Louis
Posts: 6436 Joined: Jan. 2006
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Quote (skeptic @ Aug. 14 2007,19:19) | on points a)-e), I completely disagree on every point and it can not be any plainer than that. You put you faith in man's ability to collect knowledge on these concepts and you couldn't be more wrong.
The Mind, not the mind, define it for me please. Explain how the function and structure of the brain gives rise to the emergence of the Mind and (just for kicks) consciousness.
Meaning in life is rationally subjective and can not be pinned down to a time, place or culture. The only universal solution is if it is based upon something transcendate to time, place and culture.
Emotions or the chemical reactions leading to emotions have nothing to do with what Love is or what Sadness is. For that matter, if you've ever known a woman you know that emotions are in no way rational.
God. Well this is the point of the discussion but it is extreme arrogance to assume that if God exists you should be able to detect him or them. Prove that to me and you win.
Morality is also subjective and it depends upon time, place and culture unless rooted upon something uninfluenced by these factors. Resorting to rationality to define morality results in nothing but relativism. But again, if you believe otherwise, prove it.
I keep having to repeat myself because you just aren't getting it. You're appling humanistic reasoning but it is severely limited and if it wasn't then these concepts would be defined by now and we wouldn't be having this discussion. |
Skeptic,
This is getting beyond farcical.
We are not merely exchanging subjective opinions, and my "faith" in humanity's ability to study things is not faith at all but observation of what is occurring/has occurred. I need no faith in it at all, it's happening all around me and we as a species have been doing it since the dawn of time and writing about it for only slightly less time! It doesn't matter than some of the conclusions and data we have are in error (or were in error or will be in error) the fact is beyond doubt that we can rationally investigate these things.
I know you don't understand this but you are making a claim that (for example) all of psychiatry, psychology and neurology cannot study the things they study! It's not up to me to get a psych textbook and regurgitate it for you, it's up to you to support your claim that, in contradiction to enormous quantities of evidence available at your local library no less, that the rational study of topics such as minds, morals and men is an impossibility.
I'll repeat it to help you:
Throughout this entire "conversation" (for I now realise I have been casting pearls not merely before swine but into a black hole of utter ignorance and stupidity) you have made various claims about the impossibility of things being studiable. You have in no way expanded on how or why you know this to be the case, you have merely continually reasserted them without basis. You can disagree all you like but all you are doing is sticking your fingers in your ears, plugs up your nose, and a blindfold over your eyes and singing "LALALALALA the universe isn't the way I want it to be so I won't admit anything". So again Skeptic, how do you know, i.e. on what basis, do you make the claim that (for example) the mind is not open to rational enquiry.
You claim to keep repeating yourself because *I* don't get it? Jesus fucking H Corbett, Skeptic! For an utterly clueless moron you don't suffer from the virtue of humility do you! LOL Honestly old bean your attempts at "argument" have been laughable. You now claim that if these concepts were open to rational enquiry then they would already be settled? Skeptic, crack a book, THEY ARE! The fact that many people are too biased, apathetic stupid or ignorant to know about/understand/care about the relevant data isn;t a data point in your favour! Pick up a neurology text, or a psych text, go and read Hume and Russell on ethics (hell, go and read the Greeks, no need to trouble you with anything from the last century or two!), it's all out there.
Oh and meaning and morals ARE relative! That's the point I've been trying to get you to comprehend for a while now. There is no transcendant moral code to which human morals are merely a poor reflection and the different cultural moral codes are a key indicator (but by no means the only one) of this. That's the whole point, morals vary from culture to culture (as does attempt at meaning etc). We can study (and do very effectively) the origins and nature of different cultures' morals and ethics, again crack a book and you'll find the world open up around you.
Oh and Skeptic, you really need to lay off the straw men:
a) I do live with a woman (and I've known a few, I believe my mother is one, although I'll have to ask her) and her emotions are perfectly rational whilst at the same time being totally irrational (just like mine, yours, anyone's. Oh and your abject sexism is noted, well done Skeptic, a new low). Guess what, the word "rational" can be used in different ways. I was very explicitly (and very clearly to anyone with a reading age over 5) using "rational" in the EPISTEMOLOGICAL sense of the word, not the colloquial one. Pissing about with definitions makes you look very silly. Please don't act the cunt with me because I will slap you down.
b) I never said that if god(s) exists then we should be able to detect it (them). I said that if god(s) exist AND interact with the universe (answer prayers, move matter about to create X or Y) then BY DEFINITION that is an interaction with the material universe that is detectable. How easy or hard it might be to do that is a different matter. If god(s) only move single photons, then our chance of detecting them are vanishingly small, still finite, but beyond modern technology unless it's a photon we currently happen to be looking at very carefully. That's the difference Skeptic, and I think you'll find it's a key one. Appeals to undetectable deities don't butter any parsnips. First undetectable looks a lot like nonexistant. Second it's not exactly parsimonious. Appeals to tinkerer gods (liek the one described above) are dangerous because thus far all gods defined by the human race have attributes that are open to detetction. Claiming (for example) that hurricanes are sent by god is a big no no. We KNOW how hurricanes work and arise, no god there at all. If you want to make the utterly asinine claim that "ahhhhhh well it's really god behind it all but you can't see him" then you know I am going to ask "how do you know?" and "how do you know which god it is? Or if it's not pixies etc?" and since you are relying solely on faith to suuport your claim then those contradictory and mutually exclusive faith claims are equally as valid, so you lose out once again.
Oh and Skeptic, if I prove something to you I've won? Sweetie I hate to break this to you but if there was winning and losing to be done, I won a while ago. I was also unaware that conversation involved winning or losing. You think this is a debate? LOL Skeptic my dear sweet little munchkin, if this was a debate, the debate moderator would have removed you for failing to meet the minimum intellectual requirements both in terms of your abilities as a prticipant and the lack of cohesion in your claims and arguments. You would have been ruled out of order and sat on the sidelines so that a more capable debater could take the floor. PErhaps some kind of vegetable.
What you are currently doing is flannelling around and repeating the same claims you made at the start. Even a sympathetic reader would be ashamed of your drivel, but don't take my word for it. Capitalising words like Mind and Love don't change their meaning, and as some supposedly capable of understanding basic chemistry (although no eevidence of this has ever arisen I note) you seem curiously ignorant about the basics of drug action and biological chemistry. Want me to prove you can feel a sincere and abiding love just on the basis of your body's chemistry? Easy peasy, take an E, go to a club. You'll love everyone in the room very sincerely indeed because of the lovely little biological pathways through your brain that E stimulates.
I'm giving you an F, must try a lot harder. Now are you going to answer the questions or not?
Here they are again:
1) How does one distinguish between two faith based claims?
2) Demonstrate that faith/revelation provide knowledge about the universe. I.e. that they are valid mechanisms of acquiring knowledge, be it physical or "spiritual" (whatever that means, we'd need a definition, and some evidence it even exists, because saying that reason cannot examine love [for example] is merely yet another reassertion of the original claim).
3) Demonstrate that reason etc cannot penetrate the areas you claim faith/revelation can, because at the moment all of your examples have been either i) mere reassertions of your original point or ii) derived solely from your personal ignorance of the topics at hand.
4) Demonstrate that questions such as "what is the meaning of life?" are valid questions, and that faith/revelation can answer them.
Four simple questions you have yet to answer, and yet you continually (ever more frantically) reassert your claims without basis. Whining that you do so "because I don't get them" is a) untrue (quite demonstrably so) and b) a logically fallacious special plead. Not only do I "get" your claims Skeptic, but since post number one I have shown them to be utterly false at every turn.
It's quite simple: the rational study of the universe works and is going on all around you despite your ignorance of it. You can stamp your feet and shout "BUT IT CAN'T" all you like, the simple fact is that it can, it does, it is and you are in denial. Asserting by faith alone that something is not open to rational enquiry does not constitute evidence for your claims. The very fact that we can and do investogate things like morals, mind and what have you rationally proves your claims false. The fact that we investigate these things and produce reproducible, reliable data from their study that can be used to predict future phenomena before we've even observed them (why, that seem like science! Gosh, it is!) is the icing on the cake. Not only can we investigate these matters perfetcly rationally, we can do so successfully. So your claims aren't merely false, they are in direct contradiction to what we already know. Hence why you have to show on what basis you make those claims. Good luck!
Louis
-------------- Bye.
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