As a person of long-held religious conviction I am deeply saddened to see this worthy adversary go. He had an uncanny ability to go straight for your mostly deeply held beliefs with the most trenchant rhetoric and yet somehow made you like him anyway. I think it's because with Hitchens, you knew he spoke from the integrity of his own convictions. He was nobody's man, on no one's bandwagon, carrying water for no polit…
I don't think a finer thing could be said about a man. http://www.ajkesslerblog.com/a-hell-of-a-eulogy/
What do you call someone who is closed to the possibility that a plausible religion might exist? I consider myself an atheist and I find the term "plausible religion" to be inherently contradictory. If it's plausible then it's no longer religion. Much like how "alternative medicine" that works becomes simply "medicine", religion that is plausible (as in, there's actually some reason to think it might be true) simply…
hm, what if, let's say, someone came and started doing so-called miracles -raising people from the dead and such. If you witnessed first-hand those miracles in a way that left no room to doubt their validity (i.e., they were done in a controlled environment) and you were completely certain they could not be justified by current scientific understanding, wouldn't it be likely to take the leap and consider his claims p…
"Miracles" wouldn't be evidence of the divine unless science was, in principle and permanently, incapable of explaining them. If the laws of physics were changed or ignored in order to perform some feat which was explicitly an attempt to prove the existence of the divine, then sure. If, however, a long-dead person were to spring from the grave and perform a jig, scientists would be (to borrow from the vulgar vernacular) "all over that shit". Even so, the mere existence of permanently inexplicable phenomena is evidence only of the strangeness of the universe, and not of a conscious omnimpotence behind it.
We shall have to work faster. http://yudkowsky.net/other/yehuda
You know, I think it's really distasteful that you people use the deaths of people who probably wouldn't have even agreed with the message of that essay to promote the ideas in that essay.
Think what you like, by all means. I think your comment is shallow, and a disservice to humanity in general.
Going in for cancer treatment does not imply a philosophical commitment to human immortality. You people are the new Randroids.
Um. Why doesn't it? Because when you think about it, that's a surprising thing about humans in general. Why do people who do not believe in immortality (as an ideal, I'm saying) still go in for cancer treatment?
To expand on what phil is saying: It is by itself logically consistent for someone to decide that there's enough fun left in their life and enough stuff that they need to do that they don't want to die now even if they don't necessarily mind dying in the indefinite future.
This is not really true. Only 100-70 years ago Sweden was a very classist society with quite severe internal conflicts (workers were gunned down by the military in an incident in the 30s for instance). In the 17th century Sweden was an imperialist country dedicated to the bloody wars of several ambitious kings (Gustav II, Karl XII, etc). Supposedly some people in Germany still warn their kids of the Swedes... So my p…
And during that time, were Swedes productive and so on? If so, that's evidence for the "Swedes can make any system work" theory.
Yeah, they were productive. At mayhem and conquest :)
Or maybe it's the other way 'round. Perhaps they chose a sensible system because they are rational, compassionate and civilized people. Come to think of it, that seems more likely now.
This is not really true. Only 100-70 years ago Sweden was a very classist society with quite severe internal conflicts (workers were gunned down by the military in an incident in the 30s for instance). In the 17th century Sweden was an imperialist country dedicated to the bloody wars of several ambitious kings (Gustav II, Karl XII, etc). Supposedly some people in Germany still warn their kids of the Swedes... So my p…
> That stuff is quite recent.
Any sensible, rational "stuff" is recent, anywhere in the world. Until very recently, no country or culture were good places to be.
Going in for cancer treatment does not imply a philosophical commitment to human immortality. You people are the new Randroids.
Um. Why doesn't it? Because when you think about it, that's a surprising thing about humans in general. Why do people who do not believe in immortality (as an ideal, I'm saying) still go in for cancer treatment?
Humans don't live their lives as an exercise in exploring the rational consequences of consciously held principles. And actually, a lot of people don't go in for cancer treatment, because cancer treatment is fucking miserable and doesn't always extend your lifespan as much as you'd hope.
hm, what if, let's say, someone came and started doing so-called miracles -raising people from the dead and such. If you witnessed first-hand those miracles in a way that left no room to doubt their validity (i.e., they were done in a controlled environment) and you were completely certain they could not be justified by current scientific understanding, wouldn't it be likely to take the leap and consider his claims p…
"Miracles" wouldn't be evidence of the divine unless science was, in principle and permanently , incapable of explaining them. If the laws of physics were changed or ignored in order to perform some feat which was explicitly an attempt to prove the existence of the divine, then sure. If, however, a long-dead person were to spring from the grave and perform a jig, scientists would be (to borrow from the vulgar vernacu…
I don't disagree.
I might be mistaken about the use of the word "plausible", but I think it is not necessarily connected with evidence but with human perception. Of course rational people would only find plausible explanations that are backed with evidence, but even the most hardcore rationalists are subject to their own psychology and emotions.
My argument is that in a (completely unlike, hypothetical) scenario like the one I describe, most people would likely find plausible what that someone would claim (if it did not sound completely stupid) not because it would be the reasonable thing to do but because psychologically those acts would feel too imposing, if science could not explain them at the time.