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The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

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Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#251

Post by throw10920 »

vivi_ wrote: post #86
nickpsecurity wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can save over ten million children from murder if you raise support to ban abortion. Cancer is horrible, too. People following Christ built many hospitals, orphanages, recovery programs, and places like Life Choices Memphis to do what we can for them. You show two, common views: God owes us something; no gratitude. God is a sovereign being who can do what He wants with His creation like you do with your possessio…

Why are you doing this? Friendly reminder that this is HackerNews; nobody is here (nor cares) to read your incoherent, unwelcome religious preach nor to argue religion - at all. That is not the topic of the article, there is nothing to do with religion in the article yet you feel it is your duty to solicit your irrelevant and frankly offensive religious beliefs onto others. I don't spew atheist thought unto christian…

Your comments repeatedly and blatantly violate the HN guidelines (which you can read here https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) as well as being incredibly vicious and hateful. You seem to be new to HN - this is not Reddit. You shouldn't do this here.

Your hypocrisy and hateful tone also further serve to legitimize nickpsecurity's points - he is the one preaching religion, but in a very kind and respectful tone despite your vitriol and hypocrisy.

You also demonstrate a shocking lack of ability to use logic, and a lack of awareness of what the poster's points or ideology actually are, in addition to the above malice. More than even a tone problem - your comment is just completely and entirely unsuitable for HN and beyond providing zero value provides negative value. Please don't do this here.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#252

Post by throw10920 »

hiatus wrote: post #70
nickpsecurity wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve brought up important points. Why does suffering exist? How do people face it differently if they know God personally? God intended for us to live forever in a paradise with Him. Instead, people wanted to be their own gods, lie, lust, steal, kidnap, etc. Even if warned, all have sinned and continue to choose evil. Suffering is God’s wrath on sin, often through our own decisions but not always. He wants people t…

You haven't addressed the secondary point I was making: what does an innocent child have to repent for? What is the purpose of their gruesome death? If it is for the benefit of others, that means some of us are just pawns for the lessons of others. The alternative is that some kids just die through no fault of their own and for no reason at all (which leads to the question: why would an all-knowing, loving god allow…

In addition to nickpsecurity's response - if you enjoy using the rationalist perspective, then the calculus is that yes, the innocent child died a horrible death, but then they spend eternity in heaven.

I don't subscribe to "it's worth torturing one person for their entire life if it removes dust specks from enough peoples' eyes" hyper-rationalist logic, but I do think that "an eternity of peace and joy outweighs a few days of suffering" is a reasonable argument to make. (and the more you think about the length of infinity, the more reasonable that argument gets)

Also, my understanding of the answer to "why do innocent people suffer" starts out with the caveat "Nobody is truly innocent - everyone sins a lot (the standards of a perfect God are zero sin, not "not very much sin")" and then under that caveat there's a few reasons:

1. God's punishment/wrath on non-Christians

2. God's correction on Christians for sin (like punishing a child for disobeying something important like "don't hit others" so that they don't do that when they grow up)

3. God pushing non-Christians into a state where they'll realize they need Him (I've heard a lot of stories that basically go "my life started out OK and then I did alcohol and drugs and eventually ended up in a ditch and realized I needed Jesus")

4. The result of other humans being created with free will exercising their free will

5. God bringing Christians closer to Him (to your last point)

6. God using that person's suffering to either bring other Christians closer to Him, or to convert non-Christians

...where the reason for any particular case is probably a linear combination of the above.

For the specific case of the person dying instead of just suffering, take (1), (4), (6), and "it was in God's plan that it was time for this person to die" (e.g. because they were a Christian who He was ready to take to heaven, they were a non-Christian who He knew would never become a Christian, they were going to do something evil in the future, etc.)

A lot of the reason why people think so many things in Christianity are crazy is because their perspectives are wildly different. For instance, in almost every non-religious people have some threshold value for what it means to be "good" that still includes occasionally doing something "bad". But where does that value (and "good" and "bad" for that matter) come from? The Christian answer is that "good" things are things that are not sin, "bad" things are things against God's will, and that the threshold value is "perfect" because God is perfect - which seems nuts, but I think that it logically follows from the premises, and if you understand all the premises at once, the entire thing seems quite logical to me at least (although most people don't actually believe the premises without a major ego shift).

You do have to understand the premises, though - if someone says "they weren't baptized" I can guarantee you that their theology is inconsistent and they don't understand the premises. There's a reason that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Catholic church - not only was the church incredibly corrupt, but the theology itself is inconsistent with the Bible.

Uh, I hope this was helpful. I don't expect you to believe it, but I at least hope it's logical. If all that was rational to you, then you can challenge me with more hard questions at the email in my HN profile and we can see how far I can get before I run out of answers :P

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#253

Post by Def_Os »

Well written, and very recognizable. I felt pretty much the same as the author at the time of my firstborn. The second kid's birth I don't even remember, haha. I can say that 8 years later the love for the children and my partner has only deepened. Family life is unrelenting and exhausting at times, but I'm one of the lucky ones with a fabulous partner and healthy, smart and fun kids-- until the teenage years change the picture all over again, maybe?

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#254

Post by mistermann »

lwhalen wrote: post #212
mistermann wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're parsing semantics rather than engaging with the core point. a) You are engaging in rhetoric. b) "parsing semantics" is not the win you think it is - we are in the age of AI, man. People now know what the term means. > When I say something "can be dismissed," I mean that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The question is: what is the epistemic status? Are you afraid to admit it out loud, or…

Look, I understand what you're getting at regarding epistemological foundations. Yes, we all operate on some basic assumptions about reality, consciousness, and the reliability of our senses. But there's a meaningful difference between accepting base axioms necessary for any kind of knowledge (like "my sensory experiences generally correspond to reality") and accepting specific supernatural claims that contradict obs…

> Look, I understand what you're getting at regarding epistemological foundations.

> accepting base axioms necessary for any kind of knowledge (like "my sensory experiences generally correspond to reality")

The irony.

You People fascinate me to no end.

> can be provisionally rejected

I'd enjoy seeing you store "can be provisionally rejected" in a variable, perform some logic upon it, and then produce an output - what would the variable type of the output be?

> and scientific heuristics

I said heuristics, not scientific heuristics. Science (the scriptures) has methods and standards, and you are violating them, thus failing to meet the categorical requirements.

> They've given us everything from smartphones to space travel.

Right smack dab in the middle of the Normal Distribution. Thus, not shocking.

> Religious claims haven't demonstrated similar utility beyond social/psychological benefits that can be explained naturalistically.

"haven't...that can be explained"

> No, I don't think you're dumb or confused.

Then why do you talk to me the way you do?

> taken to its logical conclusion

Did you use logic to arrive at this "its(!) logical conclusion"?

> where we can't meaningfully distinguish between well-supported and unsupported beliefs.

I have bad news: you're already in this spot, but you cannot realize it because you are in the spot.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#255

Post by mistermann »

throw10920 wrote: post #240
mistermann wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That on certain topics, logic trumps rhetoric. That on certain other topics, rhetoric trumps logic. And if one should point this out, guess which one is used in response? :) (To be fair to HN: this is true of all such communities to differing degrees, but at least LessWrong as a platform at least aspires to take such things seriously*.)

Are you talking about the platform rules, or merely what the community thinks? If it's the latter, I absolutely agree with you - tons of posters have double-standards and switch from logic mode to rhetoric (or even emotion) mode when there's something they don't agree with (e.g. lwhalen, who is engaging in blatant emotional manipulation and logical fallacies). But, at least aspirationally, the HN rules are designed t…

> Are you talking about the platform rules, or merely what the community thinks?

Both.

> (e.g. lwhalen, who is engaging in blatant emotional manipulation and logical fallacies).

Is it not absolutely amazing! And I bet he's otherwise fairly smart (I am speculating though, perhaps I will go through his history to get a better read).

That ~no one finds this sort of thing interesting, is interesting. That ~everyone has a strong aversion to studying this phenomenon deeply is even more interesting, and it makes me wonder where that aversion comes from (mainly cultural evolution and conditioning is my guess).

> But, at least aspirationally

There's talking the talk, and then there is walking it. All ideologues have problems with the latter, and are rarely enthusiastic about discussing it, to put it nicely.

> the HN rules are designed to constrain rhetoric to keep the discourse civil

I'm suspicious, considering how rhetorically weaponized they are. But then, maybe it's just luck or random error.

> while allowing users to set the standards for what's acceptable logic

My very point!! :)

I'd have put "logic" in quotes though.

> although in practice, users like lwhalen and lproven just completely ignore the guidelines

The enforcers of the guidelines also regularly ignore them, though not "just" and "completely", which I suspect is a big part of why no one notices.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#257

Post by lproven »

mistermann wrote: post #256
lproven wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Two can play at that game: "I declare myself the victor!" Wow that is very easy, maybe that's why it's so popular.

No, not at all.

You claim:

> all metaphysical frameworks are faith-based

First, define what a "metaphysical framework" is.

But my strong suspicion is that to do so you will end up with a philosophical argument that amounts to "we can know nothing" and ends up with solipsism.

Which is largely why I disdain philosophy.

Instead, here is a simple set of statements to counter your position that all belief systems are equivalent:

* There is such a thing as objective reality, independent of belief.

* It is possible to probe and determine the nature of reality by experiment.

* By doing this, we can obtain objectively verifiable, reproducible results, ands they are consistent for all, regardless of belief.

* No such test is possible for any kind of supernatural belief. Gods, afterlife, any of it.

* Therefore there is no way to demonstrate these.

Belief in that which cannot be tested and demonstrated is faith based.

Lack of such belief is not a belief, although it is typically asserted to be so by faith-holders.

It is is equivalent to saying that "off" is a TV station. "I watch channel X, you watch channel Y. We are the same!"

No: I turned off my TV. It has no aerial. I do not watch any station or channel.

This is not the same.

Person A: "I have hair, you don't. We both have hairstyles. You chose that hairstyle."

Person B: "I am bald."

Atheism is not a faith. Atheism is not a belief. It is the absence of belief. It is not equivalent. It is not a metaphysical framework, if I understand what you meant.

I have encountered many evangelists who maintain that all atheists are lying and everyone believes in their god. This is a simple failure of imagination. It is not a stronger argument.

"Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it." -- Philip K Dick.

I stopped believing at age 11 and have never since seen any evidence to make me reconsider.

All gods are lies. All religions are simple superstition with no basis in reality or truth.

I welcome any objectively verifiable, reproducible evidence to the contrary.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#258

Post by mistermann »

lproven wrote: post #257
mistermann wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two can play at that game: "I declare myself the victor!" Wow that is very easy, maybe that's why it's so popular.

No, not at all. You claim: > all metaphysical frameworks are faith-based First, define what a "metaphysical framework" is. But my strong suspicion is that to do so you will end up with a philosophical argument that amounts to "we can know nothing" and ends up with solipsism. Which is largely why I disdain philosophy. Instead, here is a simple set of statements to counter your position that all belief systems are equi…

> No, not at all.

If this was true, you would be able to DEMONSTRATE that you can actually consider criticism of your claims, and take questions seriously, and answer them.

I believe that you quite literally cannot do that.

For starters, there is your base cognitive capability. But there is also now the "losing face" element in play.

Pushing back against one's cultural conditioning and the intuitions and customs that come along with it is not easy.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#259

Post by mistermann »

lproven wrote: post #257
mistermann wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two can play at that game: "I declare myself the victor!" Wow that is very easy, maybe that's why it's so popular.

No, not at all. You claim: > all metaphysical frameworks are faith-based First, define what a "metaphysical framework" is. But my strong suspicion is that to do so you will end up with a philosophical argument that amounts to "we can know nothing" and ends up with solipsism. Which is largely why I disdain philosophy. Instead, here is a simple set of statements to counter your position that all belief systems are equi…

This is so shockingly normative, it almost feels like you (or someone else) are putting me on.

Have you wondered why it is so incredibly easy for LLM's to emulate Humans?

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#260

Post by lproven »

mistermann wrote: post #259
lproven wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. You claim: > all metaphysical frameworks are faith-based First, define what a "metaphysical framework" is. But my strong suspicion is that to do so you will end up with a philosophical argument that amounts to "we can know nothing" and ends up with solipsism. Which is largely why I disdain philosophy. Instead, here is a simple set of statements to counter your position that all belief systems are equi…

This is so shockingly normative, it almost feels like you (or someone else) are putting me on. Have you wondered why it is so incredibly easy for LLM's to emulate Humans?

We are not playing on the same table here.

I am not interested in whatever weird little sky-fairy-botherer game you are trying to play.

If your gods were real, you could prove their existence. You can't, same as all other sky-fairy-botherers. Therefore, there being no evidence whatsoever for them, they don't exist. The end.

Now please go away and stop being annoying. The grownups have technology to talk about.

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