Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test... • Hacker News Board

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#81

Post by waqf » Wed, Aug 11, 2010, 12:34 AM UTC

tspiteri wrote: post #44

cwp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the question was not whether Sutcliffe was justified in committing rape, but whether he was justified in believing that he was doing the will of God. If "firm inner conviction" justifies a belief, and Sutcliffe had firm inner conviction, then Sutcliffe was justified in his belief.

Well, it's a bit like this: 1. Is it justifiable to walk into a shop? 2. John Does walked into a shop and murdered all present. Was he justified in walking into the shop? Answering yes to 1 and no to 2 is a contradiction in the same way. But, is it really valid to separate the action of walking into the shop with the murder of those present? Is it really valid to separate Sutcliffe's belief from his actions?

That question often bothers me in the following form:

1. Is it justifiable to speak freely?

2. John Doe announced that a crowded theatre was afire, and people died in a resulting stampede. Was he justified in speaking?

Nobody ever addresses the separability issue you describe.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#82

Post by loup-vaillant » Wed, Aug 11, 2010, 7:47 AM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #77

loup-vaillant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm lost here. I know neither Platon nor ontology. Your last sentence sound right, but I don't see how it connects to my previous posts.

Sorry, fell into a little philosophical opaqueness there. Platonist is meant to refer to the ancient philosopher Plato. What he may be most famous for is his theory of Forms. The idea is that there are two worlds: the material world which we can perceive directly and another realm that is "intelligible" but not directly perceivable. We can refer to these as the sensible and supersensible realms. The supersensible rea…

I may have not made myself clear. It looks like I suggested that numbers, squares, and circles exists somewhere, just not in our world.

I didn't want to.

The problem comes from the word "exist", which does not mean the same thing when I talk about the physical world and when I talk about mathematical concepts. For instance, when I say "Do unicorns exist?", or "cars do exist", I am talking about actual existence, in our world, such that it could change my life: if unicorns existed, I might see one. If cars did not exist, I would be riding instead of driving.

When I say "do odd numbers exists", or "there exists no even prime number greater than 2", I am talking about mere ideas. See, numbers "exist" by definition. In Peano arithmetic for instance, I declare that natural numbers exist because: (1) I declare that zero exist, (2) I declare that if a number n exist, then a different number, n+1, also exists. (There are other laws, but we'll leave them.) In short, numbers "exist" because I decided it. This is not the same kind of existence than unicorns. No matter how hard I decide, unicorns don't exist.

Now the fact that everyone agrees that numbers "exist" just means that everyone follows the same convention.

I actually agree with David Hume. He's right because of a very simple, now easy to guess, reason: mathematics doesn't even talk about existence of the unicorn/car kind.

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#83

Post by dkersten » Fri, Aug 20, 2010, 11:37 AM UTC

Locke1689 wrote: post #70

dkersten wrote: post #15

You claimed earlier that any being which it is right to call God must want there to be as little suffering in the world as possible. But you say that God could make it so that everything now considered sinful becomes morally acceptable and everything that is now considered morally good becomes sinful. This is stupid. I said that god COULD change what is considered sinful and that god would WANT to minimize suffering.…

You're right, the explanation of the contradiction is poor. The true contradiction is that your definition of sin is arbitrary -- if God simply decides what is "sin" and that definition is in and of itself malleable, what makes an action "sinful?" Tomorrow I will see if I have my Socrates texts. I think he spoke about this in the Creeto (piety under the Gods).

If god couldn't redefine sin, then god would not be all powerful, which, in my opinion, is a requirement of being considered "god".

Re: Are your beliefs consistent? Take the test...

#84

Post by Trindaz » Sat, Aug 21, 2010, 4:25 AM UTC

andymorris wrote: post #16

timcederman wrote: post #12

You stated earlier that evolutionary theory is essentially true. However, you have now claimed that it is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that she exists. The problem is that there is no certain proof that evolutionary theory is true - even though there is overwhelming evidence that it is true. It is foolish to believe in something with zero evidence for it. Whether it's the celestial tea…

I think it's getting at: say you had more actual evidence for the God theory than you did for evolution. Your response seems to indicate that you would STILL prefer evolution, as you would require certain, irrevocable proof for God. Your previous response said that you didn't need that level of proof for evolution, hence it states your views are logically inconsistent. I made the same "mistake", as I intended to impl…

@Ayjay, What would consist as "very strong" proof?

Some of my thoughts on that: Any 'proof' God gives must be physical so we can measure it. Anything we can measure is a 'normal' part of the universe, and so can't be God.

Rainbows = not God because it's just water vapor and light

The universe = not God because it's what happens when you get some kind of powerful explosion that throws out matter and energy for billions of years.

God literally appearing in the sky in physical form announcing that He is God and that He's responsible for this creation = not necessarily God because it could be alien technology, or propaganda warfare from US evangelicals, or

--Trindaz on Fedang