Philosophy Now Forum

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:07 am I suggest the great Peter Griffin.

Is that how you see me?

Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:10 am I remember it. It's my favorite one and I think it fits you well. It's a suitable expression for the discussions on this forum.

I think it sends the message that I'm not to be messed with, don't you?

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:16 am

Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:10 am I remember it. It's my favorite one and I think it fits you well. It's a suitable expression for the discussions on this forum.

I think it sends the message that I'm not to be messed with, don't you?

That message... and so much more!

Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:27 am
That message... and so much more!

Thanks for not saying what.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:29 am

Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:27 am
That message... and so much more!

Thanks for not saying what.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:14 am

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:07 am I suggest the great Peter Griffin.

Is that how you see me?

Not at all, and I suppose Peter does more than occasionally take things very seriously with disastrous consequences.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:23 pm If God exists, what's at stake is one's eternal soul...its destiny, and its ultimate value. The stakes literally could not be higher. One is deciding on the disposition of one's soul forever...and one is receiving the outcome of one's own determination.

Can we come back to this?

Your above comment about the soul doesn’t provide much detail. I know you haven’t just made it up, so what is the source of your knowledge about what happens to the soul, and how specific is it in detail? From what you do say, I get the sense that you don’t just mean the soul misses out on something good, but, rather, faces something very bad.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the guy who made the Closer To Truth video I posted, has said he wants to believe in God but can’t quite manage it -or something to that effect- and I’ve heard others say something similar. It’s not like that with me. I’m not attracted to the notion of God, but neither am I repelled by it, so I don’t think there is something deep down in me that just wants to be contrary. No account of God that I have heard sounds plausible, so I am left without belief. That may be due to a deficiency in my rationality, as you might suggest, but the fact remains, I just do not believe that God exists. I could pretend to believe, just in case, as Pascal advises, but God would surely see through that. What I’m saying is, genuine belief in something is not a matter of choice.

Given this, is it really just, or proportionate, that I suffer for eternity because I couldn’t do something required of me during my blink of an eye lifespan as a mortal human being? You are going to tell me that is not for you to say, and whatever God decides, or does, is the right thing, aren’t you? What God decides to be fair, is fair, let that not be in dispute. Even so, despite your total faith in God’s judgement, you are human, with a human’s sense of right and wrong, and what is fair or unfair, so, human to human, tell me if you think it fair that I suffer for eternity for failing to believe that God exists?

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 1:23 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:14 am
Is that how you see me?

Not at all, and I suppose Peter does more than occasionally take things very seriously with disastrous consequences.

I'm not very familiar with the character. I looked him up on Youtube and watched a clip of him trying to beat up Donald Trump, so he obviously does have something to recommend him.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:36 pm

tillingborn wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:29 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:25 pm The assumption is that the concept "God" is an exact parallel with the concept "fairies." That's false. I'm not granting it.

But you must have realized that.

In logic, yes He is.

"Logic" is a mechanism. It has no premises of its own...

Exactly. Which is why if God cannot slip into a logical argument on the same standing as fairies, there are no logical arguments for God; they all rest on special pleading.
But even if you argue that there is difference between fairies and God, in that:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 9:56 pmNobody's a No-Fairyist, and for good reasons...that question is settled and gone.

your argument that no Atheism follows from no God because:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 9:24 pmThere's no longer anything to deny. So Atheism's one central precept, "no God" becomes an incoherent statement.

might be applied to fairies, the same cannot be said of evolution.

If God has to exist for "Atheists" to coherently deny Him, evolution has to exist for you to coherently deny it.

Anyway, back to another logical point you refuse to confront. One of the following is true:
1. If it is only your fear of God that prevents you from doing terrible things, you confess to being a dangerous lunatic that needs to be controlled.
2. If you are not a dangerous lunatic, you admit that your sense of morality is independent of God.

Incidentally, here is a video for you to ignore, but may be of interest to others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18YwBwIK_no

Immanuel Can wrote:

If God exists, what's at stake is one's eternal soul...its destiny, and its ultimate value. The stakes literally could not be higher. One is deciding on the disposition of one's soul forever...and one is receiving the outcome of one's own determination.

But "forever" is not the same as "eternal". Forever implies everlasting, and eternal implies absolute and timeless.

The welfare of one's soul matters very much . However many people think soul is a synonym for psyche. Whether or not the psyche survives the death of the body is another issue from the question of ontic substances. IC seems to believe body and soul/psyche are different ontic substances of which soul/psyche is of special value to God, more so than body.

Many men now believe the welfare of the psyche is very important, and there is no need to read The Bible or believe in life after death to believe mental health is a good state to be in.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:06 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 1:23 am

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 12:14 am
Is that how you see me?

Not at all, and I suppose Peter does more than occasionally take things very seriously with disastrous consequences.

I'm not very familiar with the character. I looked him up on Youtube and watched a clip of him trying to beat up Donald Trump, so he obviously does have something to recommend him.

I find this extremely disconcerting, that someone I find in you of a familiar sense of humour has not watched the crap out of Family Guy!! Even Arising_uk - who I clearly miss from the forum, not sure if you remember that git, even that total philosophical meanderer knew more than me about the dude that feeds me Peter Griffin - not God. A_uk was an agnostic atheist (until I convinced him (that God would eventually exist due to entropy(at which point he got his wife to pull out the garden hose (to baptise him)))) ...lest he become a boonyist of boonyism. I digress.

..such is life as another git said down under.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 1:34 pm
I find this extremely disconcerting, that someone I find in you of a familiar sense of humour has not watched the crap out of Family Guy!!

It's gone onto my to-do list.

Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 1:39 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 1:34 pm
I find this extremely disconcerting, that someone I find in you of a familiar sense of humour has not watched the crap out of Family Guy!!

It's gone onto my to-do list.

..no excuse since you're retired...you can sit back with a cup of tea and watch the crap out of Seth MacFarlane's imagination (personally, I'd have his babies since he is my favourite USAdian...all it takes is imagination and ediucation of biologists imo, of course then I need psychologist to work out how to convince Seth that I am his man...or there could be more convincing ways for him...the mind boggles)

The Orville was pretty good - sometimes a little too serious...I thought it would be more wacky like Seths other crap that got stuck..

..shit, hang on, so you are barely comprehending Brian and Stuey..and we have been talking all this time...as if we were friends from the same planet.

Since you are retired, this starts off on point,..not sure where it ends up

The amazing thing about Seth M. is that he does most of the voices - then Mila Kunis does Meg - there's a live thing where the voice actors are all on stage and doing it ...like live..doing it live Harbal...

I'll try and find it for you

(sorry to any ACTUAL Christians that are getting upset right now)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:23 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 10:16 pm Okay, make me aware of what is at stake, if only to relieve yourself of the arduous task of trying to imagine me.

If God exists, what's at stake is one's eternal soul...its destiny, and its ultimate value. The stakes literally could not be higher. One is deciding on the disposition of one's soul forever...and one is receiving the outcome of one's own determination.

Compared to that, nothing on Earth is serious business.

First, it is quite possible that there are higher and other dimensions to our existence -- such as what is proposed by the existence of a soul. It is also quite possible that the entire universal and cosmic manifestation has a divine origin or that the manifestation itself (as Vedanta proposes) is itself necessarily divine. In that perspective all emphasis is placed on Existence and Being as, for us, unfathomable wonders.

But to say "If god exists" is one thing. It is quite another to say "God exists in the specific way that it is pictured in Jewish and Christian scripture".

But let's focus on what are 'the highest stakes'. The term establishes itself within an evoked anxiety. It orients itself in the assertion that for an individual *something is wrong* that requires a medicine and an antidote. This is fitting in an existential sense given the fact that life itself is completely unstable and, to all obvious appearances, life itself (the world, the universe) does not give a rat's ass about the well-being the comfort or the security of any biological entity. These conditions evoke sensations of insecurity and, as it does often happen, contingent events arise that turn life into a 'hell' (natural events or human events) this anxiety is increased. Essential existential angst then is not hard to understand.

Looked at critically, if also cynically, the Christian threat that Immanuel works with has a great deal of power. It is not hard to see it as deeply manipulative and psychological. If you can convince someone that at the most fundamental level (the ontic as Belinda says) then you really have them in your hands.

To say "If it happens that you do not" (and here we must state what it is that is demanded in truthful terms) "get on your knees before Jesus" and, somehow, manage to get yourself into his good graces, that as a result you will absolutely lose yourself; find yourself in a terrible realm of eternal torture; and be forever deprived of something promised (heaven) but never actually perceivable -- right there you have a profoundly powerful tool to psychologically manipulate people.

This should be obvious, should it not?

And my question becomes: OK, so we have identified the ultimate psychological manipulation tool; we know that it is real and has been used. We also know that it is being used. But what is the further ramification of the existence of such powerful and ultimate tools of psychological manipulation? What happens if, say, you create a society and a culture of people who are trained to be manipulatable in these ways? Or put inversely: What happens if you create a society and culture of people who are capable of seeing and resisting manipulation and coercion on these levels?

Essentially though -- philosophically and also existentially -- the central questions are not bad ones at all:

1) What really IS the most important thing, or way of being, or activity, of Life itself?

2) What is of Ultimate Value?

3) What actions do, or do not, conduce to the final (if one thinks in such terms) disposition of one's soul?

The questions are valid and indeed I would say extremely so. But again, and to invert them, what do we say about a person, even if that person is ourself, who has absolutely no regard for the importance of the questions if only on an 'ontic' level? (i.e. not based in afterworld fears or beliefs).

Here I would say, at least this is true in my own case, that what most people take away from a close reading of Nietzsche is that one does very well to ask oneself all of the primary questions, the most intense of questions, the most demanding questions, while having punctured and deflated the absurdity of an entire system of 'false belief' which Christianity had become.

Thus if one is really *seeking truth* one is obligated to puncture a false bubble -- and come what may when the false construct crashes down around one.

Immanuel, indoctrinated up to his gills and a 'pimp' for a belief-system clearly deeply committed to untruths that no longer can really function for us, cannot and will not be moved from his position. But here is the curious thing: through his adamancy, through his ever-renewed and stengthened commitment to fronting a lie (a deception-set) he gets ever more mired in the strict act of psychological manipulation, not of revealing a 'liberating truth'.

It is quite absurd to say that when or once such a false-imago of god is punctured and man is left significantly alone that that man has no ethical or moral questions! That itself is a terrible lie. I will go further: it is wrong and even evil to assert that a man who cannot believe in the Jewish-Christian conception, so bound up in manipulative techniques, who retreats away from the entire concern about god and divinity, is rendered incapable of living out moral and ethical values.

But you see it is right there that Immanuel shows himself deeply invested in LYING. This is not a minor issue. And I could also parrot his phrasing: "The stakes could not be higher".

For this reason, Immanuel, for this essential reason, you have taught me what really is at stake. You did this inadvertently but nevertheless you did it very thoroughly.

Nevertheless the question of Ultimate Truth, though you deprive yourself of any right to preach about it (because of your tendency to lie and distort and your daily revealed dishonesty), remains a quintessential question.

What is at stake? What has value?

attofishpi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 2:04 pm
..shit, hang on, so you are barely comprehending Brian and Stuey..and we have been talking all this time...as if we were friends from the same planet.

OKAY, okay! I'm on to it.