be, otherwise nothing would exist. Nothing can come from nothing.

As our understanding of energy evolves, we can see that there are no vacuums. What we view as empty space contains a whole bunch of energy that we can't see, including what has been dubbed the Higgs Field, dark matter, dark energy, strings and whatever else is currently unmeasurable.

There is always an underlying field of pure potence, with enough energy to boil dry all of the Earth's oceans within one cubic centimetre. Why is it that we assume that this energy is unorganised?

Ernst Bloch: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8406 Board!

 

[FIGJAM]

Ernst Bloch: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8406 Board!

What on Earth does this have to do with my post Contra?

 

[Contra Mundum]

What on Earth does this have to do with my post Contra?

Sorry my gnostic brother - it was a spasm caused by your first sentence about the intersection between athiesm and religion. Uncle Ernst was trying to construct an athiest theology

 

[Mario the Lothario]

Ernst Bloch: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8406 Board!

Karen Carr: http://books.google.com.au/books?id...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP1,M1 Board!

 

[evo]

3) His denial of the possibility to elucidate the idea of selfless love in language, thus calling into doubt the whole enterprise.

4) His exhaustive examination of 'the other'. A remarkable treatise which speculated about everybody's effect on the world, as it's really lived, and our encounters with those with whom we share it.

The rest was shit.

.

I finally got around to reading his pamphlet over the xmas break and was pleasantly suprised to learn their is some real quality thinking contained within.Unfortunately it is matched in equal measure with a large dollop of equivocation and waffle.

Nevertheless I was rather taken with "The look" section.Hopefully I'll get around to writing something more substantial here at some stage.

 

[Contra Mundum]

I finally got around to reading his pamphlet over the xmas break and was pleasantly suprised to learn their is some real quality thinking contained within.Unfortunately it is matched in equal measure with a large dollop of equivocation and waffle.

Nevertheless I was rather taken with "The look" section.Hopefully I'll get around to writing something more substantial here at some stage.

The conceptual rhubric around "The Other" was developed by that negative theology dude Emmanuel Levinas. A very sophisticated thinker for a Christian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas

 

[Karl Pilkington]

Karl, I have long-admired your capacity for self-regard. I fear in the quoted passages below you may be displaying a dimunition of tendence to critical thinking.

It depends which self you're referring to, skilts. I have multiple senses of self and one of them can be a total narcissist.

Inherent in this statement is an an unexamined assertion that a longer life is, by definition, a better or somehow more valuable one. This is a begging of the question. It also pre-supposes that you are in a position to judge the worth of a life, especially one of which you know nothing. If I were of such a mind, I could easily assert that to live a life embracing an other, nether world is to miss the point, and would constitute no life at all. It could be construed from this that the encounter with what is for twenty years, would be more significant than resiling from what is for 100 years, in the hope of an extended misanthropy.

All things being equal, you would have to say a longer life is superior to a shorter one - I of course can't say that's always the case, but for the purpose of comparison it is effectively comparing the same quality of life.

To say that, "existence itself is only a perception", is to deny the evidence of your own existence. Do you believe that the reality of your existence is open to doubt? If so, there is no point in any conversation with you, because you're not sure you're here.

I'm not sure you're here either. Still, why would there be no point continuing with a discussion with a being that may or may not exist? Are you hallucinating me?

If the bolded bit I wrote is "very likely", why would you cling to the idea as fact that everybody has a soul? Other than sheer bloody-mindedness of course.

Its not fact scientifically - but I am certain it exists through my own experience. First hand knowledge is the best kind, but presents me with a conundrum - what if I don't exist? How can my first hand experience count for anything then?

The outrageous claim that atoms have been proven to be eternal constitutes yet another begging of the question. We have done no such thing. You have asserted such, for no sustainable reason.

Are atoms not eternal? I thought they were but science isn't my strong suit.

Please define 'spirituality'. There need be no reference to religion, as it's not an attribute ascribed to a deity.

Getting in touch with the soul and traversing inner space.

Is your 'diet' interpretation of human existence merely another version of life being a rehearsal?

I'm not sure its a rehearsal, its more a playground. Eventually we decide we are done with coasting through the cosmos for a while, and imagine ourselves as humans again.

 

[Contra Mundum]

The conceptual rhubric around "The Other" was developed by that negative theology dude Emmanuel Levinas. A very sophisticated thinker for a God botherer [Jewish]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Levinas

Oops i meant believer but wrote Christian

 

[Contra Mundum]

Karen Carr: http://books.google.com.au/books?id...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP1,M1 Board!

I have read that book - its a good reason why publishers should steer clear of doctoral theses