191–200 of 294 posts
So, everyone in the world knows what a circle is, or has a basic idea of a circle: you won't find a person who doesn't recognize one, right? But, there are no circles in the world, empirically--every circle you've ever thought you've seen is actually an ellipse, even the earth itself is oblong, just like all the stars and planetary bodies. Well, would we call it a mistake if someone described what, empirically, was a…
I would argue we utilize symmetry of rotation and balance along with holding a blade at a fixed point (laythe) or rolling hot metal between two bodies (ball bearings), the avantage / creation of that was one of the crucial advances of humanity (being able to make actual circles / cylinders / spheres, since most objects you mentioned are also 3d) What makes the circle unique (or a copy / scaling of the unit circle) is…
Idiots never ask themselves that question, that's why they usually win the argument.
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"I've thought very carefully on what kind of evidence could be presented to me to show that Christianity was wrong" I don't believe this. "I'd be interested in what kind of evidence Dennet would accept to show him that his atheism was wrong." Perhaps the reason you aren't aware that he has addressed this at length is that you don't have have his name right. Also, as Chris Hitchens noted, religion poisons everything,…
You're being unnecessarily mean and confrontational, that isn't a good fit for HN. You can take parent at their word that he's thought about it and engage, or you can choose not to engage. No reason to disparage them.
So as to minimize confrontation, I won't respond to any further provocation.
I will also note that religion is off-topic at HN, for obvious reasons.
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>I realise circles are just a subset of ellipses Ah, but in a circle the circumference is always equidistant to the centre, which is never true of an ellipse. I suppose there is only one circle in the world.
> Ah, but in a circle the circumference is always equidistant to the centre, which is never true of an ellipse. It's never true of an ellipse that isn't a circle . i.e., this is a--ahem--circular argument.
Why do circles need to be ellipses anyway, why can't they be absolutely different? If they were absolutely different, then circles would be purely ideal, and yet an organizing principle (or as the say in Greek, an ἀρχιτεκτονική, from when we receive the word architecture). The only way to understand this, ontologically, is if we take the world to be in a constant tension with the "earth," as Heidegger puts it (cf. The Origin of the Work of Art), the thing in which the "rifts," which is the actual discourse of idealism, come about.
You know, I thought about it for a moment, and I don't think the visual circle is even universal. The schema of the circle may be, but the circle itself never appears. See this article below[0].
I applaud the author and thinker for taking on this timely and hard topic. I struggle with this question in the same way I think as the author, but in technology we are afforded less time to ponder if we are wrong and more time to test if we are wrong. However the author points out, even in testing as he does with his students, we can be wrong in a fundamental way that all the branches of my iterations stem from the…
> I wish more people would help me be “constructively wrong” What's the value proposition? As you noted, not even your own wife will help you until she sees some kind of return for herself (abating her tiredness). Online actors pointing out irrelevant wrongness get to laugh at the meltdown of the maladjusted "intellectual" that usually follows. This is what consultancy is for. You pay someone to look at what you are…
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> It can be false but still explain the human condition. Sure - and as a matter of fact, this is largely the angle I approach religion from these days - i.e. that we collected a series of parables, rules, and traditions that, when combined, lead to a "good life" (or, more cynically, provide competitive advantages to societies who adopt them in a sort of "memetic natural selection" paradigm). But when I look at the my…
I don't know that the story of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection specifically is supposed to explain something like "why we are conscious", but here is my (somewhat shoddy) explanation of what Christianity says about the human condition: The purpose of our life is to be in a loving relationship with God. This entails becoming who we are - becoming our true, ideal selves, who express our love for God through our li…
As for the issue of spiritual exegesis in Christianity, I'm certainly aware that it exists, and a lack of it also isn't my real issue. I guess my problem, in short, is that the central theology of the death and resurrection of Jesus doesn't seem to ... add up for me, for lack of a better way to put it. I'm sorry in advance, because this is going to feel like a move of the goalposts from my first posts.
I am once again going to struggle to express this clearly, especially in the context of an HN post, so fair warning, but here's my best shot:
God - a being/intelligence/force with the capability of creating a universe - sacrificed his son / himself to himself in order to wipe clean the cosmic debt of sin of humanity. This was done as a gift to humanity, because without this sacrifice, humans could never attain salvation - which, in short, means the ability to become our true, ideal selves - to have a relationship with God, to reach a oneness with him.
It just feels so ... small, in a sense. That the whole point of Jesus was to thread some cosmic loophole in the rules that gave humanity a clean slate in terms of sin. Surely there has to be some bigger explanation? surely knowing everything we know about what it took for conscious humans to exist on this planet - how can I be satisfied with this explanation that the cosmic currency of the universe and God and conscious beings is sin and sacrifice?
Now - with all that said - clearly there's room for exegesis and interpretation here. I can start to wind together explanations - maybe the whole notion of the "sacrifice" is not the full picture. Perhaps the life and death of Jesus was less about paying off some cosmic debt, but more about some sort of change in consciousness of humanity. Without that story and the culture / religion that spun out of it, maybe we never could have reached that understanding of the divine that would let us have that full relationship with God. I can play the game of rationalization all day and come to conclusions that feel more satisfactory to me - but it all feels like "theory building" and I don't see the same urge to that kind of thing in the average churchgoer.
But as soon as I have to start playing these games, it seems to call into question the whole central notion of the theology, and I'm left scratching my head, wondering what I'm missing. Either way, as much as I'm open to the ideas and the sort of "secularly obvious benefits of religion," I'm still left in a place where I certainly don't feel comfortable saying the Creed every Sunday. (And this discussion doesn't even begin to get into other ideas of Christianity/Catholicism, like the Eucharist, or problems inherent to any theism like the so called "trilemma").
I'm not sure if all that will make sense, it's a difficult feeling to express.
Anyway, I've enjoyed the discussion. Since HN isn't the best platform for these sorts of long running threads, if you feel like continuing the conversation, feel free to find my email in my profile. I am fascinated by these sorts of debates and always enjoy finding someone to have them with in good faith. If not, that's ok too, either way, thanks for the chat!
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>therefore you do have to compare the Christian worldview to the non-Christian worldview. For the Christian, this is presumably part of asking "what would lead me to believe Christianity is false?". That is, asking whether other religions should lead one to conclude Christianity is not true. >Maybe that's the case with Roman mythology (though I don't have the dates) Well, more than just the dates, it's about the inte…
> Well, more than just the dates, it's about the intellectual rigor of people thinking about the theology. There is no serious equivalent in Roman mythology to, for example, Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, which includes grappling with questions such as "Whether the existence of God is self-evident?", "Whether God is the supreme good?", and "Whether sacred doctrine is a matter of argument?". I'm genuinely curious - do yo…
I say this because there are no seriously-taken arguments for the Roman mythological gods (or anything like them) like there are for foundational beliefs of the other religions you mention (none that I have heard of in my studies, at least... I'd be very interested to hear them if they exist). And because the ancient philosophers - e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus - generally drifted away from popular mythology to something more akin to monotheism.
>Yes, but I think you misunderstood my meaning. I was saying, if you substitute "Roman Mythology" with e.g. "Islam" in the parent comment, you can't just as easily brush it aside by saying "there is not rich intellectual tradition there".
I see - I made that point about intellectual history there because the implication originally seemed to be that both Roman mythology and Christianity are just silly beliefs that people held as children and continued to hold because they hadn't thought about it. That isn't to say that that alone shows Christianity is true, just that it's a set of beliefs we need to take more seriously.
>As a Christian believer, I think you do have to grapple with billions of people, some of them as smart and sophisticate as any Christian, who follow a different belief system. That's why you have to argue "from the inside" as it were about why Christianity is right - some reason it is more correct than any other belief, or that other beliefs are wrong.
If Christianity was a conclusion reached after a set of rational arguments, you would be right. But belief in Christianity is sort of logically prior to rational argumentation. Of course, we have Christian apologetics, which make arguments for certain aspects of Christianity, but this isn't really the reason to believe so much as it is just motivation for people who think in more intellectual terms to take it seriously. Faith is beyond the domain of human reason - the Christian's belief is founded in a kind of immediate, self-evident spiritual experience that comes logically prior to arguments. We might still discover internal inconsistencies that might motivate us to rethink this worldview, of course.
This might sound kind of silly. But there is a point at which your justifications of your beliefs have to bottom out. Can you start with only naturalist/scientific premises and reach Christianity? No, even if you agree to Christian apologetic arguments, they will not get you to Christianity proper. In this sense, atheism, Christianity, and other religions are each in a kind of bubble that arguments alone can't let you escape from. It still makes sense to talk about internal consistency (inconsistencies should probably lead us to drop the system), but I don't think we can really make any progress by trying to argue about the foundational premises themselves, if that makes sense.
As for your final comment - Christianity does share a lot in common with other religions. It shares a lot with Islam and Judaism, the other Abrahamic religions. It's maybe not apt to characterize Islam and Judaism as "simply false" from the Christian perspective - there are significant elements of truth even though the overall system is false. This is true, I think, even for the eastern religions.
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I get your point, but to be genuine with you I have paid. Very very few people you are paying with genuinely critique or disagree with you for very obvious reasons. However I can’t help but point out that you’re being exactly as I’ve described redditors…argue an adjacent point to just say the original point is ‘stupid’. It’s a waste of good brain cells.
As before, I am humoured by the meltdown, which has not failed to disappoint. There is no other value proposition online.
I think you’re a troll and looking at your comments you seem to engage totally disingenuously with HN.