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They aren't fucking mutually exclusive.
All of the dumb asses who go around proudly announcing I'M AN AGNOSTIC TAKE THAT
You sound like a fucking retard.
Alright.
Get this into your head.
Atheism = Lack of belief in a god
Agnosticism = You don't claim to know for certain there is no god
I don't believe in a god, and I don't claim to know for certain there is no god.
I can't stand people who act smug because they say they're an agnostic.

(http://api.ning.com/files/kvOHl9cTrw7tTohXFKjpEExwwz0hualrDsn0-6s1D4DjsRMe*PO7qlttW97WZji-XBcwFp*Xow8E56zaTjaZNfL0xbIoD9xr/gnosticism_graph.png)

You seem to have issues.

Quote from: aitm on January 23, 2016, 08:15:56 AM
You seem to have issues.

How so?

Quote from: Jannabear on January 23, 2016, 08:21:00 AM
How so?

Okay, Janna, I'll take a shot.  From my perspective, you come across as a raging angerholic.  Your point becomes  covered by your anger--whether or not I agree with your point, what I see first is raging anger.  After I take the time to subtract out the abusive language, the angry language, I can then see your point.  But by that time I am usually too tired to respond; emotionally, I just don't want to become involved.  I am not saying anger is not real, not productive, not justified--I am saying that when you lead off with it post after post, it does become very tiresome. 

I, too, hate smug people--people who are smug about anything.  When the opportunity is right for me, I love to wipe that smug look off their faces.  But I have found that anger does not work well to do that.  Anger makes them more smug.  Then can see that they have gotten your goat, and relish that and take it as a sign that they have won and are correct in their smugness after all.  Clear, unemotional statement of facts works best.  If they react to those facts (which prove their point is incorrect), smile knowingly at them and maybe raise your eyebrows.  Don't show them you are angry.  Not getting angry seems to make some of them angry--if so, you know you have won or at least rocked their boat a little. 

Anyway, Janna, I hope that makes a little sense to you.

Preaching to the choir, mate.


Secretly a Warsie.

Quote from: Mike Cl on January 23, 2016, 09:01:12 AM
Okay, Janna, I'll take a shot.  From my perspective, you come across as a raging angerholic.  Your point becomes  covered by your anger--whether or not I agree with your point, what I see first is raging anger.  After I take the time to subtract out the abusive language, the angry language, I can then see your point.  But by that time I am usually too tired to respond; emotionally, I just don't want to become involved.  I am not saying anger is not real, not productive, not justified--I am saying that when you lead off with it post after post, it does become very tiresome. 

I, too, hate smug people--people who are smug about anything.  When the opportunity is right for me, I love to wipe that smug look off their faces.  But I have found that anger does not work well to do that.  Anger makes them more smug.  Then can see that they have gotten your goat, and relish that and take it as a sign that they have won and are correct in their smugness after all.  Clear, unemotional statement of facts works best.  If they react to those facts (which prove their point is incorrect), smile knowingly at them and maybe raise your eyebrows.  Don't show them you are angry.  Not getting angry seems to make some of them angry--if so, you know you have won or at least rocked their boat a little. 

Anyway, Janna, I hope that makes a little sense to you.

Right. The way you write your submissions is indicative of an emotional outburst, in that they lack arrangement in paragraph form and you could put an exclamation mark on every sentence, based on phrasing and content.

That is not a criticism. The clarity of your statement is lost because your statements are more like outbursts than rational thought.

This is not a complaint about what you post, because I think you really are seeking answers. But your posts to me are indicative of a scattered thought process. You are also an intelligent person and can contribute. And for fuck sakes, SEE A DOCTOR for your problems.

QuoteAll of the dumb asses who go around proudly announcing I'M AN AGNOSTIC TAKE THAT

I would think you of most people should realise the importance as people identifying as what they find most accurate.

Atheists and agnostics have different "cultures" and expectations on their behaviour and what they find important. Yes you can be (and are) both... but there is no point in saying "I am an atheist who frankly just doesn't know and don't overly care about if there is or isn't a god, as well as don't feel like getting involved in theological debates or the stigmas associated with declaring myself an atheist" instead of just saying "agnostic".

You cant complain about people who call themselves feminist because you dislike one interpretation of what that word means, then say that the popular interpretation of agnostic is wrong because only one meaning is the "true" meaning.

Quote from: Jannabear on January 23, 2016, 08:21:00 AM
How so?

Well for one thing, you cannot seem to go more than a few minutes at a time without angrily labelling someone or something as fucking retarded. It must suck being that angry and frustrated all the time.

Quote from: JannabearThey aren't fucking mutually exclusive.

This is fucking correct.

Quote from: JannabearAll of the dumb asses who go around proudly announcing I'M AN AGNOSTIC TAKE THAT
You sound like a fucking retard.

Shiranu already answered this statement.

Quote from: ShiranuI would think you of most people should realize the importance as people identifying as what they find most accurate.

Quote from: JannabearAlright.
Get this into your head.
Atheism = Lack of belief in a god
Agnosticism = You don't claim to know for certain there is no god

Correct. See the chart above.

Quote from: JannabearI don't believe in a god, and I don't claim to know for certain there is no god.

I am confident that none of the gods worshiped by mankind exist. But certainty about a creator, one way or the other, is probably dishonest.

Quote from: JannabearI can't stand people who act smug because they say they're an agnostic.

How very smug.

Agnosticism is a subject that has been discussed here so many times before, that many people are probably disinterested. But if you want to get people to talk to you, about these kinds of things, I think you need to dial back the outrage. :34:

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 23, 2016, 06:09:31 PM
This is fucking correct.

Shiranu already answered this statement.
Correct. See the chart above.

I am confident that none of the gods worshiped by mankind exist. But certainty about a creator, one way or the other, is probably dishonest.

How very smug.

Agnosticism is a subject that has been discussed here so many times before, that many people are probably disinterested. But if you want to get people to talk to you, about these kinds of things, I think you need to dial back the outrage. :34:

What makes you think there's a creator?

I'm gnostic. It's because my mind can't handle god ^_^

I put metaphysics above physics ... I put holism above reductionism.  It is a choice.

Quote from: Jannabear on January 23, 2016, 08:54:23 PM
What makes you think there's a creator?

I think you misunderstood me. I don't think there is a creator. Not at all. But to profess certainty, as to there being no creator, would be dishonest. So in that respect I am agnostic. As for the Gods of men, I am as near certain as I can be, that they are myths. So I would consider myself functionally gnostic in that area.

Objection!

We do possess the knowledge that proves that a creator cannot exist. It's called linguistics.

There is a reason why it took so long a time for the concept of any deity; any creator evolving into a transcendental god that came up with Abrahamic religions. Because it is an abstract concept and abstract concepts cannot exist without written culture. (This is also the explanation both why Abrahamic religions rose from the same region and why they are different and yet the same in many sense, besides the narrative they dictate. Why it started with ancient Hebrew and Arabic very easily fel linto the same line...)

Simply the idea of a god; any god, gods or deities are all one and it is completely based on human desires apart from the delusion itself. There is not a definition or a description of a god in human history that exists out of that profile. There can't be. Because there is no other narrative for god out of the profile of an absentee landlord. It's human, its as various as humans and its desires.  Therefore there is no such thing as the slightest possibility of some evidence for existence of a creator. It's invalid. It's fantasy of a fantasy. Any evidence anyone would try to imagine as 'what if' would have to be in the limits of describing some sort of a super MAN. Not some unimaginable supreme entity that mortals cannot fathom. Humans only constantly developed the language to describe it and with the sufficient accumulation of written culture they finally reached to a transcendental creator. They invented imaginary concepts, powers they liked to have- to tell those stories attached to it, but narrative has always been the same. Like children playing make belief. Because gods and religions are functional. It has always, but always been beneficial and profitable. It's trade, its politics. It's a means to desired ends played itself out.

God is an anthropomorphic figure that has developed into some abstract make up -transcendence which cannot exist without written culture- and all religions are anthropocentric in their nature. The idea of god does not come from a creator of the universe. It evolved to be the creator of the universe in time. It comes from fearing the thunder and lightening, fire, earthquake, floods, hurricanes, the mighty ocean, the mighty mountains and the powerful wild animals, famine, bad winter that threatened their lives. Everything human faces on the planet in nature.

Humans did not start 'believing' in a god because they thought some supreme being 'created' them. They arrived an understanding of a god that did the creating from mortal fears and simple daily needs. Because they worried about their own lives. Famine, hard winter, disease, fear of death. Why do we die? Why do we feel pain? Why do we get sick? Why do we starve? Human fear of its own nature. It's always 'what happened to me' or 'what is happening to me' or 'what will happen to me? Now and after I die'. It's first person, all about the human itself, first defined in the individual level, then for a society because we are social animals and cannot survive alone; we have to live together.

The idea of the creator of universe, esp. the universe as we undertsand now, today, is a last phase of a series of 'upgrades' and 'updates' of that primitive idea, adapted and modified in time. By development of language. Linguistics. First 'the universe' is the clan, then the village....then the cities, countries and what's around it. As the map starts to open, gradually the 'universe' has become the planet, then finally it has becaome the universe as we know today. Adaptation. Religions and gods get keep adapted by humans because they are functional. So they survive. Basic principle. As the general scale got larger, the scale of god followed it. But it is the same absentee landlord. Doesn't matter how or with what high language or concepts you decsribe it. It's human.

God is the rejection of nature because of mortal fear. That's why in all Abrahamic religions human is defined with something supernatural, an immortal element called soul. It's a symbolic way of refusing to die. It's why in all those religions human is defined as something proud and more than animals, first in the center of the world and that world as in center of the universe. Me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I.

This is not a belief or trust into some supreme being. It's only the BELIEF IN ONESELF in a twisted collective way; SIMPLE TRIBALISM and any other way of believing in a god cannot exist, exactly because of this reason. People who claim to believe in some god, actually believe in themselves, their special place.

And that god is not even a monotheistic god. It can't be. It's sum of fears of death, fears of pain and hoping to be rewarded above all whatever happens. It's 'I don't wanna die! I'm above nature, I have a precious soul, I refuse to die'. It's not trusting in some omnipotent divinity. It's not a belief, it's a claim, it's a wish rising from a make believe has gone so long, it is a fucking category. The whole thing is just a resentful pray; a painful wish.

Guys, there is NOTHING in human history that humans DID because they BELIEVED in some god. Everything, but everything that has been DONE has a REAL LIFE FUNCTION behind it, because humans believe in themselves above all and nothing else. The very reason they imagined gods an deities is this. This is how our cognitive process evolved and also why it actually doesn't allow some genuine belief in god. Otherwise, we couldn't have survived. Because whatever happens, human will act, consciously or unconsciously according to what functions for him. Rest is politics, literature, fantasy to carry this along time.


Infact, I am going to go further and claim that it's actually impossible to believe in a creator and that actually noone does.

Because god is also a still born concept, because the moment a hominid developed the ability to think and speak;describe any experience he had stepping out that reality he experienced it; voice what's in his mind about a possible creator, imagined stories of it, rather than just feel, love, fear, live and die with it, the idea of god died there at that moment. Because he alienated and seperated himself from that supposed omnipotent nature of that idea of supreme being and its supposed existence. He existed outside of it. He developed the consciousness regarding to his own existence apart from the nature. Process of intelligence. The kind of self awareness and consciousness only one animal on the planet that we know evolved to possess. The cognitive process we developed makes the idea of god impossible. Yes, I said impossible.

If any of you can imagine a god outside the presented category, please come forward explain and then I'll reconsider that thinking/claiming that god cannot exist is dishonest. However, categories of human narrative doesn't change, because we are just simple animals with simple fixed needs and we don't have any need or use for another category of a god, that's why we invented it this way in the first place . Because there isn't one, there can't be and hence the fantasy needed to be maintained.


Even if one day we manage to colonise the galaxy, we will always be a bunch of apes that wants to feel safe sitting around a fire nestling to each other. Take that up to the space, bring it down to a cave, it doesn't matter, because it doesn't change. Can't. If it does, we'd go extinct. 

Bonus points to Shoe ... can't not admire the psychological/linguistic POV.

But I suppose a real skeptic would not only be skeptic about theism and anti-theism (one kind of atheism) but also agnosticism and gnosticism (other kinds of atheism).  Atheism as broadly defined.  But that would be rather Buddhist (in some cases).

I used -'s for my replies.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 08:56:58 AM
Objection!
-OVERRULED!
We do possess the knowledge that proves that a creator cannot exist. It's called linguistics.
-I was saying I'm agnostic towards the idea of a god because it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis, I find it to be completely silly regardless of whether or not it can be disproven.

There is a reason why it took so long a time for the concept of any deity; any creator evolving into a transcendental god that came up with Abrahamic religions. Because it is an abstract concept and abstract concepts cannot exist without written culture. (This is also the explanation both why Abrahamic religions rose from the same region and why they are different and yet the same in many sense, besides the narrative they dictate. Why it started with ancient Hebrew and Arabic very easily fel linto the same line...)
-Again, I find it to be completely silly, but the idea of a god is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, that's why I'm an atheist agnostic.

Simply the idea of a god; any god, gods or deities are all one and it is completely based on human desires apart from the delusion itself. There is not a definition or a description of a god in human history that exists out of that profile. There can't be. Because there is no other narrative for god out of the profile of an absentee landlord. It's human, its as various as humans and its desires.  Therefore there is no such thing as the slightest possibility evidence for existence of a creator. It's invalid. It's fantasy of a fantasy. Any evidence anyone would try to imagine as 'what if' would have to be in the limits of describing some sort of a super MAN. Not some unimaginable supreme entity that mortals cannot fathom. Humans only constantly developed the language to describe it and with the sufficient accumulation of written culture they finally reached to a transcendental creator. They invented imaginary concepts, powers they liked to have- to tell those stories attached to it, but narrative has always been the same. Like children playing make belief. Because gods and religions are functional. It has always, but always been beneficial and profitable. It's trade, its politics. It's a means to desired ends played itself out.
-Again, I find the idea of a god to be completely silly, and I'm completely atheist towards the christian and islamic god, and every other religious idea of a god, but I'm an atheist agnostic towards the idea of a god in general, because it has no attributes, it's unfalsifiable, that doesn't mean I'm giving it any credibility on any level, it's just not disprovable, maybe it is, but currently, from what I see, it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

God is an anthropomorphic figure that has developed into some abstract make up -transcendence which cannot exist without written culture- and all religions are anthropocentric in their nature. The idea of god does not come from a creator of the universe. It evolved to be the creator of the universe in time. It comes from fearing the thunder and lightening, fire, earthquake, floods, hurricanes, the mighty ocean, the mighty mountains and the powerful wild animals, famine, bad winter that threatened their lives. Everything human faces on the planet in nature.
-Agreed, but again, the idea of a god in general is unfalsifiable, I'm an athiest towards religious ideas of a god, and an atheist agnostic towards the idea of a god in general, though I find both to be completely fucking silly.

Humans did not start 'believing' in a god because they thought some supreme being 'created' them. They arrived an understanding of a god that did the creating from mortal fears and simple daily needs. Because they worried about their own lives. Famine, hard winter, disease, fear of death. Why do we die? Why do we feel pain? Why do we get sick? Why do we starve? Human fear of its own nature. It's always 'what happened to me' or 'what is happening to me' or 'what will happen to me? Now and after I die'. It's first person, all about the human itself, first defined in the individual level, then for a society because we are social animals and cannot survive alone; we have to live together.
-Agreed

The idea of the creator of universe, esp. the universe as we undertsand now, today, is a last phase of a series of 'upgrades' and 'updates' of that primitive idea, adapted and modified in time. By development of language. Linguistics. First 'the universe' is the clan, then the village....then the cities, countries and what's around it. As the map starts to open, gradually the 'universe' has become the planet, then finally it has becaome the universe as we know today. Adaptation. Religions and gods get keep adapted by humans because they are functional. So they survive. Basic principle. As the general scale got larger, the scale of god followed it. But it is the same absentee landlord. Doesn't matter how or with what high language or concepts you decsribe it. It's human.
-I agree, I've never said anything otherwise.

God is the rejection of nature because of mortal fear. That's why in all Abrahamic religions human is defined with something supernatural, an immortal element called soul. It's a symbolic way of refusing to die. It's why in all those religions human is defined as something proud and more than animals, first in the center of the world and that world as in center of the universe. Me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I.
-Agreed

This is not a belief or trust into some supreme being. It's only the BELIEF IN ONESELF in a twisted collective way; SIMPLE TRIBALISM and any other way of believing in a god cannot exist, exactly because of this reason. People who claim to believe in some god, actually believe in themselves, their special place.
-I find those who actually believe in it to be mentally ill personally, but most of them don't actually believe this shit.

And that god is not even a monotheistic god. It can't be. It's sum of fears of death, fears of pain and hoping to be rewarded above all whatever happens. It's 'I don't wanna die! I'm above nature, I have a precious soul, I refuse to die'. It's not trusting in some omnipotent divinity. It's not a belief, it's a claim, it's a wish rising from a make believe has gone so long, it is a fucking category. The whole thing is just a resentful pray; a painful wish.
-It's a silly belief and a silly claim.

Guys, there is NOTHING in human history that humans DID because they BELIEVED in some god. Everything, but everything that has been DONE has a REAL LIFE FUNCTION behind it, because humans believe in themselves above all and nothing else. The very reason they imagined gods an deities is this. This is how our cognitive process evolved and also why it actually doesn't allow some genuine belief in god. Otherwise, we couldn't have survived. Because whatever happens, human will act, consciously or unconsciously according to what functions for him. Rest is politics, literature, fantasy to carry this along time.
-Bullshit, humans are manipulated all of the time to do shit they wouldn't do with religion.

Infact, I am going to go further and claim that it's actually impossible to believe in a creator and that actually noone does.
-I find the idea of a god to be silly, but the idea that someone can't believe in something is silly.

Because god is also a still born concept, because the moment a hominid developed the ability to think and speak;describe any experience he had stepping out that reality he experienced it; voice what's in his mind about a possible creator, imagined stories of it, rather than just feel, love, fear, live and die with it, the idea of god died there at that moment. Because he alienated and seperated himself from that supposed omnipotent nature of that idea of supreme being and its supposed existence. He existed outside of it. He developed the consciousness regarding to his own existence apart from the nature. Process of intelligence. The kind of self awareness and consciousness only one animal on the planet that we know evolved to possess. The cognitive process we developed makes the idea of god impossible. Yes, I said impossible.
-I honestly don't even know what the fuck you're trying to say.

If any of you can imagine a god outside the presented category, please come forward explain and then I'll reconsider that thinking/claiming that god cannot exist is dishonest. However, categories of human narrative doesn't change, because we are just simple animals with simple fixed needs and we don't have any need or use for another category of a god, that's why we invented it this way in the first place . Because there isn't one, there can't be and hence the fantasy needed to be maintained.
-I'm torn between the fact that the idea of a god is incredibly silly and the fact that it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
I'm not sure what to think.

Even if one day we manage to colonise the galaxy, we will always be a bunch of apes that wants to feel safe sitting around a fire nestling to each other. Take that up to the space, bring it down to a cave, it doesn't matter, because it doesn't change. Can't. If it does, we'd go extinct.
-Humans can and will change if we survive, I forsee humans changing for the better and not the worse personally, because religion is declining, and people are starting to challenge their governments, they're starting to be skeptical and asking what the fuck is going on.

Quote from: Baruch on January 24, 2016, 09:06:46 AM
Bonus points to Shoe ... can't not admire the psychological/linguistic POV.

But I suppose a real skeptic would not only be skeptic about theism and anti-theism (one kind of atheism) but also agnosticism and gnosticism (other kinds of atheism).  Atheism as broadly defined.  But that would be rather Buddhist (in some cases).

I agreed with most of the shit he said, I just don't know what to think, the idea of a god literally makes absolutely no fucking sense, but at the same time it's unfalsifiable.

Quote from: Baruch on January 24, 2016, 09:06:46 AM
But I suppose a real skeptic would not only be skeptic about theism and anti-theism (one kind of atheism) but also agnosticism and gnosticism (other kinds of atheism).  Atheism as broadly defined.  But that would be rather Buddhist (in some cases).

Atheism is not a claim. It's a neutral position. There are no various neutral positions. There is only one. It doesn't have some strong or weak version or side. It's neutral.

Theism is a claim. And the 'knowledge' it created has many positions as far as the diversity of human cultures go. All these things can be explained by linguistics and anthropology; human evolution in any way. That is KNOWLEDGE.   

Scepticism is needed when you have something to be sceptic about. You cannot be just sceptic that something might be out there when there has never been anything to be sceptic about. You can just be personally suspicious that something might be out there and this again falls back what I wrote about traits of being human; the culture we created around fear of death.

If you are born into that categories, you are sceptic about them. Not sceptic about something that is not there.

Science. It's completely different. We need science to understand nature and develop technology. We don't need science to 'disprove god'. That's the reason it doesn't work on masses. Doesn't matter how breif and beautifully you explain ho things are in a scientific way, there is always the religious. Because, people do not believe in some creator because they need answers on why all the existence was created and by what. They just don't want to die. They do not feel pain. They do not want to be afraid. It's personal; it is believing oneself.

There is nothing more powerful than this fear. This is exactly why we evolved to believe, look for patterns in everything, make up batshit crazy stories -besides them being practical parables- and see much more than it really is out there.

It's Lucy having a walk around the Savannah and thinking every breeze is a wild animal to get her. She needs to take everything as a fatal threat to survive and so do we. That's also our ego and our paranoia -not scepticism- human seeing itself above everything. Even the belief that aliens are visiting us -of course us!- is coming form this.

The nonexistence of god is not a some scientific theory offered to explain a natural phenomenon or some law. It doesn't have to be falsified. It's outside of empiric data.

Atheism is an ancient position. It didn't occur as a result of scientific development. It's another result of written culture and it is not a claim.

Quote from: Jannabear on January 24, 2016, 09:13:14 AM
I used -'s for my replies.

I do not have to tweak your lines from my own post. Get the fuck out of my face until you learn how to use the forum.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 09:42:01 AM
I do not have to tweak your lines from my own post. Get the fuck out of my face until you learn how to use the forum.

what the fuck are you talking about.
I just put it that way so it's more fucking coherent to read, if you just have to read it side by side with your original post it makes it much more annoying, I'm being more considerate to you if anything.
Don't have to be a fucking cunt about it.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 09:39:30 AM
The nonexistence of god is not a some scientific theory offered to explain a natural phenomenon or some law. It doesn't have to be falsified. It's outside of empiric data.

Atheism is an ancient position. It didn't occur as a result of scientific development. It's another result of written culture and it is not a claim.

I never said it was.

Quote from: Jannabear on January 24, 2016, 09:14:34 AM
but at the same time it's unfalsifiable.

Not everyone agrees that falsifiability is a good criteria.  Philosophers aren't supposed to agree, they are supposed to just argue.

When using Quote vs Insert Quote ... if you are responding and quoting someone, use Quote, outside the original post (upper right)  Then be sure to put your response, below the [/QUOTE] bracket.  A pain, if you are responding point by point.

Insert Quote is used ... if you are quoting something, after you open an new post, and are adding something farther down the string (the list when in compose is in opposite order of time).

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 10:00:24 AM

Yeah, and?
You do know what an unfalsifiable hypothesis is, right?
It's something with attributes that can't be disproven on an anecdotal level.

Some people don't believe in Popper (falsifiability).  Others don't believe in Kuhn ... that there are scientific revolutions because the old scientists die off.

Quote from: Jannabear on January 24, 2016, 10:19:45 AM
Yeah, and?
You do know what an unfalsifiable hypothesis is, right?
It's something with attributes that can't be disproven on an anecdotal level.

Yes I do. And trying to apply falsifiability to nonexsistence of god is exactly like trying to make arguments from scripture in accordance to disprove the scripture itself. Invalid. Bullshit, if you prefer. Esp. if you conisder that we possess the knowledge to explain why the basics of human culture; religions and the concept of god evolved this way.


Like being 'sceptic' of Alice not hitting the floor dead after falling down the rabbit hole, but being OK with the whole Wonderland.   

Quote from: Baruch on January 24, 2016, 10:30:00 AM
Some people don't believe in Popper (falsifiability).  Others don't believe in Kuhn ... that there are scientific revolutions because the old scientists die off.

It's not a matter of belief. These are two seperate things. The fact that science can explain what religion claimed to know for absolute, doesn't change the fact that the concept of god and belief evolved through linguistics from the same practical root.

Popper and Kuhn have nothing to do with this. Science has nohing to do with this. Science is not what curious people read in popular books, it is a world of its own. The knowledge that is used, produced has no direct relation to life without the applicable results.

The belief that a creator exists; that he intervenes human life is about human reality and human narrative which has changed very little in millions of years. That's what and where people have belief. Not because science can explain how planets form or the star that warms us.

You guys keep confusing two very different seperate things.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 10:39:26 AM
Yes I do. And trying to apply falsifiability to nonexsistence of god is exactly like trying to make arguments from scripture in accordance to disprove the scripture itself. Invalid. Bullshit, if you prefer. Esp. if you conisder that we possess the knowledge to explain why the basics of human culture; religions and the concept of god evolved this way.


Like being 'sceptic' of Alice not hitting the floor dead after falling down the rabbit hole, but being OK with the whole Wonderland.

Not really the same thing...
At all..
I'm just an atheist agnostic to the idea of a god because there's no way of disproving it completely.
Maybe this isn't a good standard, but you haven't really made a valid argument for why that is, perhaps you can change my mind.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 10:51:15 AM
It's not a matter of belief. These are two seperate things. The fact that science can explain what religion claimed to know for absolute, doesn't change the fact that the concept of god and belief evolved through linguistics from the same practical root.
-How it evolved is fucking irrelevant to the idea of a god in general, this isn't an argument for rather or not falsifiability should be a factor for being an atheist agnostic towards something or not.

Popper and Kuhn have nothing to do with this. Science has nohing to do with this. Science is not what curious people read in popular books, it is a world of its own. The knowledge that is used, produced has no direct relation to life without the applicable results.
-And?

The belief that a creator exists; that he intervenes human life is about human reality and human narrative which has changed very little in millions of years. That's what and where people have belief. Not because science can explain how planets form or the star that warms us.
-Alright, what the fuck is your point, this is irrelevant to rather or not falsifiability should be a factor in rather or not you're an atheist agnostic.

You guys keep confusing two very different seperate things.
-You literally haven't made a point for your position yet, unless I'm missing it.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 08:56:58 AM
Objection!

We do possess the knowledge that proves that a creator cannot exist. It's called linguistics.

The origins of myths about gods, are relevant only to the gods in question. They do NOT prove that a "creator cannot exist." They only prove that humans made up the ideas of gods, including creator beings.

The beginning of wisdom, is saying "I don't know." Agnosticism is simply that.

I have no knowledge of the existence of a creator. But I'm just a pretentious little speck of matter, and it seems like hubris to me to proclaim with certainty that there is not now, nor ever was a creator (Still, I'm pretty sure of it.).

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 24, 2016, 12:00:39 PM
The origins of myths about gods, are relevant only to the gods in question. They do NOT prove that a "creator cannot exist." They only prove that humans made up the ideas of gods, including creator beings.

The beginning of wisdom, is saying "I don't know." Agnosticism is simply that.

I have no knowledge of the existence of a creator. But I'm just a pretentious little speck of matter, and it seems like hubris to me to proclaim with certainty that there is not now, nor ever was a creator (Still, I'm pretty sure of it.).

I wasn't talking about myths or what the myths are telling about. I was talking about the link between thought and language. Thought doesn't come before language, it evolved/s through language and made an accumulation through history. We don't just speak what we think, we mostly think what we are thaught to speak -in modern world; standardised education also what we write. Every day socio-linguistics proves more that language rules over human, NOT human over language and we have little power to influence that while it has the power to shape us.

And I was saying all that as a tiny speck of matter. The manner of the tiny speck of matter really doesn't matter. It's not hubris. It's a tiny speck of matter with an opinion. 

You are so hung up on how I say it, you don't pay attention to what I am saying. May be you just don't want to, I have no idea.

i define myself as agnostic-atheist...yes...there is something like agtostic-atheism...
positive-atheists claims strictly that there is no god ''for sure''... agnostic-atheism claims that quran or bible can't have been sent by any kind of kind god who can be thought of...but there may be god we can't identify...

Atheism has little to nothing to do with religion. It's a position of lack of belief in gods and deities. The opposite position of atheism is theism. A theist can be without religion.

Religions are set of rules and conditions offered what cannot be coped/tolerated in a society level, because they are NOT beneficial or profitable for the society. They have been labeled as 'sin' and 'evil' in time. And moved on by mythic narratives (so they could easily be conveyed to other generations and everyone) became traditional norms that have been determined to keep order in a given society before any organised religion, let alone Abrahamic ones.

They are basically an accumulation of a very crude interpretation of basic primitive anthropological traits of human culture; life experience. That's why they are functional. The more the demography grew, they became more functional. And their evolution depended on constant re-defining of these traits of human culture, esp. after the written culture started to have its toll. This is still happening today. Some sects of religions adjust to what was unacceptable before, because it is beneficial to their existence and the society they live in. 

People should marry! Why? Can't we just fuck around? No, because we need to know who are the parents, esp. the father. Why? Somebody needs to protect and take care of women and children. OK, but I don't like women, I like men, why can't I fuck men? Because you cannot have kids and if we let men marry men, who will impregnate women? Someone else. No. They can hardly give birth and live and most of the babies don't even survive. It's pointless, we need people and we need them to obey rules. We'll kill you if you fuck a man.

This has nothing to do with the belief of god or religion. Religion comes with ceremony, gathering of the parables to spread around ; rules and laws to standardise the ways to provide for these needs 'safely' and they constantly changed into stories and pass that to the other generations to guarantee they will do the same.

Pagan cults were as strong as Judism or Islam or Christianity not to mention much older. They had the same basic, they had the same guarantee logic. Gods and the ceremonies got upgraded to adapt to the changes.

This is not different than the death punishment for cutting down a tree from the 'holly forest' 30 000 years ago. It doesn't start with "oh this is sacred forest! We should kill anyone who cuts a tree." It starts with that forest providing nuts and fruits and the necessary food to feed the people of the clan and people learning that it takes a long time for trees to grow and give their fruit. So if you cut them down uncontrollably everybody starves. This is the experience. How are you going to make that experience last for generations? By explaining every men and women and child that how important that is for their nurture in a time that 'knowledge' didn't exist as knowledge? You cannot do that. You need a guarantee. Then the forest becomes 'sacred' and if you harm a tree, you die.

Every other accumulation of texts are just 'expanding' human narrartive through development of language. Thousands of years later it is huge and every bullshit, disgusting thing in it has/had some function. They are not 'evidence' for disproving or proving a creator. The idea of a creator as we understand today is much younger than those traditions, rules and norms. Therefore, in a way, religion is older than god(s).

Quote from: drunkenshoeI wasn't talking about myths or what the myths are telling about. I was talking about the link between thought and language. Thought doesn't come before language, it evolved/s through language and made an accumulation through history. We don't just speak what we think, we mostly think what we are thaught to speak -in modern world; standardised education also what we write. Every day socio-linguistics proves more that language rules over human, NOT human over language and we have little power to influence that while it has the power to shape us.

Be that true or not, I don't catch what it really has to do with agnosticism, as a position or a label.

Quote from: drunkenshoeAnd I was saying all that as a tiny speck of matter. The manner of the tiny speck of matter really doesn't matter. It's not hubris. It's a tiny speck of matter with an opinion.

An opinion, with the limited perspective of a speck of matter, nonetheless. Just like me.

Quote from: drunkenshoeYou are so hung up on how I say it, you don't pay attention to what I am saying. May be you just don't want to, I have no idea.

I do pay attention, I just don't agree with you on the relevance of language/thought, to whether agnostic atheism is a more honest position than gnostic atheism, from the frame of reference of a speck of matter.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 25, 2016, 07:28:26 AM
Be that true or not, I don't catch what it really has to do with agnosticism, as a position or a label.

Everything.

QuoteAn opinion, with the limited perspective of a speck of matter, nonetheless. Just like me.

Of course. Where did you get the impression that it was something different? See, again you are treating me as if I called you stupid or found your opinion less than mine.  The first thing you see is someone being an arrogant smart ass rather than offering an opinion, because you percieve it as some 'big talk' as a result of hubris.

QuoteI do pay attention, I just don't agree with you on the relevance of language/thought, to whether agnostic atheism is a more honest position than gnostic atheism, from the frame of reference of a speck of matter.

This is not a home cooked idea. I am just expressing it according to the forum lingo and how new wave atheists handle the subject and these labels.

Also, at what point you disagree with me and you think there is no link? (Just so you know the link between thought and language and the dictating role of the language is a linguistic principle)
You are not engaging with anything I write and tell me, 'this doesn't make sense because of this'. Or if you are not interested in the subject you really do not need to asnwer as you know.

Linguistics has fuck-all to do with ontology. The universe is not required to conform to the patterns of human thought, or for that matter, linguistics. This is philosophy 101 â€" the basics. Why is this an argument?

Drunkie, it's quite obvious to me that Solomon is failing to make the connection you're trying to make between the question of whether a creator exists and your linguistics/thought, and quite frankly, I don't see your point either. This is not out of spite or lack of engagement or not being interested, but rather lack of common ground and genuine confusion: you're assuming far too many prior assumptions before going ahead, and as a result you have lost him and me in your rush to get ahead. Take a step back and think about where Solomon (and myself) may not be making that connection, and then work to build your argument from firmer ground.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 25, 2016, 08:02:19 PM
The universe is not required to conform to the patterns of human thought, or for that matter, linguistics. This is philosophy 101 â€" the basics. Why is this an argument?

Agreed. But there is no 'Universe' in my conversation. That's exactly what I am talking about.

QuoteDrunkie,

It's drunkenshoe.

QuoteIt's quite obvious to me that Solomon is failing to make the connection you're trying to make between the question of whether a creator exists and your linguistics/thought, and quite frankly, I don't see your point either.

It's really not your position to evaluate what Solomon and I are talking about. Esp. without engaging what I have to say. If you manage to act like human, my reaction is "Oh, OK".  But then we are not even fighting on anything, I am just saying that he is paying too much attention on the cultural difference. 

QuoteThis is not out of spite or lack of engagement or not being interested, but rather lack of common ground and genuine confusion: you're assuming far too many prior assumptions before going ahead, and as a result you have lost him and me in your rush to get ahead. Take a step back and think about where Solomon (and myself) may not be making that connection, and then work to build your argument from firmer ground.

It seems you are drunk. Hope you are having fun.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 25, 2016, 08:02:19 PM
It's quite obvious to me that Solomon is failing to make the connection you're trying to make between the question of whether a creator exists and your linguistics/thought, and quite frankly, I don't see your point either. This is not out of spite or lack of engagement or not being interested, but rather lack of common ground and genuine confusion: you're assuming far too many prior assumptions before going ahead, and as a result you have lost him and me in your rush to get ahead. Take a step back and think about where Solomon (and myself) may not be making that connection, and then work to build your argument from firmer ground.

OK. Sorry about that. I was the drunk one. I don't like your way of communication or Solomon's constant addressing what he thinks of me rather than my opinion. I'd do much better if you guys try to get close to me -I'm not your opponent- and remembered that I am trying to express something very complicated in a foreign language and stop thinking that I am a smart ass being arrogant for kicks and giggles, but just trying to tell something. 

The connection is not my argument. (Seriously, what do you think I am? LOL )The link between thought and language is always severely underrated and underestimated. But it is the basic ground here, because everything that is loaded to the concept of god today developed/evolved through that link. Concepts like metaphysics, transcendence, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience are invented by the development of abstract thought that came with written culture. They are from myths, because myths are the narratives people 'think' in. I assume your recognise this. I'm not talking about the specific myth in the Abrahamic scripture. But the logic, the narrative; the very material of myth. The story line.

Are you interested in doxography? You know that the ancient philosophy is resulted from fairy tales and myths which are glorified tales of human narrative. The language (every language, but especially the written culture ones) we use today developed through this. Yes, it looks very different today, but it is not. We are thinking in Homer categories with a much better vocabulary.

The link between language and thought has been an issue for a long time. Even in ancient Rome, we know that people thought about the words they speak and write AND their 'accuracy' and relation in meaning to the reality of what they are expressing. The question on that link has always been a great issue. I am talking about something beyond the basic idea that 'philosophy is a development of language'.

There has been a lot going on this and finally from the beginning of 20th century a few people claimed that this link is so powerful, humans can't rule over or shape their language to express thought, but only language and the way that they express their thoughts rule over and shape their thoughts.

Naturally, these opinions were labeled as extreme, however after the school of comparative history took his toll -which owes its root to linguistics- in the last several decades socio-linguistics keeps validating them. Men like Benjamin Whorf, Basil Bernstein...and I am afraid at the end of the road there is Heidegger who asserts language is the only real undefeatable tyrant.

What I am trying to say in a big picture sounds confusing, because I am trying to accomplish an impossible task. I am trying to connect a few huge fundamental fields to describe why humans ended up inventing a concept of god. I am trying to make a philosophy of anthropology through cognitive limits of our species which I think only determined by language and the categories that came along with.

So this is not just about the labels stated by the topic or the absolute nonexistence of god I defend, but also why the big majority of people tend to believe in one, doesn't matter how reasonable and rational the explanations get.

“I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”?

- Nietzsche

Heidegger's ultimate enemy is defeated easily by my silence - Bodhidharma

For Shoe - or perhaps, having invented not just one, but two distinct philosophies, it is time for Wittgenstein to shut up?

:lol: Great, now they are having fun with me. :sad2:

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 26, 2016, 07:07:04 AM
:lol: Great, now they are having fun with me. :sad2:

Well not to be picky, there's a difference between "having fun with" and "making fun of". By your second smiley, it indicates you meant the latter. Some men (hint: aitm) would rather do the former... ;-)

Quote from: josephpalazzo on January 26, 2016, 08:51:45 AM
Well not to be picky, there's a difference between "having fun with" and "making fun of". By your second smiley, it indicates you meant the latter. Some men (hint: aitm) would rather do the former... ;-)

aitm having fun:

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/8a2b18eee5f0535ae76ff42a0bebba23/tumblr_mhpgc5G15w1ru1k6xo1_500.gif)

 :smiley:

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 26, 2016, 08:59:48 AM
aitm having fun:

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/8a2b18eee5f0535ae76ff42a0bebba23/tumblr_mhpgc5G15w1ru1k6xo1_500.gif)

That's how it would start......

Ok you two, get a room...

I'm just an innocent bystander who loves dogs. You pulled us down to the gutter.   :a012: And I feel awful.

I, like always, believe it is also easy to proclaim that god(s) not only do not exist but can't.

We have ample evidence that "man" did not wake up one day and say, "aha!". Our cultural evolution has shown a distinct and recognizable methodology from simply animism which still has broad support among many indigenous people's, and even among the most religious they can easily suggest that some"thing" may posses a "part" or "spirit" of a former person, i.e. your fathers catchers mitt, your mothers necklace. Even though we fully are aware that there is no "spirit" living in our car, we, and I do mean we all, have talked or cajoled at least one if not all our vehicles at one time, fully aware of how silly it is but unable NOT to.

The animal gods existed far before the great spook in the sky, the gods of the wind and snow and rain and thunder...sheesh. So now we come to the concept of a territorial god of man himself. And we have ample, mountains of gods that man has declared to be true. We all know this argument. 100,000 gods but only one is true? Right.

Man has proven they invented gods, regional gods, ethnical gods, gender gods. We have mountains of evidence that every single god was invented, and if you wish to argue about your choice, simply ask those of the other 99,999 what they think of your god and you can spend a couple years arguing with them.

As to whether a god can exist. This is a case of, "we have to abandon common sense and knowledge because we are now talking about an invented idea that has absolutely no backing in evidence, logic or practicality."

We are allowed to dismiss stupid when it is stupid. There is no law that says we have to subject stupidity to unreasonable question and suspend all knowledge and common sense because it is a "popular idea".

Is it in anyway possible for a human to get bit by a radio-active spider and within weeks develop a way to shit special webbing out of his wrists for fuck sake? No, I can see at least his anus projecting something......

But for comparison, what the "gods" are suggesting is they can create worlds with a thought, universes with no effort and... even know about everything before they ever brought it into existence, despite the idea that the ridiculousness of that statement gets lost.

A 14 billion light year universe of which our entire galaxy is but a grain of sand to it and someone suggests I cannot deny the existence of a wispy creator that created it all but thinks a woman having her menstrual cycle is a danger to the community? Get the fuck outa here.

You can claim with far more certainty that gods don't exist than you are able to proclaim they do. There is everything that demands they cannot and nothing that suggests they do.

I used to be an agnostic.  But that was before I read and listened to (and thought about) arguments such as put forth by Shoe and aitm.  There is no god(s), and there cannot be.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 26, 2016, 06:26:06 AM
Naturally, these opinions were labeled as extreme, however after the school of comparative history took his toll -which owes its root to linguistics- in the last several decades socio-linguistics keeps validating them. Men like Benjamin Whorf, Basil Bernstein...and I am afraid at the end of the road there is Heidegger who asserts language is the only real undefeatable tyrant.

What I am trying to say in a big picture sounds confusing, because I am trying to accomplish an impossible task. I am trying to connect a few huge fundamental fields to describe why humans ended up inventing a concept of god. I am trying to make a philosophy of anthropology through cognitive limits of our species which I think only determined by language and the categories that came along with.

So this is not just about the labels stated by the topic or the absolute nonexistence of god I defend, but also why the big majority of people tend to believe in one, doesn't matter how reasonable and rational the explanations get.

That does clear a lot up. Thanks.

While I have arguments with some of the specific points, they are not fatal to what I think is your overall point, which is that people have a very hard time breaking out of the view that God is an exant being with real, demonstrable influence in people's lives, and part of the trap is the language people use around them. Language certainly influences thought â€"language could not work to communicate if saying a word did not automatically trigger a certain thought in a listenerâ€" and repetition of certain phrases in ritual would definitely have a reinforcing effect, and as such would lock you into a certain way of thinking. Yet we know that the effect is not absolute, because people have broken out of these forms of thinking before (and often do), even in the most thought-restrictive societies.

If I may indulge in some triangulation here, your position of the absolute nonexistence of god sounds similar to what I have come to call the Hijiri Byakuren argument (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=5404.msg1025284#msg1025284), which to TL;DR:

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on June 28, 2014, 03:09:56 AM
tl;dr version: There is no way anything we would regard as a god could ever prove that it is what it claims to a skeptical individual. Because the universe less resembles a mythical god's realm than it does a simulator, any designer we did find should be called a programmer, not a god. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that there is no god.

So you have a point about the nonexistence of god, and agree with you that, as far as the connotations built up of what "god" means, there is no such being because we've simply stretched the concept past its breaking point. However, the specific word being used was "creator", not "god". A "creator" is a more general word that doesn't have the same conceptual baggage as "god" â€" even though it is being used as a weasel word for "god", apologists do have a point that a generic "creator" more easily bears the conceptual burden of the role and as such the possibility of a "creator" of the universe remains. The word "creator" is being used precisely because it is empty enough of specifics to not be utterly shattered by the obsolescence that afflicts "god". That's why apologists use it. As such I think it is a mistake to use the same logic to dismiss a vague creator as one would a more specific god.

And, yes, I did try to fit your argument into my language. By your own hypothesis, I can do nothing else. :biggrin:

Quote from: Johan on January 23, 2016, 05:31:18 PM
Well for one thing, you cannot seem to go more than a few minutes at a time without angrily labelling someone or something as fucking retarded. It must suck being that angry and frustrated all the time.

Yeah, all we have is this little tiny bit of time sandwiched between two eternities of oblivion. Why spend any of that time being in a negative mood?

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 26, 2016, 06:25:11 PMIf I may indulge in some triangulation here, your position of the absolute nonexistence of god sounds similar to what I have come to call the Hijiri Byakuren argument (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=5404.msg1025284#msg1025284), which to TL;DR:

So you have a point about the nonexistence of god, and agree with you that, as far as the connotations built up of what "god" means, there is no such being because we've simply stretched the concept past its breaking point. However, the specific word being used was "creator", not "god". A "creator" is a more general word that doesn't have the same conceptual baggage as "god" â€" even though it is being used as a weasel word for "god", apologists do have a point that a generic "creator" more easily bears the conceptual burden of the role and as such the possibility of a "creator" of the universe remains. The word "creator" is being used precisely because it is empty enough of specifics to not be utterly shattered by the obsolescence that afflicts "god". That's why apologists use it. As such I think it is a mistake to use the same logic to dismiss a vague creator as one would a more specific god.

And, yes, I did try to fit your argument into my language. By your own hypothesis, I can do nothing else. :biggrin:

Just to clarify, the reason I used "programmer" instead of "creator" was precisely to avoid letting apologists use their weasel word, and to emphasize that my point was specifically about the human concept of a god.

Yes, the universe is a simulation created by Microsoft ... but not Apple.  Because it sucks just that much ;-)  If Apple had done it, it would "suck awesome!".

Atheism is about not believing, agnosticism is about not knowing.

Simple.

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 26, 2016, 07:15:09 PM
Atheism is about not believing, agnosticism is about not knowing.

Simple.

Unfortunately most religious people don't know the difference between believing and knowing.  Epistemology is not their friend.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 26, 2016, 06:25:11 PM
That does clear a lot up. Thanks.

While I have arguments with some of the specific points, they are not fatal to what I think is your overall point, which is that people have a very hard time breaking out of the view that God is an exant being with real, demonstrable influence in people's lives, and part of the trap is the language people use around them. Language certainly influences thought â€"language could not work to communicate if saying a word did not automatically trigger a certain thought in a listenerâ€" and repetition of certain phrases in ritual would definitely have a reinforcing effect, and as such would lock you into a certain way of thinking. Yet we know that the effect is not absolute, because people have broken out of these forms of thinking before (and often do), even in the most thought-restrictive societies.

If I may indulge in some triangulation here, your position of the absolute nonexistence of god sounds similar to what I have come to call the Hijiri Byakuren argument (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=5404.msg1025284#msg1025284), which to TL;DR:

So you have a point about the nonexistence of god, and agree with you that, as far as the connotations built up of what "god" means, there is no such being because we've simply stretched the concept past its breaking point. However, the specific word being used was "creator", not "god". A "creator" is a more general word that doesn't have the same conceptual baggage as "god" â€" even though it is being used as a weasel word for "god", apologists do have a point that a generic "creator" more easily bears the conceptual burden of the role and as such the possibility of a "creator" of the universe remains. The word "creator" is being used precisely because it is empty enough of specifics to not be utterly shattered by the obsolescence that afflicts "god". That's why apologists use it. As such I think it is a mistake to use the same logic to dismiss a vague creator as one would a more specific god.

OK.  I think, I am saying something more 'extreme' than Hijiri. I'll try something else.

Are you familiar with the quote, "If Aristoteles had spoken Chinese or Dakotan, he would have come up with a completely different logic system"?

Yes, I gave religious concepts as examples, however they are the ones we can easily pinpoint in this subject as fantasy, because for a long time now it has been obvious to our accumulation of knowledge that they are fantasies. (That actually is a part of what I am saying) But when I say the link between language and thought, I mean the whole kind of concepts, their development, including the 'secular' ones, which are not realy secular but created in constrast, in comparison in a language that has evolved from myth and fantasy, before creator or god 'towards' the concept. The very reason why people managed to reason out that thought about challanging those specific concepts created related to god is that they were defined/existed in language in the first place. Comparison is the most basic, simple way of critical thought. When you create a concept in contrast, it is bound to be in comparison and therefore actually very related and it is in the end a counterpart.

Also 'linguistic relativity' is not a joke. People do percieve and experience the world in many various, very different ways according to their linguistic ability and background. Or in Bersnstein's case U and Non U English as your culture go. But this is very offensive to people in general and will have a looong way to go.

You know what I am thinking, in a primitive level of perception, I think this linguistic aspect of absolute nonexistence of god  is like a bit how evolution was percieved when it first took its root and still today. It's very offensive. May be more than the idea of evolution to most people, because it is 'easy' to reject and idea of humans descending from great apes and being one, as it is very comfortable to think how 'preposterous' it is and dismiss it. People don't even think about it, they just reject it, because they reject to put their minds into it for very obvious reasons. But language is not like that. What is so unique about language is that we know for a fact that humans in every culture have always been extremely aware of it. They way how themselves and other people use it; speak it, write it. There is no other cultural element that the individuals are so strongly self aware of or aware in others.

So I am claiming that language is the major shaping force -I don't know how to name it properly; feature? I've come to believe it is at a fatal level. 

I'll write more about this when I can put my mind into it, if anyone is interested. It is an harculean task and I can't get to around it just like that.

There is this book, I would reccomend. It's not some ideogical wish wash or hardcore philosophical linguistics with sharp claims given by a monologue, but an evaluation of language in European culture in a different level ; very related to our subject as a whole and our positions as nonbelievers I think. http://www.cambridge.org/et/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/languages-and-communities-early-modern-europe?format=PB

Peter Burke is an important man for many reasons. Long story short, he is not a reactive new age historian/cultural historian looking for 'justice', but a rational scientist trying to explain human culture with critical thought.

QuoteAnd, yes, I did try to fit your argument into my language. By your own hypothesis, I can do nothing else. :biggrin:

LOL Yes, you are right. Same goes with me.

Nothing new here. Humans came up with two outstanding tools: the alphabet (language) and numbers (math). So it's no surprise there is a symbiotic link in the evolution of the human mind with the evolution of language and math. Which precedes and which is a chicken-and-egg question.

However one caution: there are concepts in QM that language simply cannot capture, only math - just like there are concepts in language which cannot be captured by math. So you can't have one without the other.

It's relatively very new. What they thought about the connections between literacy/illiteracy, language and people 50 years ago and now is very different. And no it is not about the alphabet. Alphabet is not language. English has one alphabet, there are multiple English languages.

Social history of language is not really that simple.

"Sociologist argued that 'literacy is the basic personal skill which underlines the whole modernising sequence. Anthropologist suggest that the traditional difference between 'logical' and 'prelogical' thought should rather have been framed in terms of 'literate' and 'preliterate', because what made abstract thinking possible was literacy."  Burke.

Math is a wrong example here. When you think about literacy -its uses and mediums of it- and language, you are thinking about -naturally- the standardised understanding of language in every level we have today. The crucial point is that that understanding has evolved with modern state; after French Revolution just a bit more than 200 years ago and after the standardisation of national language and the universal education models modern state brought.

See, that's makes us myopic. When you got to 16 th century Italy for example, it is very different. Or the period between 1452-1789, throughout Europe everything related to language, literacy, speaking , writing, reading, the understanding of numeracy are completely different and different from each other. Languages don't even exist past 200 years ago in the way we understand today.

What changed? Researchers; historian, most importantly social historians and cultural historians realised they cannot do without socio linguistics and this is new. This started with evaluating the recorded historical data different than before. The issue was always what is the recorded written accumulation is telling us. Events, names, dates; their accuracy and compatibility with each other etc... but then eventually they started to analyse this  information in a very different way. As in structure of language, uses of literacy in different ages in different domains, different mediums, how those mediums changed the language, it is usage; what was accepted, what wasn't and why. Ho wit played into Curch, social life. Conflicts and controversy. A very different world broke out starting from the mid 20th century.

The traditional information on linguistics has chnaged so much, branches were born. Socio-linguistics is not a joke; because the consequences of the connections between language and culture is very powerful. It's going to be a fundamental field in near future in our life times. I am guessing the last 30 years they have been feling like Darwin having a walk around in Galapagos islands. It' just ther eisn't some cool stuff to show like there isin evolutionary biology. It's a organic thing about people that changes constantly -like the air we walk in- that we don't even still know exactly what it was like just a couple hundreds of years ago. Yet, so far what was thought extreme a 100 years ago keeps validating itself.

I also think people find these subjects boring and they think it is easy and simple. They can't be more wrong. (I am not saying any of you are doing this.) But that's my general impression. It's not considered as cool as other fields, that makes me a bit upset I guess. Because I think it is fascinating. Not to mention it is also funny and surprising; it offers a lot of unlearning and learning about ourselves. What's better than that?

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 24, 2016, 08:56:58 AM
Objection!

We do possess the knowledge that proves that a creator cannot exist. It's called linguistics.

There is a reason why it took so long a time for the concept of any deity; any creator evolving into a transcendental god that came up with Abrahamic religions. Because it is an abstract concept and abstract concepts cannot exist without written culture. (This is also the explanation both why Abrahamic religions rose from the same region and why they are different and yet the same in many sense, besides the narrative they dictate. Why it started with ancient Hebrew and Arabic very easily fel linto the same line...)

Simply the idea of a god; any god, gods or deities are all one and it is completely based on human desires apart from the delusion itself. There is not a definition or a description of a god in human history that exists out of that profile. There can't be. Because there is no other narrative for god out of the profile of an absentee landlord. It's human, its as various as humans and its desires.  Therefore there is no such thing as the slightest possibility of some evidence for existence of a creator. It's invalid. It's fantasy of a fantasy. Any evidence anyone would try to imagine as 'what if' would have to be in the limits of describing some sort of a super MAN. Not some unimaginable supreme entity that mortals cannot fathom. Humans only constantly developed the language to describe it and with the sufficient accumulation of written culture they finally reached to a transcendental creator. They invented imaginary concepts, powers they liked to have- to tell those stories attached to it, but narrative has always been the same. Like children playing make belief. Because gods and religions are functional. It has always, but always been beneficial and profitable. It's trade, its politics. It's a means to desired ends played itself out.

God is an anthropomorphic figure that has developed into some abstract make up -transcendence which cannot exist without written culture- and all religions are anthropocentric in their nature. The idea of god does not come from a creator of the universe. It evolved to be the creator of the universe in time. It comes from fearing the thunder and lightening, fire, earthquake, floods, hurricanes, the mighty ocean, the mighty mountains and the powerful wild animals, famine, bad winter that threatened their lives. Everything human faces on the planet in nature.

Humans did not start 'believing' in a god because they thought some supreme being 'created' them. They arrived an understanding of a god that did the creating from mortal fears and simple daily needs. Because they worried about their own lives. Famine, hard winter, disease, fear of death. Why do we die? Why do we feel pain? Why do we get sick? Why do we starve? Human fear of its own nature. It's always 'what happened to me' or 'what is happening to me' or 'what will happen to me? Now and after I die'. It's first person, all about the human itself, first defined in the individual level, then for a society because we are social animals and cannot survive alone; we have to live together.

The idea of the creator of universe, esp. the universe as we undertsand now, today, is a last phase of a series of 'upgrades' and 'updates' of that primitive idea, adapted and modified in time. By development of language. Linguistics. First 'the universe' is the clan, then the village....then the cities, countries and what's around it. As the map starts to open, gradually the 'universe' has become the planet, then finally it has becaome the universe as we know today. Adaptation. Religions and gods get keep adapted by humans because they are functional. So they survive. Basic principle. As the general scale got larger, the scale of god followed it. But it is the same absentee landlord. Doesn't matter how or with what high language or concepts you decsribe it. It's human.

God is the rejection of nature because of mortal fear. That's why in all Abrahamic religions human is defined with something supernatural, an immortal element called soul. It's a symbolic way of refusing to die. It's why in all those religions human is defined as something proud and more than animals, first in the center of the world and that world as in center of the universe. Me, me, me, me, I, I, I, I.

This is not a belief or trust into some supreme being. It's only the BELIEF IN ONESELF in a twisted collective way; SIMPLE TRIBALISM and any other way of believing in a god cannot exist, exactly because of this reason. People who claim to believe in some god, actually believe in themselves, their special place.

And that god is not even a monotheistic god. It can't be. It's sum of fears of death, fears of pain and hoping to be rewarded above all whatever happens. It's 'I don't wanna die! I'm above nature, I have a precious soul, I refuse to die'. It's not trusting in some omnipotent divinity. It's not a belief, it's a claim, it's a wish rising from a make believe has gone so long, it is a fucking category. The whole thing is just a resentful pray; a painful wish.

Guys, there is NOTHING in human history that humans DID because they BELIEVED in some god. Everything, but everything that has been DONE has a REAL LIFE FUNCTION behind it, because humans believe in themselves above all and nothing else. The very reason they imagined gods an deities is this. This is how our cognitive process evolved and also why it actually doesn't allow some genuine belief in god. Otherwise, we couldn't have survived. Because whatever happens, human will act, consciously or unconsciously according to what functions for him. Rest is politics, literature, fantasy to carry this along time.


Infact, I am going to go further and claim that it's actually impossible to believe in a creator and that actually noone does.

Because god is also a still born concept, because the moment a hominid developed the ability to think and speak;describe any experience he had stepping out that reality he experienced it; voice what's in his mind about a possible creator, imagined stories of it, rather than just feel, love, fear, live and die with it, the idea of god died there at that moment. Because he alienated and seperated himself from that supposed omnipotent nature of that idea of supreme being and its supposed existence. He existed outside of it. He developed the consciousness regarding to his own existence apart from the nature. Process of intelligence. The kind of self awareness and consciousness only one animal on the planet that we know evolved to possess. The cognitive process we developed makes the idea of god impossible. Yes, I said impossible.

If any of you can imagine a god outside the presented category, please come forward explain and then I'll reconsider that thinking/claiming that god cannot exist is dishonest. However, categories of human narrative doesn't change, because we are just simple animals with simple fixed needs and we don't have any need or use for another category of a god, that's why we invented it this way in the first place . Because there isn't one, there can't be and hence the fantasy needed to be maintained.


Even if one day we manage to colonise the galaxy, we will always be a bunch of apes that wants to feel safe sitting around a fire nestling to each other. Take that up to the space, bring it down to a cave, it doesn't matter, because it doesn't change. Can't. If it does, we'd go extinct. 

I am so going to steal all of this. And young lady just why aren't you writing books instead of translating other people's books? I'd actually buy a book titled The rantings of a raving drunkenshoe.. This all probably makes more sense than all the other crap written about god(s) and religion than anything I've ever read.  I'll go one further and suggest it ought to be enshrined at the entrances to all public buildings around the world..
That said it doesn't stand a chance because the powers that be would never allow it because they want us all to believe they derive their power from the absentee landlord..

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 28, 2016, 10:39:10 AM


A very different world broke out starting from the mid 20th century.

Yep, a result of the revolutionary ideas brought upon by GR and QM (1900-1930). Nothing since the dawn of history compares to these scientific revolutions. The technological changes  that follwed were immense. Think what the world would be without TV, computers, the internet, nukes, going to the moon, and so on. That was the world prior to 1900. And would still be without GR and QM. Of course, there were important ramifications in other fields - art, social sciences, medicine, etc. But without the impetus of science, we'd be still lighting our homes with candles. And we discussing on the net would be science fiction.

Quote from: Mike Cl on January 26, 2016, 10:55:11 AM
I used to be an agnostic.  But that was before I read and listened to (and thought about) arguments such as put forth by Shoe and aitm.  There is no god(s), and there cannot be.

I used to emphasize my agnosticism more than my atheism, but over the years, the arguments for God have begun sounding like so much folly, that I'm leaning more toward strong atheism.

Quote from: josephpalazzo on January 28, 2016, 11:41:15 AM

Yep, a result of the revolutionary ideas brought upon by GR and QM (1900-1930). Nothing since the dawn of history compares to these scientific revolutions. The technological changes  that follwed were immense. Think what the world would be without TV, computers, the internet, nukes, going to the moon, and so on. That was the world prior to 1900. And would still be without GR and QM. Of course, there were important ramifications in other fields - art, social sciences, medicine, etc. But without the impetus of science, we'd be still lighting our homes with candles. And we discussing on the net would be science fiction.

Without QM, no solid state physics, no transistor, no computer chip.  Thanks for saving me from a huge vacuum tube computer to get onto the WWW superhighway ;-)

Quote from: josephpalazzo on January 28, 2016, 11:41:15 AM

Yep, a result of the revolutionary ideas brought upon by GR and QM (1900-1930). Nothing since the dawn of history compares to these scientific revolutions. The technological changes  that follwed were immense. Think what the world would be without TV, computers, the internet, nukes, going to the moon, and so on. That was the world prior to 1900. And would still be without GR and QM. Of course, there were important ramifications in other fields - art, social sciences, medicine, etc. But without the impetus of science, we'd be still lighting our homes with candles. And we discussing on the net would be science fiction.

I am not questioning the impact of science and techology and how it changed the world, joseph. You completely misunderstood me. This is has nothing to do with what I am trying to say. Anyway, you are not interested I guess.

Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on January 28, 2016, 11:12:25 AM
I am so going to steal all of this. And young lady just why aren't you writing books instead of translating other people's books? I'd actually buy a book titled The rantings of a raving drunkenshoe.. This all probably makes more sense than all the other crap written about god(s) and religion than anything I've ever read.  I'll go one further and suggest it ought to be enshrined at the entrances to all public buildings around the world..
That said it doesn't stand a chance because the powers that be would never allow it because they want us all to believe they derive their power from the absentee landlord..

Pffft on me writing a book,lol. Thank you for the vote though. *Hugs. I'm giving up translation too. I'll find a traditional daily job for the first time in my life and try to hang on to it. And do things like trying to save money for a telescope -not the one I posted, too expensive- and travel. Let's try something new, feels like time to change my life. Again.

Quote from: Baruch on January 28, 2016, 01:04:13 PM
Without QM, no solid state physics, no transistor, no computer chip.  Thanks for saving me from a huge vacuum tube computer to get onto the WWW superhighway ;-)

You bring up an interesting question: would huge vacuum tube computer be invented without QM? I guess the possibility would be there, but how likely for that to happen is not so obvious. Turing came after Gödel, who came after Russell, and Russell was heavily influenced by GR and QM.  Without Russell's paradox, there's no Incomplete Theorem from Gödel, and Turing doesn't come up with the  "Halting Problem" for Turing Machines, therefore no huge vacuum tube computer...;-)

Are you saying you are a linguistic determinist, DS? Because that's the vibe I'm getting from you.

Linguistic relativity is a thing. It is very difficult to get an idea out of someone's head except through language, and of course using a particular language is going to distort that idea somewhat, or even was factored in formulating it in the first place. But this is obvious enough to anyone who has been at a loss for words, or had to rewrite a statement again and again because they know what point they're trying to make and the language is failing them. And of course, you can only get a thought into someone's head using language, so of course the idea is going to be similarly distorted.

Linguistic determinism, on the other hand, where language determines what is thinkable by a certain person or culture, is quite thoroughly discredited. Nobody you have cited goes so far as to say that language forms the principle limitation on our thoughts, not even Benjamin Whorf or Peter Burke. The limits of our thoughts are determined a very large number of factors, the specific construction of the language itself being only one. For language without a context in which to operate is utterly barren.

Would Aristotle really have come up with a completely different logic system had he spoken Chinese or Dakotan? No, because Aristotle did not come up with the logic he used in philosophy, but rather was the inheritor of about three hundred years of prior philosophic thought beginning with Thales of Miletus. And it's not as if China didn't have its own philosophic hieritage, or the Dakotans their own mythology. Aristotle was the first person to refine logic into what we would call formal logic, but logic in some form has always been a part of the human experience. The myths and story-telling you alude to earlier are examples, because what is a story or a myth but a series of connected events leading to an explanitory outcome? The seeds of implication lie in the causal relation between events, faculties that all languages have to one degree or another.

As such, I do not see the language barrier as fatal as you think, because at the core of language is the seed of logic.

It looks like some interesting material, Shoe. I don't really have the dedicated interest to read up on it though.

So, speaking as an uneducated hick, it seems to me that whatever strong influence linguistics has had on the thought of agnostic atheism, it has had the same strong influence on gnostic atheist thoughts as well. If one is invalid, then isn't the other also?

I usually call myself a nullifidian, but hardly anyone's ever heard the word:


(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-BA0IB8eS-jM/VQmTO5kNjFI/AAAAAAAACXQ/0tVHLpLddkk/s506/WOTD%2B18%2Bnullifidian.png)

Quote from: Unbeliever on January 28, 2016, 04:25:52 PM
I usually call myself a nullifidian, but hardly anyone's ever heard the word:


(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-BA0IB8eS-jM/VQmTO5kNjFI/AAAAAAAACXQ/0tVHLpLddkk/s506/WOTD%2B18%2Bnullifidian.png)

Oxfords have been out of style for awhile now.  How about those Air-Jordans? ;-)

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 28, 2016, 03:09:43 PM
Are you saying you are a linguistic determinist, DS? Because that's the vibe I'm getting from you. Linguistic determinism, on the other hand, where language determines what is thinkable by a certain person or culture, is quite thoroughly discredited. Nobody you have cited goes so far as to say that language forms the principle limitation on our thoughts, not even Benjamin Whorf or Peter Burke.

No, I am not. I'm not talking about a conclsuion. I am talking about something continous that took a turn recently. And the whole of my idea or the argument as you put it was not based on linguistics alone but a few other huge fields that I expressed my outlook regarding to the problem of the absolute nonexistence of a creator. I am trying to follow this process, because I have seen a change. And saying that while these men were defined as extreme, the new branches occured as a result of previous small paradigma shifts in the capacity of their dicisplines and the resreach keeps leaning towards a certain way and I said that at the end of this chart stands Heidegger. You are talking about he end of the chart. 

QuoteLinguistic relativity is a thing. It is very difficult to get an idea out of someone's head except through language, and of course using a particular language is going to distort that idea somewhat, or even was factored in formulating it in the first place. But this is obvious enough to anyone who has been at a loss for words, or had to rewrite a statement again and again because they know what point they're trying to make and the language is failing them. And of course, you can only get a thought into someone's head using language, so of course the idea is going to be similarly distorted.

Agreed. However, what you are describing is, for people the difficulty of expressing the thoughts in their minds and the limits/distortion of the language is just a small part of the problem. The main issue with linguistic relativity is that the distortion and the limit it creates in how people experience the world, come to understand it. It just doesn't make it difficult for them in certain situation it shapes how they percieve the world, so how they think.

QuoteThe limits of our thoughts are determined a very large number of factors, the specific construction of the language itself being only one. For language without a context in which to operate is utterly barren.

I load language a special powerful place, because it is the first filter and the material all other factors are going through that transforms them into experience, memory and consciousness. That's why they are so various and different in cultures and in individual level and why it affects every person differently; why they have different importance in different cultures.

QuoteWould Aristotle really have come up with a completely different logic system had he spoken Chinese or Dakotan? No, because Aristotle did not come up with the logic he used in philosophy, but rather was the inheritor of about three hundred years of prior philosophic thought beginning with Thales of Miletus. And it's not as if China didn't have its own philosophic hieritage, or the Dakotans their own mythology. Aristotle was the first person to refine logic into what we would call formal logic, but logic in some form has always been a part of the human experience. The myths and story-telling you alude to earlier are examples, because what is a story or a myth but a series of connected events leading to an explanitory outcome? The seeds of implication lie in the causal relation between events, faculties that all languages have to one degree or another.

I don't think you understand what the quote refers to. It's not about Aristo or his logic. People who offered that anology are perfectly aware that Chinese have their own philosophy, Dakotans have their own mythology and that Aristo's logic is a product depended on schools that preceedes his. This is EXACTLY what they are saying in a higher level of a category. They are pointing out that they are all as results, strictly bound to their respective linguistic development in their own circumstances.

Parmenides just left a poem opening with a dedication to a goddess -as it was the custom- and just the description of the chariot is enough to analyse his extreme diffculty to 'express' his complicated, distinguished perspective compared to his contemporaries. Because the Ancient Greek used in his time is no where near enough to do that, he tried to make it, but at the same time he used Homer phrases -naturally- because that's the only available narrative to think in. Forget Aristo, without Parmenides you don't have Plato, so no Socrates in written form.

Ancient Greek philosophy is the direct result of the development of the ancient Greek language and there is also another direct result is the art they produced. While a bigger and older super power like an Ancient Egyptian Empire -I'm not getting into what might have happened to Library of Alexandria myths, but going with what survived to us) didn't produce anything like this, because the language of a funeral cult/culture didn't create a written culture accumulated to produce knowledge for the sake of knowledge, it also created a completely different art. Same dictating relation. 

Art is an example I can speak more confidently. It's not a coincidence or a matter of taste or the result of the religion why Egyptians depicted human body in a certain way. First of all, they were far advanced about human anotomy compared to any other culture, but while Greeks started with imitating their style and scale, they 'soon' ended up depicting human body as naturalistic (even idealistic) as possible. This is a direct result of a specific part that occured within the development of Ancient Greek culture got its break through from development in language. How they forced/worked that language to express complicated concepts.

While it's a very simple thing for Greek sculptor to carve an Afrodites figure at the moment she is brushing her hair or coming out of water (a continous act), this idea whould be shocking and confusing to an Egyptian sculptor who sculpts idealised forms of human bodies in 'unnatural' positions. Same with architecture. Pyramids are as a whole abstract art, doesn't matter if they are tombs or not. It took thousands and hundreds of years for Western culture to reach abstract forms in art.

Also about myths. From your posts I sense that when you see the word 'myth' you automatically think of obscure ancient fairy tales echoing from thousands of years ago. OK. But you were born into a world with huge accumulation of knowledge. For example, you have learned how to count, read and write when you were a toddler. But forget being literate and have the simplest undersanding of numeracy, I want you to imagine how would be like to be born in a world that the only piece of 'information' -other than the ways of fighting with the nature to survive- is just what old people tell to others around a hearth. Myths; their characters, plots...etc. This is a language. The ultimate context. Those fairy tales are the basic norms of language which we evolved it by contrasting, criticising, inflating/deflating them. That's why I said we are thinking in Homer with a much better vocabulary. 

QuoteAs such, I do not see the language barrier as fatal as you think, because at the core of language is the seed of logic.

No, it is the other way around. The language is the core of logic. Seed is about the culture you bury it; it also depended/s on many other dynamics and factors to grow that logic an dmake it dominant. A very few cultures managed to do it.

I experience this everyday when I am writing a post here in a foriegn language when I have to think in it to do so. I can see very clearly the differences of logic, the ways of thinking, concepts and most importantly their differences in interpretation in two different languages -therefore cultures- when I don't know or don't get even though it was explained UI know something has changed in the material produced and in time I coincide it over again and eventually add that to my bag. And I recognise all these are in the face of very similar situations and same issues. I'm bilingual. When I take a test -be it some test to measure some specific information and knowledge or some IQ test or a simple test I score much higher than my peers if I take it in English. Because the accumulation of knowledge is dictated by that one, although there is the translation of it. My brain developed this ability of switching between the languages -through using those language together- according to the available concepts each language provides. Even while speaking in one language, it automatically changes track and some times I have to translate what I need to say from English ot Turkish or Turkish to English. I dream frequently in two languages the same way.

It's almost that my brain has learned to use two different tools, not two different languages.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 28, 2016, 03:22:29 PM
it seems to me that whatever strong influence linguistics has had on the thought of agnostic atheism, it has had the same strong influence on gnostic atheist thoughts as well. If one is invalid, then isn't the other also?

In my opinion;

No. Because gnosticism is based on theological 'knowledge' with pre-christian roots. (3rd century?) There is no such thing as 'theological knowledge', it is not knowledge. Agnosticism is produced -evolved- to counter that idea which is theistic in itself.

The reason we have agnostic atheism is most modern atheists treat the concept of god as some natural phenomenon or law that needs to be proved by empiric data with the scientific method and insert the principle that you can never know because it cannot be falsified. By doing that also they are treating 'theological knowledge' and secienitfic knowledge in the same category -as if one could ever worked in another's place- which drives me mad,lol. Existence and belief/faith in god with or without religions exist outside of the empiric data or the scientific method. It's not science's job or duty to disprove god. Never has been. Scientific knowledge is not the criticism of theological 'knowledge'. They are completely two different things.

The reason there are gnostic theism and agnostic theism with agnostic atheism and gnostic atheism, because of the linguistic development shaping the thought that I have been busting my ass trying to explain. It's symmetrical contrust to begin with. It's getting back to the theistic position with in its own terms and inserting a 'religious' term in front of a neutral position that has nothing to do with it. No, there isn't the same relation between theism and atheism. Because atheism is not a system or attached to any systems or some anti-religious system.

Atheism is zero; the only natural position. It has nothing to do with science, or even religion, gnosticism or agnosticism, it does not have some weak or strong version. The former is a religious term and concept and the latter is evolved from that religious concept therefore strictly bound to that concept, but adapted and interpretated to something that has nothing to with it as sceptic escape point, BECAUSE we people think as the language dictates.  

:lol:

They TEND to not be exclusive, but there are gnostic atheists. And quite a bit of them. Just because you're an atheist, does not mean you're also agnostic, but there is a very good chance an atheist is also agnostic. Just not 100% across the board.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Shoe - loved your analysis again.  We can't escape the linguistic straight jacket ... except partially, by transferring one's self to another language/culture that contrasts with our own.  Then we can see that we are captured by our upbringing.  Until that point we don't even know there is a problem ... because we are culturally solipsistic.  Zen attempts to escape linguistics, thru silence.  The monkey mind has to be knocked out.

Nothing you have said, has led me to conclude that agnostic atheism is an invalid position. Although after reading what aitm has written, and reading some of your own tangents, it may no longer be my position.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 29, 2016, 01:48:14 PM
Nothing you have said, has led me to conclude that agnostic atheism is an invalid position. Although after reading what aitm has written, and reading some of your own tangents, it may no longer be my position.

You're an easy pushover...;-)

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 29, 2016, 01:48:14 PM
Although after reading what aitm has written, and reading some of your own tangents, it may no longer be my position.

While we have said the same thing in the end, I have written a far more detailed, -how many posts again- backed up account -with different aspects- of why agnostic atheism is problematic, but you have changed your position after aitm's post (one post) which is simply based on 'we are allowed to dismiss stupid when stupid' (and I agree with him and I am not trying to be offensive to him) and some of my tangents after telling me that I have 'hubris' and thought that it was your duty to remind me that I'm a tiny speck of matter because of how I see agnostic atheism and defend absolute nonexistence of god.

I do not believe for one second that if there was just aitm's post in this thread you'd change your position or it even was the effective post at all. You are intellectually dishonest and I am not going to have a serious conversation with you again. I don't know why you have a prejudice against me, I don't care. But you do have in a level of denying anything I said could actually mean something -whether you agree or not- or create an influence on you.

QuoteNothing you have said, has led me to conclude that agnostic atheism is an invalid position.

Since you cannot argue with or against even one point I've made, save 'I don't agree with it', esp. with your attitude, your opinion has no value for me at all at this point.

charles darwin and richard dawkins are agnostic atheists...i appreciate them...: )

do you know more than they know...argument from authority :D:D

As nobody claims to be an authority on anything in this thread, you are pitching a strawman. Darwin and Dawkins or science has nothing to do with the subject.

This is not/has never been an attempt on having a last word on something, this is an opinion.

May be people should stop trying to score by seeing everything offered as an ultimate conclusion about huge issues like this -which is a religious way of thinking- and just have conversations about what they think and exchange ideas instead of trying to beat each other down to look cool to other posters. (I'm not saying this to you.)

But then the interesting is what I am saying sounds alien and also bigger, loaded than it is, highly likely because people here are not interested in or informed about it. 

Quote from: Baruch on January 29, 2016, 12:54:47 PM
The monkey mind has to be knocked out.

Interesting you say that. I am thinking the monkey should be encouraged along with the sapient. It's the belief and the 'as if' the monkey doesn't exist thinking/behaviour messes up a lot of things. Modern human thinks it is not a monkey any more. Actually the 'danger' is that it thinks it is different 'now' than a couple of hundreds or even thousands of years. This thing called 'now' comes up everywhere in history and everyone thinks that now is different. Myeh.

Quote from: josephpalazzo on January 29, 2016, 02:43:08 PM
You're an easy pushover...;-)

Like you have the balls to admit if someone ordinary -like yourself- influenced your opinions. We all know almost everyone in this forum only can be swayed by extraordinary minds as themselves. *Snort.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 30, 2016, 05:01:18 AM
As nobody claims to be an authority on anything in this thread, you are pitching a strawman. Darwin and Dawkins or science has nothing to do with the subject.

This is not/has never been an attempt on having a last word on something, this is an opinion.

May be people should stop trying to score by seeing everything offered as an ultimate conclusion about huge issues like this -which is a religious way of thinking- and just have conversations about what they think and exchange ideas instead of trying to beat each other down to look cool to other posters. (I'm not saying this to you.)

But then the interesting is what I am saying sounds alien and also bigger, loaded than it is, highly likely because people here are not interested in or informed about it.

the ultimate conclusion is that god may exist...beceuse we are unable to detect whether he exists or not; the existence of him can't be proven or disproven...having some ideas like thinking of the absence of him is for certain is signals os being bigoted...

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 30, 2016, 06:07:15 AM
the ultimate conclusion is that god may exist...beceuse we are unable to detect whether he exists or not; the existence of him can't be proven or disproven...having some ideas like thinking of the absence of him is for certain is signals os being bigoted...

I am guessing you are talking about empiric data and the scientific method of proving/disproving as it is the only way exists.

Did you read anything I wrote above? Becuse either you didn't or you do not really understand those concepts you use to blame someone with being a bigot.

Quote from: drunkenshoe...but you have changed your position after aitm's post (one post) which is simply based on 'we are allowed to dismiss stupid when stupid' (and I agree with him and I am not trying to be offensive to him) and some of my tangents after telling me that I have 'hubris' and thought that it was your duty to remind me that I'm a tiny speck of matter because of how I see agnostic atheism and defend absolute nonexistence of god.

It wasn't a really sudden change, though. You, and especially aitm, just managed to articulate some of the thoughts I've had over recent years, in a lucid manner.

As for hubris, I mean c'mon, we all display that quality, at some point, so don't take it to heart. I reminded you of being a tiny speck, only to point out the obvious, that a speck in a little corner of such a vast universe can say very little with certainty about what created it.

Quote from: drunkenshoeI do not believe for one second that if there was just aitm's post in this thread you'd change your position or it even was the effective post at all. You are intellectually dishonest

 I don't know why you have a prejudice against me, I don't care. But you do have in a level of denying anything I said could actually mean something -whether you agree or not- or create an influence on you.

Are you that dense? I said that you contributed to my change of mind! How is that anything less than a compliment? But it wasn't your linguistics argument so much as some of your other statements (you wrote at such length, that you'll have to forgive me if I don't hunt through you're posts for a quote).

You insist that I am dismissing your opinions, when I am only disagreeing with the notion that the study of linguistics has rendered the “agnostic atheist” position (or any other position, for that matter) invalid. In my mind, you still haven't satisfactorily connected the dots.

i am also wondering how any kind of god cannot exist according to linguistic...

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 30, 2016, 06:18:51 AM

It wasn't a really sudden change, though. You, and especially aitm, just managed to articulate some of the thoughts I've had over recent years, in a lucid manner.

As for hubris, I mean c'mon, we all display that quality, at some point, so don't take it to heart. I reminded you of being a tiny speck, only to point out the obvious, that a speck in a little corner of such a vast universe can say very little with certainty about what created it.

All you have written me in this thread -and in others- tantamounts to how arrogant, condescending I am and how I treat people as if they are stupid which I tried to explain many times that I don't. You know what, may be I should. They don't see any difference any way. And you claim that you have changed your position because of a post that said "this is the way because the other is stupid". I don't know a bigger hubris than that.
 

QuoteAre you that dense? I said that you contributed to my change of mind! How is that anything less than a compliment? But it wasn't your linguistics argument so much as some of your other statements...

The linguistics argument is a small part of a whole.

Quote

(you wrote at such length, that you'll have to forgive me if I don't hunt through you're posts for a quote).

You insist that I am dismissing your opinions, when I am only disagreeing with the notion that the study of linguistics has rendered the “agnostic atheist” position (or any other position, for that matter) invalid. In my mind, you still haven't satisfactorily connected the dots.

Yes, you do. Not bothering to quote or having a conversation but just coming up with a statement "I don't agree" with expressed ad hominem based on the approach to the subject is the position of dismissing or a disguised "I don't know what you are talking about, also I don't like that atitude, mostly because you are showingit". It doesn't bother you when someone else forget that they are a tiny speck of matter.

Are you aware that you are criticising me for not offering a perfect argument on an issue with this scope (WHOA!) and dismissing because a part of it didn't make sense to you in a topic you admit that you are not informed about and then claim that you changed your position about it because of another post that barely put 1/10 of what I have without backing anything up but just declaring "I know this the way it is, because the other way is stupid!"?

As I said, I do not believe you changed your position because of aitm's post, whenever the thought process began. You are either dishonest about your reaction to mine or his. Either way, you are intellectually dishonest, because you have a problem to admit an influence; a change 'drunkenshoe' (whoever/whatever you think she is) might have caused on your position. I am not angry, I find your prejudice hurtful and I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 30, 2016, 06:27:53 AM
i am also wondering how any kind of god cannot exist according to linguistic...

I think you should first read the thread. And then may be look up a few concepts and along with that try to engage points made instead of writing one liners about your idols or what you don't undrestand.

I am not here to repeat what I have written or explain everything over and over again to you, just because you can't be bothered to get informed what the conversation was about.

So I'll dismiss your 'curiosity'.

You really are impossible.

I never expected this thread would get so many fucking responses.
I've thought to myself lately if falsifiability should be a factor in agnosticism, and I'm not completely sure. (No pun intended)
I can definitely see where you're coming from though.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on January 30, 2016, 07:05:06 AM
You really are impossible.

No, I am not. Try to get close, try to engage with me if you are interested in what I have to say at all, you'll be amazed how easy I am. I can't do it otherwise, noone can. I'm sick of people trying to look 'cool', trying so hard to disagree with anything that comes alone without even having a conversation about it, standing in distant and pitcihing "myeh, me thinks not". Everything is so polarised and atomised, no conversation can occur. Disagreeing everything that is possible is not a sign of intelligence.

These subjects are not the fields anyone can have a conclusion on and have some score against each other. This is something we can talk about, and echange information or opinion. It's a long standing thing. We produce questions, I write something, you write something. We try to add information or some piece of knowledge that has been put out there before. And it goes on.

I was going to try to start a conversation about Foucaldian discourse on power, society, LABELS...how labels are created, WHY most labels don't actually carry the meanings we think they do; and why they are collective inventions by social contract to CONTROL PEOPLE. Not to convince anyone about anything, because it is relevant. It is an herculean task that will end in 'I don't agree with you's and one liners. Anyone who is interested in the subject, you get the key words.   

Quote from: SoldierofFortune on January 30, 2016, 06:27:53 AM
i am also wondering how any kind of god cannot exist according to linguistic...

The Logos.  This goes back to ancient Greece, and Johannine theology.  But of course that is not a universal metaphysics, there are many other alternatives.  Zen would tell you that the truth cannot be spoken.  I am tactical on metaphysics ... I lean on whatever works in a given situation.

Shoe - "Foucaldian discourse on power, society ..." ... most posters here don't bother with philosophy, you dig?  The idea that American (language) could be New Speak is ... inconceivable for most (also English (language) for our British friends).  That only happens in old political tomes.

I have to admit, agnosticism always struck me as a cop out. Usually "I don't know" is a valid position to have. Whats the square root of 65,227? I don't know. FINE! Its ok not to know that. Who is in the other room? I don't know. NO PROBLEM.

But then we get to "Does God exist?". I don't know. Not really acceptable.

In all other areas of life your lack of knowledge can be remedied by the search for knowledge. I can go find out who is in the other room. I can get a calculator and figure out the square root of whatever.

But there is no evidence to collect on the question of God's existence. There never has been. The lack of an ability to confirm or deny the existence of something through evidence gathering leads to only one inevitable conclusion: that thing does not exist. If it existed, some evidence of its existence would be available as proof. The assertion of God's existence must be dismissed in exactly the same manner that all other unsupported assertions are dismissed.

When someone says "I don't know" to the question of whether or not God exists, I feel like asking them "why not? Are you confused? Can I help?"

Quote from: Baruch on January 30, 2016, 10:31:23 AM
Shoe - "Foucaldian discourse on power, society ..." ... most posters here don't bother with philosophy, you dig?  The idea that American (language) could be New Speak is ... inconceivable for most (also English (language) for our British friends).  That only happens in old political tomes.

The funny thing is English is the language that we have the most research and so knowledge in this aspect, lol.

But what I was talking about a bit different than just philosophy in a traditional sense. Why labels get created and how they are tools of controlling people is pretty much about daily life and social relations. We discuss them all the time. Faggot, nigger, commie, dyke, slut...countless others are about to keep the traditional norms of gender, race; hierarchy.

I consider the label "Logical Positivist" as a cuss word.  But then I admire Popper (who actually wasn't a Positivist or Logical Positivist, but a Post-Positivist).  So Post-Positivist is an anti-cuss word ;-)

Since it seems you are in the Philosophy of Language camp, and the Philosophy of Social Sciences camp ... you might be unaware how alien that is not just to Anglo-American culture, but to Anglo-American philosophy over the last 100 years.  The anglophone camp hasn't chosen to address these concerns since the 19th century (William James and Josiah Royce for example).  Analytic-Philosophy and Cognitive Science have each had their day here.  What was useful to the Deep State, to support their anti-Communist ideology and support of lumpen plutocracy ... was encouraged.

I like people who come from a line similar to mine, but from a different angle.  What do you think of Slavoj Žižek?  A Left version of Nietzsche?  We need a few good Marxists.

Quote from: Baruch on January 31, 2016, 11:27:29 AM
I consider the label "Logical Positivist" as a cuss word.  But then I admire Popper (who actually wasn't a Positivist or Logical Positivist, but a Post-Positivist).  So Post-Positivist is an anti-cuss word ;-)

Since it seems you are in the Philosophy of Language camp, and the Philosophy of Social Sciences camp ... you might be unaware how alien that is not just to Anglo-American culture, but to Anglo-American philosophy over the last 100 years.  The anglophone camp hasn't chosen to address these concerns since the 19th century (William James and Josiah Royce for example).  Analytic-Philosophy and Cognitive Science have each had their day here.  What was useful to the Deep State, to support their anti-Communist ideology and support of lumpen plutocracy ... was encouraged.

I like people who come from a line similar to mine, but from a different angle.  What do you think of Slavoj Žižek?  A Left version of Nietzsche?  We need a few good Marxists.

I have never seen linguistics -or language analysis- as a method and I'll never -I'm always with Popper on that; 'neither language analysis nor logical analysis can be a method' - but as an 'evidence' in historical sense or a 'force' in both historical and organic sense. My relationship with social sciences comes with my own field. Studying art history as it is actually a still born discipline, I'm immune to traditional social sciences aspect -I think they call as 'anthropologically minded" (vs philosophically minded) - and to me philosophy is just a tool to produce the right questions when it is necessary. It's the soil mixture to hold the bricks -scientific knowledge- together. Other than that the traditional monologues do not mean much to me and I do not attach myself to a school. I can't. Neither reasonable nor rational.

Marxism is very important as it is the often crucial ground for the critical thought. I think more than linguistics aspect of philosophy that is alien to American culture. See, the thing is Marxism is not working as being 'marxist' as the ideology anymore -has been for a long time by the way. This is the distorted view in the American side. When we say Marxist, we mean marxist criticism of something as opposed to the common crude sense of history, nationalism, politics...modernity... etc. Not a political or social set of rules or a base for a regime -lol- as it is often understood.

Zizek...Don't know him very well. If I am not confusing him with someone else, when I read the name all I remembered was something like defining the state as 'the symbolic power that determines masses' behaviour patterns?' Could be wrong. Satyed back in the Saddle period? :lol:

Anglo-American philosophy cannot be cut out from the rest of the Western philosophy though. As you cannot 'make' philosophy ignoring German Idealism, you cannot do it with ignoring its criticism.

Philosophy is needed to carry the knowledge on, not to shape it. It can't. We are not living in the 19th century, but unfortunately we still need to deal with the garbage it left. Once when I was drunk, I said "We are lying in the open graves that were dug back in the 19th century" it became a kind of joke and I think it fits here.   


About my persistence in seeing langauge as a force -therefore socio-linguiscts crucial to history itself- is that our subject here has NOTHING to do with scientific methods, knowledge or its growth, but purely what stands out of it as human evidence for anthropology-history which can explain the need to invent religious way of thinking; gods and religions. That makes language more than relevant, esp. concerning the modern state, it's a centripetal force. How we label ourselves, others, our opinions and thoughts and others' do not depend on brand new ideas or the accumulation of scientific knowledge as we modern kids like to think. That's a delusion the age of knowledge and mass communication created. They are very ancient categories constantly gets brushed up with 'new colours'.

Preaching to the choir ... here is a great Zizek vignette on why it takes an ex-Christian to make a better atheist ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C16eiQH06RE

To Anglo-American prejudice ... the Anglo-American POV is the most evolved (thanks Darwin) ... and paying attention to any Continental form of Western philosophy would be going backward.  So it's criticisms can be safely ignored.  Now that the Soviet Union fell, and China has gone capitalist-retard ... Marxism as a criticism is much more relevant now than it ever was, because it is the only "other consciousness" that would warn us of going over a group-think cliff.  Unless you want to be a Buddhist monk anyway.

I totally agree, on a great number of things, that scientism as an ideology is simply idiot savant-cy.

Quote from: Nonsensei on January 31, 2016, 12:10:40 AM
I have to admit, agnosticism always struck me as a cop out. Usually "I don't know" is a valid position to have. Whats the square root of 65,227? I don't know. FINE! Its ok not to know that. Who is in the other room? I don't know. NO PROBLEM.

But then we get to "Does God exist?". I don't know. Not really acceptable.

I don't really have this objection to agnosticism, although I agree that if you can conceive of a world that does not involve a deity, Occam's Razor should compel one to adopt the atheist position rather than the middle zone.

That said, the atheist position is not necessarily one of a positive statement of knowledge that there is no god.  It is a statement that there is no compelling evidence to consider the god hypothesis in the first place.  I am not required to be agnostic about the luminiferous aether or phlogiston or the caloric theory of heat -- there isn't evidence supporting their existence, therefore I am permitted to say they don't without having to keep an "open mind" about them.

The same holds for the god theory of the organization of the universe: until there is some evidence that this theory needs to be taken seriously, I am perfectly justified in rejecting it without further explanation.

Please excuse the delay. Since the forum's complaining about lenght, I'll just hit the core points.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 29, 2016, 08:05:39 AM
I don't think you understand what the quote refers to. It's not about Aristo or his logic. People who offered that anology are perfectly aware that Chinese have their own philosophy, Dakotans have their own mythology and that Aristo's logic is a product depended on schools that preceedes his. This is EXACTLY what they are saying in a higher level of a category. They are pointing out that they are all as results, strictly bound to their respective linguistic development in their own circumstances.

No, I got the point. I just think those people are talking out of their asses. How are they supposed to prove such a thing? How are they supposed to show that, of all the factors to influence the development of Greek philosophy, it is their language that enabled them to develop? They can't. It's bullshit.

The truth is that Greek was being spoken for a long time before Aristotle, yet formal logic evaded them. What we call classical philosophy can trace itself to a very restricted region of Anatolia, the Ionian region. This is where some Greeks settled after the fall of their own civilization back home, and here, cut off from support from the mainland, they had to develop their own life here. In order to surivive, they had to take a hard-nosed look at everything around them and figure out how things worked. Their old culture and myths would be of little use here, for their familiar patterns of life would not suit their new environment. The culture that developed was at the same time recognizably Greek yet quite different from both their contemporaries on the mainland, and from the Achean culture they came from in the past.

They had to. Their circumstances â€"their environmentâ€" forced them. Their very surivival depended on being able to tease apart the world around them to find out how it worked.

It puzzles me greatly how anyone can say that the Greek language was the enabler of logic when the rest of the mainland was still steeped in the same old religion and ways of life. No, it the language was involved at all, it was but one part of a very large set of circumstances present in Ionia.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 29, 2016, 08:05:39 AM
Parmenides just left a poem opening with a dedication to a goddess -as it was the custom- and just the description of the chariot is enough to analyse his extreme diffculty to 'express' his complicated, distinguished perspective compared to his contemporaries. Because the Ancient Greek used in his time is no where near enough to do that, he tried to make it, but at the same time he used Homer phrases -naturally- because that's the only available narrative to think in. Forget Aristo, without Parmenides you don't have Plato, so no Socrates in written form.

If Homer's narrative was the only one available at the time, how did Parmenides have such difficulty expressing his thoughts in them? The observation that you can have difficulty expressing a thought in your language is prima face evidence that there is a difference between the two. When the respresentation is the same, serialization is dead easy. Parmenides shows the opposite of what you intend to prove here.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 29, 2016, 08:05:39 AM
Art is an example I can speak more confidently. It's not a coincidence or a matter of taste or the result of the religion why Egyptians depicted human body in a certain way. First of all, they were far advanced about human anotomy compared to any other culture,

What? The Egyptions didn't even know that the brain was a vital organ. That's why they threw it away when embalming. No, every culture figured out what the basic parts of the human body are (that's why we have words like "brain," "stomach", "lungs" etc. in the first place) â€" they just didn't know what they did.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 29, 2016, 08:05:39 AM
Also about myths. From your posts I sense that when you see the word 'myth' you automatically think of obscure ancient fairy tales echoing from thousands of years ago. OK. But you were born into a world with huge accumulation of knowledge. For example, you have learned how to count, read and write when you were a toddler. But forget being literate and have the simplest undersanding of numeracy, I want you to imagine how would be like to be born in a world that the only piece of 'information' -other than the ways of fighting with the nature to survive- is just what old people tell to others around a hearth. Myths; their characters, plots...etc. This is a language. The ultimate context. Those fairy tales are the basic norms of language which we evolved it by contrasting, criticising, inflating/deflating them. That's why I said we are thinking in Homer with a much better vocabulary. 

I have read Joseph Campbell, DS, and no, that's not how myths work. The basic skills of life are taught just like anything else: by rote or discovery. Myths are signposts guiding you through the transformations in one's life, and to act as a context for which rituals to carry one from one stage to the other. This can be from season to season, or rites of passage and so forth. Myths are catagorically not the only piece of information available to a primitive person. There was no myth to tell you that you how to cook meals (although there may be myths of why you cook those meals), or that one ear of corn and another ear of corn is two ears of corn.

Hell, Egypt had not only myths, but a whole bureaucracy held together by numbers, and even diplomacy. We have the letters and the records to prove it.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 29, 2016, 08:05:39 AM
No, it is the other way around. The language is the core of logic.

What 'other way around' are you talking about? I did not say that logic was the core or seed of language. I said that the two have the same core. No matter what language you are talking about, they all have at their core formal rules of being put together at all levels: from phonetic formants to syntax. Language follows rules; formal logic follows rules. Anyone can look at their own language and discover that it follows rules. The potential for that insight is always there, no matter what language you speak.

Anyway, in many ways you are preaching to the choir here, to borrow a theistic expression. We know that the 'theological knowledge' of god's existence is not even comparable to scientific knowledge, regardless of what theists claim. We only entertain the idea in arguments against theism.

So the 'theological knowledge' of god's existence is not knowledge. But you know what is also not knowledge? The 'theological knowledge' of god's non-existence. You can't prove that assertion any more than you can prove god's existence. It, too, is a statement that is not knowledge. Hell, there's a lot of statements about the real world that are not knowledge, either, even though we know that one of the alternatives is definitely true.

This is why agnostic atheism is a viable position: it is the acknowledgement that the statement 'god does not exist' is not knowledge any more than the statement 'god does exist' is. It doesn't matter why the possibility is there. Once proposed, the genie is out of the bottle and remains a technical possibility until proven otherwise â€" and a proof is unlikely.

The absence of something in an ocean of that something looks like a something itself. In a culture steeped in religion as a background, the absence of same looks like it is something rather than nothing, in the same way the absence of an electron in the Dirac sea looks like a positron. The only reason I call myself an atheist is a begrudging acceptance that the religious are going to call me one whether I like it or not.

Epistemology is a many splendored thing.  But reductionistic physicalism or materialistic pythagoreanism is an answer, not a question.  It is very useful, if you want to calculate how many BTUs might exist in a thunderstorm.

Aristotle used language analysis for part of his work ... but forget him, he was just a dumb Greek ;-).  Out of all Greek philosophy, I think being a founder of the science of biology ... is a pretty impressive CV.  Of course he biology work was purely empirical.  His physics less so (Greeks didn't have good instruments to measure dynamic things ... it took Archimedes a few decades later to get serious about that.

I would agree that the cause/effect of why the Greeks (some of them, not the hoi poloi) were more creative than most.  Bronowski is most illuminative:

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/jacob-bronowski-the-grain-in-the-stone/

There are links within to the similar commentary on other Ascent of Man episodes ... but not to the programs.

Machu Picchu as an exemplar of pre-Greek civilization ... authoritarianism under a god-king, usually a representative of the Sun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdN7Goz3Zdo&index=5&list=PL68DD81C715973B62

But the Greeks were intensely verbal ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAkLTWQUbG8

On democracy ... another Greek invention ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VelFkGje-Tw

Archimedes was an exception ... he was the first genuine physicist, and builder of engines of war ...

http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/history/archimedes.php

Geeks are the Greeks who are maniac about Archimedes ;-)

You are right, OP, that you can't just be agnostic. You're either an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. A lot of atheists will just say agnostic because that word is less scary to religious people. My brother is atheist, but his Facebook says agnostic. Even here in Canada, you still have to worry about not getting a job because you call yourself atheist.

Quote from: Baruch on January 23, 2016, 11:03:46 PM
I put metaphysics above physics ... I put holism above reductionism.  It is a choice.

Ok... So you can stop anytime?

Of course it isnt a choice. You are forced to have that opinion. (By the feeling of being right)

Quote from: facebook164 on February 02, 2016, 12:32:48 AM
Ok... So you can stop anytime?

Of course it isnt a choice. You are forced to have that opinion. (By the feeling of being right)

Of course, I am a free-will guy, not a determinist.  For example, monism, dualism and pluralism are POV taken in metaphysics.  I can use whichever I want ... I am not wedded to just one breakfast cereal.  For example monism would be the usual stance in Mahayana Buddhism ... but in Mahayana Buddhism is "skillful means" ... which means that in metaphysician doctoring, you apply based on the diagnosis, you don't do the "only have a hammer, so everything is a nail" ... if monism is a "problem" then apply dualism or pluralism.  I can believe in Santa Claus if I want, and when I was little, I did.  My inner child probably still believes.  People are like ogres, we have layers.

Theists claim to know God; atheists claim God is impossible. As an agnostic I don’t know whether “God” exists because don't understand the nature of my own existence or even understand that which I consider to be my “self”.  We each exist in an internal world of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that no one else will ever experience. The things that comprise my “self” -- ideas, memories, my cells, my relationships-- are all created, transformed and eventually lost. My subjective reality changes as my perceptions and internal responses constantly, and often without conscious control, shift. What I consider “I” is in a constant state of flux; “self” is an illusion. I can’t completely understand how my consciousness works because the moment I think about my thoughts I change them and when I focus on one sensation I lose the others. I can't even remember when I first became my "self".  For me the question of God is: Are my thoughts and perceptions solely my own, am I forever alone in my head, or is there something else beyond what I perceive to be my "self"? When I cease to exist did something know my "self"? Is denying anything other than "self" narcissism or is the idea of something more than "self" a fantasy? This is impossible for me to know. If a "God" exists I believe it is unknowable because if I cannot perceive all that is “I” then God, which is more than “I”, is inherently beyond understanding. If a God exists it is unknowable and therefore I live my life like an atheist, however unlike a strong atheist I don’t accept that just because I can’t comprehend something it doesn’t exist; I can’t fully comprehend my “self” yet it is the one thing in the universe I am certain exists.

(This is probably my worst post ever but these are my thoughts at the moment.)

Quote from: GSOgymrat on February 02, 2016, 08:24:01 AM
Theists claim to know God; atheists claim God is impossible. As an agnostic I don’t know whether “God” exists because don't understand the nature of my own existence or even understand that which I consider to be my “self”.  We each exist in an internal world of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations that no one else will ever experience. The things that comprise my “self” -- ideas, memories, my cells, my relationships-- are all created, transformed and eventually lost. My subjective reality changes as my perceptions and internal responses constantly, and often without conscious control, shift. What I consider “I” is in a constant state of flux; “self” is an illusion. I can’t completely understand how my consciousness works because the moment I think about my thoughts I change them and when I focus on one sensation I lose the others. I can't even remember when I first became my "self".  For me the question of God is: Are my thoughts and perceptions solely my own, am I forever alone in my head, or is there something else beyond what I perceive to be my "self"? When I cease to exist did something know my "self"? Is denying anything other than "self" narcissism or is the idea of something more than "self" a fantasy? This is impossible for me to know. If a "God" exists I believe it is unknowable because if I cannot perceive all that is “I” then God, which is more than “I”, is inherently beyond understanding. If a God exists it is unknowable and therefore I live my life like an atheist, however unlike a strong atheist I don’t accept that just because I can’t comprehend something it doesn’t exist; I can’t fully comprehend my “self” yet it is the one thing in the universe I am certain exists.

(This is probably my worst post ever but these are my thoughts at the moment.)

That was a wonderful post ... struggling with such woo woo questions is what got the Buddha trying to resolve them, in his case, by coloring outside the Hindu lines.  From the Mahayana perspective, the answer was "yes and no".

Specifically, because I will claim that I have resolved the "self" question to my satisfaction ... that is why I can handle metaphysics, theist or atheist.  Studying Buddhism was essential to my self-realization.  Though that doesn't mean I am part of the Buddhist religion.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 31, 2016, 08:55:29 PM
No, I got the point. I just think those people are talking out of their asses. How are they supposed to prove such a thing? How are they supposed to show that, of all the factors to influence the development of Greek philosophy, it is their language that enabled them to develop? They can't. It's bullshit.

The truth is that Greek was being spoken for a long time before Aristotle, yet formal logic evaded them. What we call classical philosophy can trace itself to a very restricted region of Anatolia, the Ionian region. This is where some Greeks settled after the fall of their own civilization back home, and here, cut off from support from the mainland, they had to develop their own life here. In order to surivive, they had to take a hard-nosed look at everything around them and figure out how things worked. Their old culture and myths would be of little use here, for their familiar patterns of life would not suit their new environment. The culture that developed was at the same time recognizably Greek yet quite different from both their contemporaries on the mainland, and from the Achean culture they came from in the past.

They had to. Their circumstances â€"their environmentâ€" forced them. Their very surivival depended on being able to tease apart the world around them to find out how it worked.

If Homer's narrative was the only one available at the time, how did Parmenides have such difficulty expressing his thoughts in them? The observation that you can have difficulty expressing a thought in your language is prima face evidence that there is a difference between the two. When the respresentation is the same, serialization is dead easy. Parmenides shows the opposite of what you intend to prove here.

No, you don't. You lack information and you think in mathmetical patterns. There is no use of pushing this. Your approach is 'It can't be, it is bullshit". You just want to dismiss a whole mountain of accumulation of knowledge, a huge field, interdisciplinary research and some connections accepted as principles, because you cannot make the connection. And you lack information -the 'that Greek was being spoken for a long time before Aristotle, yet formal logic evaded them' is a flashing sign that you don't know much about philosophy-linguistcs-doxography...etc- on this topic which is perfectly natural, you obviously are not interested in. However, you are treating long standing accepted notions and connections as if I just invented them and pitched you right in this thread.

The part with Parmenides was taken form Burnet which is old and the idea is far more developed and taken further now.

Please do not take this as condescension, but this sort of knowledge we are dealing here does not have a tidy structure that follows itself neatly piling on with forward, linear relations and outcomes. This is not natural science or math with equations and formulas. If you think in them with this nformation, you are handicapped. While it looks crude and nonsense on the surface, the 'information' looks as if it is floating on the air, because it needs time to connect it. It's not like natural science with equations and formulas and a mind that tends to recognise patterns that way, just sees a 2 dimensional map. It's not.

Defining 'those people' as 'talking out of their asses' is like someone who cannot put his mind to evolutionary theory dismissing the whole thing at 'eeh we can't be having arms because some freaking ancient fish had fins ffs!' What are you 'fighting' against, Hakurei? I get your resistence, I accept it, fine, but I do not get the crude dissmisal based on an attitude 'I know better'. No, you don't.
Neither do I or anyone else for that matter here in this forum.

Language being defined as a main force shaping the way we think is not some random thought offer by a few liberal arts hippies, nor even a new thing.

Also in my opinion, I think you sometimes confuse 'language analysis' with linguistics. The former is a little part of the latter.

I want to talk about this, not have a debate and 'convince' you or others to accept what I think. I am sceptic about it as always with everything. I just think, there is development and a dawn, a turn in the last 30 years. What is going to turn out to be? Who knows.

QuoteIt puzzles me greatly how anyone can say that the Greek language was the enabler of logic when the rest of the mainland was still steeped in the same old religion and ways of life. No, it the language was involved at all, it was but one part of a very large set of circumstances present in Ionia.

See, this statement is another flashing example of linear thinking of history; seeing ancient logic as one thing created at one time or as if something that had anything to do with daily life, way of life or religion of the time.

And by the way, why do you keep pointing out "one part of a very large set of circumstances present"? Enabling factor or the main shaping force does not equate the only factor, I have never said this -I kept remind that I haven't- neither any of those guys.

QuoteWhat? The Egyptions didn't even know that the brain was a vital organ. That's why they threw it away when embalming. No, every culture figured out what the basic parts of the human body are (that's why we have words like "brain," "stomach", "lungs" etc. in the first place) â€" they just didn't know what they did.

Eyptians removed many of the organs for mummification, because they are the first to decompose. It has nothing to do with the function of the organs. Yes, they didn't preserve the brain, but this has nothing to do with the example I gave about Egyptian knowing human anotomy related to art. I was talking about the way they depicted them. (They are often depicted in a way human body doesn't stand or pose.) And the difference between how Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek choose to depict human body.

QuoteI have read Joseph Campbell, DS, and no, that's not how myths work. The basic skills of life are taught just like anything else: by rote or discovery. Myths are signposts guiding you through the transformations in one's life, and to act as a context for which rituals to carry one from one stage to the other. This can be from season to season, or rites of passage and so forth. Myths are catagorically not the only piece of information available to a primitive person. There was no myth to tell you that you how to cook meals (although there may be myths of why you cook those meals), or that one ear of corn and another ear of corn is two ears of corn.

LOL, Hakurei, what  I am saying is AGAINST Campbell. I am saying there is no one great model, but countless different ones evolved in different ways and one model survived because of many other factors. 

About your 'how to cook' example. I specifically said that in my previous post "-other than the ways of fighting with the nature to survive-" which was included to get you understand that I'm aware there are other form of knowledge available to primitive people, bıt was not talking about them.

QuoteHell, Egypt had not only myths, but a whole bureaucracy held together by numbers, and even diplomacy. We have the letters and the records to prove it.

Also from Ancient Greece and 16th century Italy we have enormous archives survived to our day and each have pretty good evidence on from how they handled literacy and used the versions of their language, how the language change according to different domains. Not the grammnar or the alphabet. The usage of language in different domains like; family, business, military, religion, state...etc.

QuoteWhat 'other way around' are you talking about? I did not say that logic was the core or seed of language. I said that the two have the same core. No matter what language you are talking about, they all have at their core formal rules of being put together at all levels: from phonetic formants to syntax. Language follows rules; formal logic follows rules. Anyone can look at their own language and discover that it follows rules. The potential for that insight is always there, no matter what language you speak.

You said "the core of language is the seed of logic." No. Language came first and then the logic was born according to a specific language. Seed is not one absolute seed. Also the 'rules' of 'languages' as we know today came later and constantly developed until it reached the standardised form -ater standardised universal education. There are no rules or standards; THERE ARE NO LANGUAGES before French Revolution. What you refer to is 'vernaculars' only.

QuoteSo the 'theological knowledge' of god's existence is not knowledge. But you know what is also not knowledge? The 'theological knowledge' of god's non-existence. You can't prove that assertion any more than you can prove god's existence. It, too, is a statement that is not knowledge. Hell, there's a lot of statements about the real world that are not knowledge, either, even though we know that one of the alternatives is definitely true.

What I am saying is 'agnostic atheism' is the 'theological knowledge' of the non existence of god based on the knowledge that 'theological knowledge' is not knowledge and application of falsifiability to balance out that non-knowledge status of 'theological knowledge' thus treating that absence of 'knowledge' -which is just a negative symmetry of 'theological knowledge'- like some empircial data to work with. OK? It's freaking theism with a different make up, because except atheism as nonexistence of god all those concepts -agnostic, gnostic- are created from their theistic counterparts and with theology it is a one way road.

QuoteThis is why agnostic atheism is a viable position: it is the acknowledgement that the statement 'god does not exist' is not knowledge any more than the statement 'god does exist' is.

I don't accept this. See above.

QuoteIt doesn't matter why the possibility is there. Once proposed, the genie is out of the bottle and remains a technical possibility until proven otherwise â€" and a proof is unlikely.

The absence of something in an ocean of that something looks like a something itself. In a culture steeped in religion as a background, the absence of same looks like it is something rather than nothing, in the same way the absence of an electron in the Dirac sea looks like a positron. The only reason I call myself an atheist is a begrudging acceptance that the religious are going to call me one whether I like it or not.

Labels are a completely different discussion.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
I want to talk about this, not have a debate and 'convince' you or others to accept what I think.

I'm putting this at the head of my reply because I want it to be clear.

I want this to be a talk, too, but I want it to be a talk, and not just a lecture presented by you. That means back and forth. You talk to me, not at me. You are not going to lecture at me. I am going to be trying to fit what you say with what I know and have been able to confirm, and if there's a discrepency, I'm going to say something about it.

If you agree to this, super. Otherwise...

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Your approach is 'It can't be, it is bullshit". You just want to dismiss a whole mountain of accumulation of knowledge, a huge field, interdisciplinary research and some connections accepted as principles, because you cannot make the connection.

WHAT knowledge? WHAT principles? I have accepted that linguistic reletivity is a thing, that language influences society, but that's all it is â€" an influence, and not a determinator. The structure of your language does not determine what form your society takes. Aristotolian logic may have been invented by the Greeks, yet every other advanced society managed to learn and work with it, people who largely do not speak Greek, and therefore would not have the same grammatical apparatus that the Greeks had. I, for instance, can't speak Greek any better than I can speak Dakotan, yet I can deal with the Aristotolian logic as well as any other modern person â€" and no modern person speaks Aristotle's Greek (unless they are scholars specializing in it).

I am always immeditely suspicious whenever anyone tells me that some thing in history was determined by any one factor. It doesn't matter if it's pr telling me that Islam determined the Muslim world's history of violence, or you telling me that Greek determined Aristotle's logic.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
And you lack information -the 'that Greek was being spoken for a long time before Aristotle, yet formal logic evaded them' is a flashing sign that you don't know much about philosophy-linguistcs-doxography...etc- on this topic which is perfectly natural, you obviously are not interested in. However, you are treating long standing accepted notions and connections as if I just invented them and pitched you right in this thread.

Don't tell me what I'm interested in and what I'm not! There may be something to what you are trying saying, but in many ways you present a terrible case for it. It just plain doesn't make sense. You have no answer for why, if "we people think as the language dictates," (and yes, you did say that; I copied that right from your post!) there could be any phenomenon of not being able to put your thoughts into words. You have no answer for why, if "we people think as the language dictates," that we can understand the Aristotolian logic even though the language Aristotle wrote in is now long dead, and yet people who never learned Greek, and speak languages as diverse as English, Russian, French, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Turkish, etc. all can understand the Aristotolian logic. Seriously, how could this be if the conception of logic was so critically dependent on a particular language?

I have studied linguistics as an undergrad as an elective. One of the big things you learn is that all human languages are actually remarkably similar to each other. When you strip away all the fiddly little details, you find relatively few patterns. Furthermore, when children acquire language, they tend to avoid mistakes that would certainly happen if language were as arbitrary as you make them out to be, and yet they tend to make "mistakes" that are actually grammatical in other languages â€" like they'are already pre-equipped with a universal grammer, and are only seeking out the specific instance of that grammar in their environment. And, of course, language is generated in a specific set of functional modules in the brain. Some commonality in how languages work is to be expected.

Every langauge has some sort of syntax, even if the practitioners don't always adhere to its rules â€" they're not learned as explicit rules to be obeyed but as rules deduced through observation, automatically by the process of language acquisition. If Aristotle spoke Chinese, sure, the logical calculus may have a different appearance, but that's just window-dressing. It would still need to embody all of the logical constructs and derivations that had been discovered up to that time. Aristotle, after all, used formal logic and all its trappings as a tool to explore the universe (Chinese Aristotle would have been a good fit for the Taoists); if nothing else, it would have had to be fit for purpose.

I would certainly believe that we may be leveraging the lanugage modules of our brains to do logic. However this is a long way from saying that our language dictates the logic of our thoughts. Like all other parts of our brain, the language center is plastic even late into life â€" you can learn new languages with difficulty, and you are always learning new vocabulary of your own language(s). Our language, too, has to be plastic to keep up with the new kinds of thoughts that we throw at it.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Please do not take this as condescension, but this sort of knowledge we are dealing here does not have a tidy structure that follows itself neatly piling on with forward, linear relations and outcomes. This is not natural science or math with equations and formulas. If you think in them with this nformation, you are handicapped. While it looks crude and nonsense on the surface, the 'information' looks as if it is floating on the air, because it needs time to connect it. It's not like natural science with equations and formulas and a mind that tends to recognise patterns that way, just sees a 2 dimensional map. It's not.

No shit. I never pretended it was. Thing is, I do know some things about languages in general, particularly the fact that all languages are rule-governed, their universal similarity in the broad strokes, and the total discreditation of linguistic determinism â€" which is, to put crudely, exactly the "we people think as the language dictates" position you've advocated. This is basic stuff I'm talking about, stuff they teach in classrooms, stuff they wouldn't teach unless the experts in the field are quite sure that they are as correct as they can be, and in general what you say slams face-first into what I have learned.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Defining 'those people' as 'talking out of their asses' is like someone who cannot put his mind to evolutionary theory dismissing the whole thing at 'eeh we can't be having arms because some freaking ancient fish had fins ffs!'

Don't try to distort my words. By 'those people' I meant people who would assert that a Chinese Aristotle would have invented a different form of logic, and I say that they are talking out of their asses by saying that, as I would anyone who would argue a point of history was determined by one factor. Again, how would you prove that a Chinese Aristotle would really come up with a different form of logic, rather than a logic that looked different but operated in much the same way and come up with identical results? You can't. No one can. Hence, it's bullshit.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
What are you 'fighting' against, Hakurei? I get your resistence, I accept it, fine, but I do not get the crude dissmisal based on an attitude 'I know better'. No, you don't.

Neither do I or anyone else for that matter here in this forum.

What? Even the people on the forum who studied linguistics? The very thing you're trying to explain to me? One of the things that I have passed a college course about? Are you are assuming that everyone on this forum has the same educational background as you? Good grief. You will find experts on many diverse subjects on this forum, from particle physics to sociology. (Not that I'm an expert in linguistics by any means.)

What am I fighting against? Untruth and bullshit. We have quite enough of that around without us spreading it purposefully.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Language being defined as a main force shaping the way we think is not some random thought offer by a few liberal arts hippies, nor even a new thing.

Again, no shit, but you're taking it too far. You are taking it to the point of linguistic determinism, a theory that has been discredited for a long time. Have you heard this aphorism? "A picture is worth a thousand words"? You can memorize details of the Mona Lisa in a time far too short for you to describe them to yourself. You can memorize and immitate a sound faster than it would take you to verbally describe it.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
See, this statement is another flashing example of linear thinking of history; seeing ancient logic as one thing created at one time or as if something that had anything to do with daily life, way of life or religion of the time.

Ancient logic did have something to do with daily life. It formed the basis for the natural philosophy of Thales of Miletus (remember him?). That natural philosophy was so useful that it actually made Thales rich. You read that right: Thales used his natural philosophy to make a killing on the olive bounty that happened one summer by buying up all the olive presses the previous year and then renting out those presses to the olive growers who would need them.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Enabling factor or the main shaping force does not equate the only factor, I have never said this -I kept remind that I haven't- neither any of those guys.

Again, you exaggerate the role of language by characterizing it as an "enabling factor" or "the main shaping force" â€" what justifies this? Maybe "those guys" are onto something, but you (yes, I'm singling you out here) have so far presented a very poor case.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
I was talking about the way they depicted them. (They are often depicted in a way human body doesn't stand or pose.) And the difference between how Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek choose to depict human body.

If you actually take a look at Egyptian (http://www.caitloon.com/06mykerinuslarge.jpg) sculpture, (https://www.colourbox.com/preview/9324521-landmark-of-the-famous-ramses-ii-statues-at-abu-simbel-in-egypt.jpg) rather than relief carvings on their funiary walls, you'll find that they're proportioned and posed quite reasonably. They're stiff, (http://historylists.org/images/nefertiti-bust.jpg) but reasonable. (https://alisamlibby.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/walk-like-an-egyptian.jpg)

As to the carvings, I think that had to do with economy of expression rather than some bogus dications of whatever, because the Egyptians had very little space and very little time to carve those figures on their temple walls â€" their chisels were exclusively made of copper, whereas their longer-lasting tombs were made of granite (bronze was for weapons exclusively). Thus, you wanted to carve that person as few times as you could get away with, so you wanted a style that conveyed as much information about the person's status and character as possible. That meant a profile, except for twisting the chest and eye toward the viewer. But for those two distortions, the relief figures look quite like the statues.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
LOL, Hakurei, what  I am saying is AGAINST Campbell. I am saying there is no one great model, but countless different ones evolved in different ways and one model survived because of many other factors. 

Cambell's mythological model is a generalized model of how myths came into being and what their purpose is. It is a grand unified theory of cultural anthropology. He explained that, while each individual mythology is different in its detail, just like all human language is remarkably similar in form beneath the surface details, all mythology is remarkably similar in form and function underneath the specific expressions.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
About your 'how to cook' example. I specifically said that in my previous post "-other than the ways of fighting with the nature to survive-" which was included to get you understand that I'm aware there are other form of knowledge available to primitive people, bıt was not talking about them.

For primitive people, what else do you need, but that practical knolwedge and myth? It also proves that there's more to the primitive mind than the language of myth.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Also from Ancient Greece and 16th century Italy we have enormous archives survived to our day and each have pretty good evidence on from how they handled literacy and used the versions of their language, how the language change according to different domains. Not the grammnar or the alphabet. The usage of language in different domains like; family, business, military, religion, state...etc.

Well, you would expect the experts in a specific area to be able to communicate with non-technical people, and you're not going to invent a full, new language just to communicate some new concepts. That's just silly. But languages, including syntax and alphabet, evolve with time. We've seen it over the course of English history, changing from something that looked like Dutch to what it is today, using a completely different alphabet to the one we use now. So riddle me this: why do you think the language changed the way it did?

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
You said "the core of language is the seed of logic." No. Language came first and then the logic was born according to a specific language.

Of course people were speaking languages before logic, and the person who invented formalized logic would speak a specific language. But "according to a specific language"? Again, overreaching.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
Also the 'rules' of 'languages' as we know today came later and constantly developed until it reached the standardised form -ater standardised universal education. There are no rules or standards; THERE ARE NO LANGUAGES before French Revolution.

LOL! Who doesn't know linguistics again? I'm not talking about the prescriptive grammars made at that time and taught in schools, but rather that the descriptive rules detected to be in operation in long extinct languages like Sumerian or ancient Egyptian before anyone even THOUGHT of writing down rules for language, rules that every child knows about their own language without even being taught, and rules that every person follows whether they are educated on them or not. Even primitive people who have never encountered outsiders don't speak in word salad.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 02, 2016, 01:52:55 PM
What I am saying is 'agnostic atheism' is the 'theological knowledge' of the non existence of god based on the knowledge that 'theological knowledge' is not knowledge and application of falsifiability to balance out that non-knowledge status of 'theological knowledge' thus treating that absence of 'knowledge' -which is just a negative symmetry of 'theological knowledge'- like some empircial data to work with. OK?

Then you are defining 'agnostic atheism' quite differently then the way I am, and most other atheists do. To me, it's a matter of degree of certainty towards a particular proposition: "God exists." Argue all you want about 'theological knowledge' or whatever, it's there, I know of it, I know what it means, and I have assigned it some degree of certainty. The fact that I do not assign either 100% certainty nor 0% certainty (and realize that) is what makes me an agnostic, and the fact that it is near zero, enough to reject the proposition, is what makes me an atheist. Thus, I am an agnostic atheist.

I think it is a viable position. The Aristotolian logic says that it is a viable position. And I don't give a fuck if you think Aristotolian logic is an artifact of the Greek language or not. It's consistent, and it works. Until you prove otherwise (using what logic?), it still rules over any petty narrative.

This is why Continental philosophy can't get along with Anglo-American philosophy and vice versa, and we can't have nice things either.  The Anglo-American analyticism, has tried to divorce itself from language (and Wittgenstein), and originate from logic outward, not derive logic from language, inward.  It is normal in reductionism ... which Anglo-American analyticism is a part, to invert things.  Though historically, the development was from language to logic, as Aristotle demonstrated in terms of the Greek language.  And of course he was laying bare, what was already there implicitly.  He made certain ways of speaking into syllogisms, into technical jargon.

As an abstraction, logic is easier to move to another culture/language, than other aspects of Greek culture.  Modern logic is far more abstract than what people were using as recently as the 19th century.  Of course it is the language of the user of logic, his semantics, that decide what kind of axioms are advanced ... what is important, how it is structured etc.  The logic is a bare skeleton lacking in all flesh.

I am not lecturing you, nor talking at you. You have a chip on your shoulder. I'm trying to put things together trying to explain my tendency in thinking about something, because you asked me to explain my position. And I am using the available common knowledge which you lack and also reject as bullshit.

You are on an alien soil and you want me to explain something as old as written culture, a subject which has a huge mountain of knowledge and history of itself with perfectly articulate expressions in a post and convince you on something you reject from the beginning just as a principle. It's stupid.

You are perfectly fine with it when you are pointing out what is and what is not, but you cannot handle it when somebody tells you that you don't know jack squad about a particular subject to come to a conclusion.

You pompous, narcissistic idiot. All you fucking care about is having an American hot shot, 'I know it all debate' that you get to say what is right or wrong according to your own perspective.

QuoteI am always immeditely suspicious whenever anyone tells me that some thing in history was determined by any one factor.

What? Are you doing this on purpose? This is bullshit. I haven't said anything like this and actually I have repeated a few times that I haven't.

Baruch, analytical philosophy is philosophy of language and it is defined as British-American (20th century English speaking culture's) Philosophy.

'Continental' Philosophy does not need to get along with British American Philosophy, the latter has to get along with the former, because it is just a part of it.

Get your ass down to earth.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:22:47 AM
Baruch, analytical philosophy is philosophy of language and it is defined as British-American (20th century English speaking culture's) Philosophy.

'Continental' Philosophy does not need to get along with British American Philosophy, the latter has to get along with the former, because it is just a part of it.

Get your ass down to earth.

Spoken like a Continental type philosopher ;-)  Or are you micro-aggressing Analysts, by appropriation?  Don't be a very White British person, claiming you are making genuine Indian chicken curry.  Of course all philosophers use language, but that doesn't make them all, Continental.

"Analytic Philosophy (or sometimes Analytical Philosophy) is a 20th Century movement in philosophy which holds that philosophy should apply logical techniques in order to attain conceptual clarity, and that philosophy should be consistent with the success of modern science." aka it is the step-mother of scientism.

Habermas is about ... communicative rationalization:

Rationalization in this context ... "In sociology, rationalisation or rationalization refers to the replacement of traditions, values, and emotions as motivators for behavior in society with rational, calculated ones." and ...

Habermas' position ... "Jürgen Habermas has argued that to understand rationalization properly requires going beyond Weber's notion of rationalization and distinguishing between instrumental rationality, which involves calculation and efficiency (in other words, reducing all relationships to those of means and ends), and communicative rationality, which involves expanding the scope of mutual understanding in communication, the ability to expand this understanding through reflective discourse about communication, and making social and political life subject to this expanded understanding."

Your POV, and mine, is closer to Habermas, not Gettier.

LOL Baruch, I'm reacting to a 'white British' out look here. It's interesting that you percieve that as being a 'very white British person' way of looking down to American thought. ;) You are generally right about how the American thought is isolated though. *Whistle. Don't you think it is an interesting subject of it's own that what crosses the pond and what doesn't. Or most importantly didn't? Uncle Noam has a good map of that in the last few decades up to academic research titles..

I was being obnoxious. I meant it is a whole thing and one is just a small part of another. 

And you get 5 internet points just for quoting uncle Jürgen. I think he is important to us about critical theory in general too. Don't you too sometimes feel like screaming with a knife in hand  'die, postmodernism die!' :lol:

Look what I have. Want to share a good cookie? It's a monday for pessimists.  :040: 

https://pdf.yt/d/TJ7HxrAly-MtUP4B

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 10:10:08 AM
LOL Baruch, I'm reacting to a 'white British' out look here. It's interesting that you percieve that as being a 'very white British person' way of looking down to American thought. ;) You are generally right about how the American thought is isolated though. *Whistle. Don't you think it is an interesting subject of it's own that what crosses the pond and what doesn't. Or most importantly didn't? Uncle Noam has a good map of that in the last few decades up to academic research titles..

I was being obnoxious. I meant it is a whole thing and one is just a small part of another. 

And you get 5 internet points just for quoting uncle Jürgen. I think he is important to us about critical theory in general too. Don't you too sometimes feel like screaming with a knife in hand  'die, postmodernism die!' :lol:

Look what I have. Want to share a good cookie? It's a monday for pessimists.  :040: 

https://pdf.yt/d/TJ7HxrAly-MtUP4B

I like ;-)  Reading the critical Concept of Enlightenment (first chapter).  Looks promising to whit: "Enlightenment's mythic terror springs from a horror of myth."  Are we always trying to break into the Omega Point, by philosophizing with a hammer, smashing the latest generation of Francis Bacon idols?  Is the next stage already here, methinks metaphysics may be called to the bar once again ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism.

A turkish delight back at you:
https://archive.org/details/TwilightOfTheIdolsOrHowToPhilosophizeWithAHammer

Both books struggle with the fate of Francis Bacon, who preternaturally died while trying to invent fresh frozen chicken, though salisbury steak sounds more English.  If he had been as genius as Leonardo, he would have invented the TV dinner, centuries before TV.  Here lies the inventor of modernity, dead by a deed most foul, if anyone can claim to have invented it ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon

I had a friend who almost died of infection, when attacked by a frozen zombie whole turkey he was trying to prepare for Thanksgiving.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:17:17 AM... you cannot handle it when somebody tells you that you don't know jack squad about a particular subject to come to a conclusion.

You pompous, narcissistic idiot. All you fucking care about is having an American hot shot, 'I know it all debate' that you get to say what is right or wrong according to your own perspective.

Can you honestly recall any instance, where someone made a comment in disagreement with you, who wasn't a "pompous, narcissistic idiot?" :think:

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:17:17 AM
I am not lecturing you, nor talking at you. You have a chip on your shoulder. I'm trying to put things together trying to explain my tendency in thinking about something, because you asked me to explain my position. And I am using the available common knowledge which you lack and also reject as bullshit.

That line you just stated there... it's not true. What you call "common knowledge" is not knowledge; they're common misconceptions. They are things that a lot, or even most, people think are true, but actually are not.

Right at the moment, you are lecturing me: you are telling me that I "don't have knowledge", when in fact, I do have knowledge, particularly of language. You are pitting your "common knowledge" against concepts I learned in a college course on that very same subject. I don't claim to be an expert on languages by any means, but I do understand the basics â€" basics that clobber common misconceptions on that subject.

No, being bilingual doesn't give you any unique insight into language that is unavailable to those who have studied the subject as an academic discipline. Real linguists study polyglots as well as monoglots.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:17:17 AM
You are on an alien soil and you want me to explain something as old as written culture, a subject which has a huge mountain of knowledge and history of itself with perfectly articulate expressions in a post and convince you on something you reject from the beginning just as a principle. It's stupid.

Theorizing what might have happened in history under different circumstances is not history or culture. It is speculation. It doesn't even rise to the level of knowledge because there's absolutely no means to verify what you are saying is true. You have never, ever answered why it would be that a Chinese Aristotle would have come up with a different logic. That "why" is critically important to a skeptic, or indeed any intellectual â€"more important than the statement itselfâ€" for without the "why", that assertion is just that: an assertion without evidence, and thus falls to Hitchens's razor.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:17:17 AM
IYou are perfectly fine with it when you are pointing out what is and what is not, but you cannot handle it when somebody tells you that you don't know jack squad about a particular subject to come to a conclusion.

Again, more lecturing. More chastizing. More treating me like a sponge who's only fit to absorb your word without question. This is exactly what I was talking about at the head of my last message. You assume that I have no knowledge of what you're talking about, and therefore my rejections are the product of "not knowing" or "not wanting to know" about a particular subject.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:17:17 AM
You pompous, narcissistic idiot. All you fucking care about is having an American hot shot, 'I know it all debate' that you get to say what is right or wrong according to your own perspective.

Projecting much? I find it hillarious that, instead of going back to your sources to construct a proper rebuttal to my replies, which to everyone else are obvious problems in your position, you instead call me names.

You bilingual Turkish hot shot!  :wink:

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 03, 2016, 04:17:17 AM
What? Are you doing this on purpose? This is bullshit. I haven't said anything like this and actually I have repeated a few times that I haven't.

The hell you haven't. I quote:

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 28, 2016, 06:51:20 AM
Are you familiar with the quote, "If Aristoteles had spoken Chinese or Dakotan, he would have come up with a completely different logic system"?

Yes, I gave religious concepts as examples, however they are the ones we can easily pinpoint in this subject as fantasy, because for a long time now it has been obvious to our accumulation of knowledge that they are fantasies. (That actually is a part of what I am saying) But when I say the link between language and thought, I mean the whole kind of concepts, their development, including the 'secular' ones, which are not realy secular but created in constrast, in comparison in a language that has evolved from myth and fantasy, before creator or god 'towards' the concept. The very reason why people managed to reason out that thought about challanging those specific concepts created related to god is that they were defined/existed in language in the first place. Comparison is the most basic, simple way of critical thought. When you create a concept in contrast, it is bound to be in comparison and therefore actually very related and it is in the end a counterpart.

You used the quote as a preface to your longer paragraph about how language creates artificial divides that are somehow supposed to determine how we think. The problem with this argument is that this kind of division between X and not-X is not linked to language at all. Cats (or any other territorial animal) also divide the world between X and not-X when they stake out their territories. You cannot have territories unless you have some sort of understanding of "mine" and "not-mine," even if that understanding is on the instinctual level. Deciding whether to eat something in a world full of poisonous plants and venomous animals also requires this kind of understanding: "safe for me to eat" and "not safe for me to eat." These understandings may not be symbolic, but they are there â€" they are basic tools for survival. The divisions and contrasts you speak of are not the fault of language, but are actually far more basal concepts that language allowed us to put labels on.

If what you say above could be taken at face-value, then it would have obvious implications for Aristotle and his logic. Contrasts map onto logical negation pretty straightforwardly, for instance. But you asserted that these contrasts are somehow the fault of language, rather than the language acquiring a means to express these contrasts because of a preexisting need to divide the universe between god and secular. Your reasoning puts the cart before the horse.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on January 29, 2016, 08:05:39 AM
I don't think you understand what the quote refers to. It's not about Aristo or his logic. People who offered that anology are perfectly aware that Chinese have their own philosophy, Dakotans have their own mythology and that Aristo's logic is a product depended on schools that preceedes his. This is EXACTLY what they are saying in a higher level of a category. They are pointing out that they are all as results, strictly bound to their respective linguistic development in their own circumstances.

Again, a direct statement that it was the linguistic development of Greek etc. that enabled Aristotle to develop his formal logic, rather than the needs of formal logic that compelled Aristotle to repurpose some of his own language to suit it. Repurposing the language is something that happened to every other language that had to incorporate the Aristotolian logic, so why not Greek itself?

Like in other posts, you fail to elaborate why it was not the latter case in favor of the former. Again, the "why" is very imporant if you don't want to fall victim of Hitchens's razor.

Anyway, you have this tendency to assume that you are the one who knows things and others on this forum do not when we disagree with you. This is patently not true, as I have demonstrated repeatedly in the past. Maybe it's time to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself if the one with their head up their ass is me, or you.

idea/concept comes before language...for exampe:

In very early times of humanity, there were emotion of justice in the hearts of men...even the word that symbolize the concept ''justice'' didn't exist...

Now fight nicely ... like cold blooded academics do ...

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/01/25/1520752113.abstract.html?etoc

This recent scholarly article has bearing on if there are universal semantic structures in the human mind, such that it doesn't matter what language(s) you use to express yourself, or what cultural context you do it in ... because there is a human cognitive high ground, and the first group of eggheads that seize it, will be uber-mensch!

I think there are no universal semantic structures in the human mind ... because the human mind is a universal machine, not a universal truth.  And like all machines, it is garbage in, garbage out.  Turing was motivated in his researches, by searching for just such a structure ... because if it was an algorithm, then it could be programmed, and if it could be programmed, then a machine executing the program would be a mind.

Really un-cognizant of the researchers ... such universal semantics is what metaphysics, and Roget's Thesaurus ... have been all about for centuries.

Quote from: Baruch on February 04, 2016, 08:05:54 PM
Now fight nicely ... like cold blooded academics do ...

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/01/25/1520752113.abstract.html?etoc

This recent scholarly article has bearing on if there are universal semantic structures in the human mind, such that it doesn't matter what language(s) you use to express yourself, or what cultural context you do it in ... because there is a human cognitive high ground, and the first group of eggheads that seize it, will be uber-mensch!

I think there are no universal semantic structures in the human mind ... because the human mind is a universal machine, not a universal truth.  And like all machines, it is garbage in, garbage out.  Turing was motivated in his researches, by searching for just such a structure ... because if it was an algorithm, then it could be programmed, and if it could be programmed, then a machine executing the program would be a mind.

Really un-cognizant of the researchers ... such universal semantics is what metaphysics, and Roget's Thesaurus ... have been all about for centuries.

For example, for me, making the understanding of the relation between concepts and imagery without using the instrumentality of turkish gramer and symbols...with the language of noam chmsky, conversion of the deep structure without turkish, but with english to surface structure...

Chomsky is more about syntax than semantics ... there are 4 levels:

1. Lexical analysis - this is what the researchers are trying to combine with #3, and seeing recurring patterns
2. Syntactic analysis - this is what Chomsky did his research ... on English.  It won't apply with all languages
3. Semantic analysis - this is where no man is an island, this is culturally determined
4. Pragmatic analysis - this is where you put the stuff that doesn't fit above

I haven't read your previous post, Hakurei. I stopped reading after the first part you told me 'can't and 'bullshit'. Who is 'we' by the way? What do you expect to accomplish by singling me out as if I represent some anti-thesis to an imaginary 'we'? Wearing your 'opponent' down? I keep forgetting that your only position is 'how to win' and you genuinely believe that you are the smartest kid in the room without question, which makes you pretty dumb in my book. Your need of defining me as some 'side' to work against -and people here as if they are some team behind you- that you need to beat down, tires me.

One would think that with all your supposed intellect, you should have gotten long time ago that my language and way of 'speaking' here is a result of choosing direct expressions in a second language, so I wouldn't make a mess of it while trying to be subtle in nuances or more 'meaningful' when it comes to complicated opinions and ideas.

Anyway, you play your game with your 'we'. I was going to send a few pdfs to you last night. Apparently, you blocked me so you wouldn't see my posts. I do not see why this should change according to the topic just because you feel like beating me down. Only thing you need to do is not to click 'you are ignoring this user'. 

Just a few things, since you wrote all that.

If we look at this from Hitchen's razor, the agnostic atheist is responsible with explaining why he is applying falsifiability to mumbo jumbo and claim a fantastical possibility that an extremely unlikely situation could exist, because we can't know. We can't know it, because it is not knowledge. Which stops there and can't go a step further. I also don't get why you don't just call it burden of proof, but Hitchen's razor. Hitchen's razor is not even something internationally accepted and used. 'Any claim without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence' is a hyperbolic word salad version of burden of proof. Not some new original idea that calls for a specific name.

From the point of socio-linguistics, pushing burden of proof in traditional way is pointless in a limited time and space. This is not biology or physics, I can't just write here and go like 'see what we have here is an evidence of the very link between language and thought, therefore the conclusion is...blah blah' Not to mention there is not a fucking claim, but just a slow change in the understanding of a huge field started to get a bit 'weird' between extremes and in our time it started to go towards the extreme. As a result, the birth of a new field which draws perfect parallels with the developing historical fields. After the rise of social history, this was inevitable. Linguistics-comparative history-social history-linguistics...etc. It could get controversial, agressive in the next decades, then calm down and fade away may be to get revived over and over again. That's what happens with tendencies in social sciences. Drawing circles. They are historical disciplines, ideas do not just die down and drop dead not to be taken as an issue again, because there is no evidence you can cut and paste. They are organic, constantly changing, yet arriving to the same points to expand it.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on February 04, 2016, 08:46:10 AM
Can you honestly recall any instance, where someone made a comment in disagreement with you, who wasn't a "pompous, narcissistic idiot?" :think:

Hakurei Reimu is the only poster here I said something like that to and I said that to him before. And you were talking about what a few weeks ago? Over the top expressions?

Why are you reading my posts then? What are you? A masochist?

Quote from: drunkenshoeIf we look at this from Hitchen's razor, the agnostic atheist is responsible with explaining why he is applying falsifiability to mumbo jumbo and claim a fantastical possibility that an extremely unlikely situation could exist, because we can't know. We can't know it, because it is not knowledge. Which stops there and can't go a step further. I also don't get why you don't just call it burden of proof, but Hitchen's razor. Hitchen's razor is not even something internationally accepted and used. 'Any claim without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence' is a hyperbolic word salad version of burden of proof. Not some new original idea that calls for a specific name.

Now this is an argument I find much more persuasive. Much more succinct, and touches on the things I've been thinking about lately(since having a very heated discussion of God with a Christian, a short time ago, and losing my logic a little in the process of arguing). It happens to be similar to my thoughts on it, but more formally stated.

Quote from: drunkenshoeFrom the point of socio-linguistics, pushing burden of proof in traditional way is pointless in a limited time and space. This is not biology or physics, I can't just write here and go like 'see what we have here is an evidence of the very link between language and thought, therefore the conclusion is...blah blah' Not to mention there is not a fucking claim,

But you did make a claim, and it is the point of our whole argument. After I said it would be dishonest to claim certainty about a creator either existing or not existing, you said:

Quote from: drunkenshoeObjection!

We do possess the knowledge that proves that a creator cannot exist. It's called linguistics.

Since that post on, page one of the thread, I have read what both you and Hakurei wrote. Just based on those posts, I find Hakuei's reasoning to be more convincing.

Quote from: drunkenshoeHakurei Reimu is the only poster here I said something like that to and I said that to him before. And you were talking about what a few weeks ago? Over the top expressions?

Those words are not ”over the top expressions.” They are insulting arguments at the person, intended to diminish, and dismiss his opinion without answering his contentions reasonably. His thoughtful posts (which addressed your own posts point-by-point) deserve better.

Quote from: drunkenshoeWhy are you reading my posts then? What are you? A masochist?

It's a two-way street. And besides, you started it, dear Shoe. CHRIST! I've never met anyone, that I have so much general agreement with, that is so hard to get along with. :kiss:

I didn't make a claim. I put a several claims together, because it makes sense to me. I translated a book based on seminar lectures about how European vernaculars became languages last summer and had to read a lot about it. Social history of language in the Western culture.  While studying history of art and related fields -I gave 10 years to that in the univ after graduated, I was a res asst.- I had to study cultural history and anthropology and I have an idea of the general tendencies going around. So this is why, 'erm...this is different what has changed?' started in my mind. We are talking about roughly a 30 year old discipline. It has lots of problems, but it looks like with little it accomplished very good in short time.

And with general lingusitics it always goes back and forth with extreme ideas or philosophical monologues. As I said I stand behind Popper. I am not fond of linguistic determinists, but we need to work with them. Wittgenstein is one extreme, even he doesn't agree with Mauthner in his statement with Chinese/Dakotan Aristo -actually, his disagreement line with Mauthner became a famous motto about the subject; I think his answer to him is in Tractatus, not sure- but he concludes the same all over about language-thought; limits of language; limit of thought process. Mauthner's idea is developed from Nietzsche's language is 'prison' view. Yes he is a linguist determinist. Sprachkritik is always where this shit ends. There is no philosophical discourse without it; no way around it. None of it could have a conclusion, this is an ever going-changing process/discussion/production however you want to name it. Extreme or not these people belong to the same German analytical thought tradition, they cannot be excluded, so socio-linguists don't. Because they can't.

Even with someone as controversial as Whorf, (America; beginning of the 20th centur linguist) has huge influence and when they start to produce different thoughts on how to evaluate historical archives -could be it on anything, but the thing is just not the context or the texts not for what  they mean, but how they use the language- on written culture, they find themselves getting closer to 'extremes' like him or people labeled as 'biased' like Bernstein (Britan; mid 20th century, sociologist). That was what makes me think 'interesting', I recognise this from somewhere. Are they there? No. But it is getting weird.

Abstract concepts needs written culture to be born and develop. This alone is worth considering it as a handicap. We developed secular and atheistic concepts from religious concepts -not necessarily theistic, but 'religious'- in contrast with them. They are the results of critical thought. This is what I mean and why I think matters highly. This has nothing to do with science or the logic you apply to those concepts. It's about what is inherent in the very concept. This is why it is very important even to strip atheism from discussion of religions when considering its concepts.

I am sure you have heard of the humanist writer Françoise Rabelais. (France, 16th century) He is defined as a 'atheist' and anti Christian in many sources. Lucien Febvre (France 19th-20th century historian) argued in his study on language and mentality as an answer for defining Rebalais as an atheist (Lefranc) and said that atheism was impossible in 16th century France, because among other reasons, first of all the French language lacked the abstract concepts to sustain such a world view. (He said it's so ridiculous as an anachronism, 'it is like giving Digenes an umbrella' -The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais) Febvre is also close friends with March Bloch who is the father of comparative history. Its mother is linguistics, lol.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn on February 05, 2016, 01:45:01 PM
It's a two-way street. And besides, you started it, dear Shoe. CHRIST! I've never met anyone, that I have so much general agreement with, that is so hard to get along with. :kiss:

Nope, you did when you wrote how you missed my 'condescending' posts. You can't write something to me without making a negative personal comment on me and then blame me with insulting people. You provoke me and then complain when I bite back.

Hakurei has a pattern. Next he will say that I stopped 'arguing' because I can't deal with facts. It's basically my mistake trying to get into a conversation with him.

Several people here are like that.  Old men saying ... get off my grass.  I hope I am not like that when I am 80 ;-)

Some people here also think that there is no scholarship, no knowledge, except what comes out of smashing atoms at CERN.

Nerds vs Geeks, Art vs Science.  Can't we all get along?  Maybe not, too big a difference in neural arrangements.

Quote from: Baruch on February 05, 2016, 04:47:18 PM
Some people here also think that there is no scholarship, no knowledge, except what comes out of smashing atoms at CERN.

LOL  :bravo_2:

so……..back to my point...

Quote from: aitm on February 06, 2016, 08:10:03 PM
so……..back to my point...

Any thread that stays on point past page 2 is rare indeed.

Atheism/agnosticism: fuck it or meh. I win.

Quote from: aitm on February 06, 2016, 08:10:03 PM
so……..back to my point...

Well, you don't need to put up with bullshit when you write "we are allowed to dismiss stupid". I am the one who has to explain herself and still be 'condescending' and 'lecturing'; talking at people who have me on ignore. 

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 07, 2016, 08:41:45 AM
Well, you don't need to put up with bullshit when you write "we are allowed to dismiss stupid". I am the one who has to explain herself and still be 'condescending' and 'lecturing'; talking at people who have me on ignore. 

You validated my point, perhaps without even realizing it. It take two to argue.

Quote from: aitm on February 07, 2016, 08:52:51 AM
You validated my point, perhaps without even realizing it. It take two to argue.

No, I haven't. Stop the double standard. I was asked on why do I think the way I do about 'agnostic atheism' and I tried to explain it. All I got was how 'condecending' and 'lecturing' I am. You wrote one post general to the thread which says what I am saying -not even addressing to anyone- nor asked for explaining your 'argument' which of 'the point is that it's stupid, guys and that's all'.

Did it take two for you to 'argue' your point? Did it take you to argue your point? No.

So, don't distort the picture. If people are making constant comments by singling me out on how I am this and that in a forum full of condescending, arrogant people who rejects anything beyond their own interest as bullshit with 'no I know the best' attitude, I am going to drop a few lines to them.

And you can be sure this is about the cheapest kind of prejudice and discrimination you could ever get. The fact that the people who treat me this way are not aware of it, doesn't change the situation. It's neither about my opinions, nor how I say them. I'm not pitching home cooked 'theories' here, I'm not even having a claim.

If I had stayed away from certain subjects; made fragile, light conversations about from being a muslim country posting about her 'victimhood', how horrible the life is in her country and how 'wonderful' it must be over there I'd be a sweetheart here, aitm. Throw in a few 'giggles' and a 'sexy avatar', it is a fucking paradise, eh? Ah but unfortunately, I am completely a different animal. I don't work that way. I don't even sound like a woman, do I? Tsk tsk tsk. So everything is my doing.

Instead what we have? A bunch of men who can't handle a middle eastern woman having a strong opinion about something and writing long posts to explain herself without making a negative, snarky comment about her, getting pisssed at her, making her feel bad about posting anything in the first place after asking for it and then even when agreed with her -this is the saddest part I guess- dismissing anything she writes that actually has a place in the field, while others run around waving their dicks pissing on anything that rubs their 6 year old ego wrong.


It takes two to argue, eh? What fucking bullshit.

The love fest between aitm and Shoe on here is worth the price of admission....

OK this is getting weird. I don't have any extra positive or negative feelings for aitm. Neither does he. I throw the same sex based jokes or flirty lines to all men -I love men- that feels OK to do it. I can be quite open and blunt with those jokes too. Not something special about him. But somehow I think people got the impression that this is about him. It's not.

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 07, 2016, 10:27:05 AM
OK this is getting weird. I don't have any extra positive or negative feelings for aitm. Neither does he. I throw the same sex based jokes or flirty lines to all men -I love men- that feels OK to do it. I can be quite open and blunt with those jokes too. Not something special about him. But somehow I think people got the impression that this is about him. It's not.

Yeah but you two have a special relationship Shoe. Like Ralph and Alice Kramden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honeymooners

Quote from: stromboli on February 07, 2016, 10:49:58 AM
Yeah but you two have a special relationship Shoe. Like Ralph and Alice Kramden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Honeymooners

strom, I just read the characters and I really don't think they resemble any of us from the descriptions. He doesn't insult me or throw hollow threats, he has a strict opinion on why I get the reactions I do. He never approved/s my general 'manner'. I'm not a poster he likes. I am neither patient nor levelheaded. :lol:

 

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 07, 2016, 10:16:31 AM
It takes two to argue, eh? What fucking bullshit.

:sleepy:

Yes, that's why I put it there at the end.

(http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/31900000/Kenzi2-lost-girl-31991365-250-110.gif)

Quote from: Shiranu on January 23, 2016, 01:07:07 PM
You cant complain about people who call themselves feminist because you dislike one interpretation of what that word means, then say that the popular interpretation of agnostic is wrong because only one meaning is the "true" meaning.

Interesting. When we discussed the semantics about ideological labels some months ago i was spousing this same position. Basically saying that the definitions of a word are only descriptions of multiple instances of significant common usage in different contexts. That there is no true definition that is THE definition. Specially when talking about words that describe complex ideologies with many members and ideas that may differ with each other. Some quotes from that thread:

Shinaru:
If you are not a feminist, then you are by definition against women, or at the very least unconcerned about their equality... which in practical terms is the same

Mauricio:
I'm not a feminist and believe in gender equality and have nothing against woman (what does that even mean, anyway, being against woman?)

now what?

Shinaru:
Quote from: mauricio on October 05, 2015, 08:42:55 PM
I'm not a feminist and believe in gender equality...

So... you're a feminist...

Feminism = gender equality, or a branch of it. If you believe in gender equality, you are a feminist.

Mauricio:
No I'm not a feminist it is not a statement of fact, you think I'm a feminist, because that's how you define feminism as purely the believe in gender equality.


Shinaru:
A. That isn't what I said, I said feminism is the belief that women should be equal to men. It is a BRANCH of gender equality, like anti-theism is a branch of atheism.
B. Yes, that's how I define feminism, because that is the definition of feminism:


"1.the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men."

_________________________________________________________________________________


I wonder if you would agree with this quote in which I explained my underlying reasoning on why whether someone's position is defined by an ideological label is not a prescriptive matter.

Mauricio:


Yes i read that, you posed that analogy towards jason asking him if he would take the same stance with the word atheist. Personally I would, since my stance is consistent with all terms, I don't believe in prescriptive definitions. I believe in multiple meanings due to context and this meanings being defined by common usage. I won't dictate what is the TRUE meaning of feminism or atheism or whatever to anyone.When i consider it necessary I make my definitions clear first then proceed with the dialogue. If i want to debate the semantics I appeal to the common usage by showing sources that show there's a significant amount of people that use that word to mean that in their specific context or they self describe themselves with that term and claim their specific believes they associate with the term. I also believe most rational people should understand that when criticizing an ideology or a group you are directing your criticism towards the specifics you are talking about and not all it's possible instances (generalizing).

All quotes come from this thread http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=8545.0

Btw this is not a cheap gotcha bullshit or an attempt to incite more feminism shitflinging i just care about the reasoning people use to deal with ideological labels. That is what im more concerned with in the writing of this posts: the semantic discussion.

Then you are really interested in: semiotics

"Semiotics (also called semiotic studies; not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology which is a part of semiotics) is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication."

Shoe is really into that also.  No wonder you two don't get along ;-) ... you are like two Highlanders (scifi version) and there is only room for one of you ... think of Samurai TV Repairman (John Belushi) except in English class ... so words must be beheaded (i mean parsed).

It is possible for any of us to be inconsistent for various reasons, not the least of which is that English is an inexact attempt at a real language.  And of course some us might be engaged in down and dirty rhetoric more appropriate for bar fights at librarian conventions.

I'm glad to see you guys discussed this so much, I find the topic to be interesting and I want to hear more about it, I'm still not sure whether or not I think falsifiability should be a factor for whether or not you're an agnostic towards something, as I stand I'm an outright atheist to specific ideas of gods and an atheist agnostic towards the idea of a god in general.

Sorry so slow responding, I've been away from the computer for  the weekend.

Quote from: drunkenshoeI didn't make a claim.

Quote from: drunkenshoeObjection!

We do possess the knowledge that proves that a creator cannot exist. It's called linguistics.

C'mon! This is a claim!

Quote from: drunkenshoeI put a several claims together, because it makes sense to me.

Several claims together is still a claim!

Quote from: drunkenshoeI translated a book based on seminar lectures about how European vernaculars became languages last summer and had to read a lot about it. Social history of language in the Western culture.  While studying history of art and related fields -I gave 10 years to that in the univ after graduated, I was a res asst.- I had to study cultural history and anthropology and I have an idea of the general tendencies going around. So this is why, 'erm...this is different what has changed?' started in my mind. We are talking about roughly a 30 year old discipline. It has lots of problems, but it looks like with little it accomplished very good in short time.

And with general lingusitics it always goes back and forth with extreme ideas or philosophical monologues. As I said I stand behind Popper. I am not fond of linguistic determinists, but we need to work with them. Wittgenstein is one extreme, even he doesn't agree with Mauthner in his statement with Chinese/Dakotan Aristo -actually, his disagreement line with Mauthner became a famous motto about the subject; I think his answer to him is in Tractatus, not sure- but he concludes the same all over about language-thought; limits of language; limit of thought process. Mauthner's idea is developed from Nietzsche's language is 'prison' view. Yes he is a linguist determinist. Sprachkritik is always where this shit ends. There is no philosophical discourse without it; no way around it. None of it could have a conclusion, this is an ever going-changing process/discussion/production however you want to name it. Extreme or not these people belong to the same German analytical thought tradition, they cannot be excluded, so socio-linguists don't. Because they can't.

Even with someone as controversial as Whorf, (America; beginning of the 20th centur linguist) has huge influence and when they start to produce different thoughts on how to evaluate historical archives -could be it on anything, but the thing is just not the context or the texts not for what  they mean, but how they use the language- on written culture, they find themselves getting closer to 'extremes' like him or people labeled as 'biased' like Bernstein (Britan; mid 20th century, sociologist). That was what makes me think 'interesting', I recognise this from somewhere. Are they there? No. But it is getting weird.

Abstract concepts needs written culture to be born and develop. This alone is worth considering it as a handicap. We developed secular and atheistic concepts from religious concepts -not necessarily theistic, but 'religious'- in contrast with them. They are the results of critical thought. This is what I mean and why I think matters highly. This has nothing to do with science or the logic you apply to those concepts. It's about what is inherent in the very concept. This is why it is very important even to strip atheism from discussion of religions when considering its concepts.

I am sure you have heard of the humanist writer Françoise Rabelais. (France, 16th century) He is defined as a 'atheist' and anti Christian in many sources. Lucien Febvre (France 19th-20th century historian) argued in his study on language and mentality as an answer for defining Rebalais as an atheist (Lefranc) and said that atheism was impossible in 16th century France, because among other reasons, first of all the French language lacked the abstract concepts to sustain such a world view. (He said it's so ridiculous as an anachronism, 'it is like giving Digenes an umbrella' -The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais) Febvre is also close friends with March Bloch who is the father of comparative history. Its mother is linguistics, lol.

It sounds like a fascinating study, but not so much that I'm going to devote my time to it. When writing, always consider your audience. I am an uneducated hick, not a linguistics scholar. The names you just dropped in your response mean nothing to me.

I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, but they are not as informed as your own. That doesn't mean that I have to defer to your conclusions, when, given the information that you have provided, your logic doesn't convince me.

Quote from: Solomon Zorn... And besides, you started it, dear Shoe.

Quote from: drunkenshoeNope, you did when you wrote how you missed my 'condescending' posts. You can't write something to me without making a negative personal comment on me and then blame me with insulting people. You provoke me and then complain when I bite back.

Okay. Here's some linguistics for you: “it” in my thoughts meant this specific argument, on this thread; when to you, “it” meant some ongoing conflict that you perceive to be our argument. You apparently feel slighted by my reproaching you for argumentum ad-hominem in some of your posts. What you don't seem to remember, is that I was the victim of one of those dismissals, back a few years ago, calling me an “American,” if you know what I mean. So it was still you who started it, Shoe.

And I think it's you who can't see past my criticisms, to what my real attitude is toward you: if I thought so little  of your opinions, I would not engage with you, for one thing, so you can come off the persecution angle. I only criticize you because, I know you to be highly intelligent, well read, and thoughtful. You can do without the personal comments, and make your point much better.

One of the first discussions I ever participated in here was about the semantics of agnosticism.  I was disappointed when the whole thread was quickly smacked down and buried.  I think the typical sentiment  expressed was in one quote from someone I can no longer remember:  "Not this shit again!"

Anyway, keep up the good fight.  Just because semantics never seemed like a good argument for or against something, doesn't mean it's not worth discussion.  Semantics plays a big part in mankind's inability to relate with itself.  The mechanics seem important, but often get ignored in the heat of a debate.

Quote from: SGOS on February 08, 2016, 11:03:58 AM
someone I can no longer remember:  "Not this shit again!"

:whistle:

Quote from: SGOS on February 08, 2016, 11:03:58 AMI think the typical sentiment  expressed in one quote from someone I can no longer remember:  "Not this shit again!"

Quote from: aitm on February 08, 2016, 11:58:47 AM
:whistle:

LOL  I honestly can't remember the source of that quote, but of all the people that have stopped by to drop a post or two since then, I could easily be convinced that the credit belongs to you. :biggrin:

Quote from: SGOS on February 08, 2016, 11:03:58 AM
One of the first discussions I ever participated in here was about the semantics of agnosticism.  I was disappointed when the whole thread was quickly smacked down and buried.  I think the typical sentiment  expressed was in one quote from someone I can no longer remember:  "Not this shit again!"

Anyway, keep up the good fight.  Just because semantics never seemed like a good argument for or against something, doesn't mean it's not worth discussion.  Semantics plays a big part in mankind's inability to relate with itself.  The mechanics seem important, but often get ignored in the heat of a debate.

Err...yeah? Semantics is branch of the linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. That is the discussion. Also what you and aitm are pitching is a brilliant daily example concerning the topic in general. Super. 

You use the word 'semantics' like a 'magic' word as if it would reduces the names of concepts into some meaningless indistinguishable "you call it John or Peter whatever catches yuor fancy' and the whole discussion useless.

What a strawman....*whistle.

And that 'semantic' is not an 'argument' against or for anything. :lol:

You know what, it looks like American culture pretty much emptied everything that looks obscure to itself or didn't cross the pond. And transformed them into Holywood lines, so they could live.

Because that^ is how 'semantics' used in movie lines and daily conversations.

-blah blah blah is blah blah, but blah blah is NOT blah blah.
-Pfft semantics. (I win!)

And what is this attitude of 'you kids dig it, there is nothing'? Not this shit again suits the Noah's Ark and Universal Morality threads, not a discussion about a huge scholarship that had a MAJOR influence on OUR WRITTEN CULTURE. You are not out of this. Nobody is.

But then it is what you already know about it, isn't it? Seems like you two know everything. :clap:

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 09, 2016, 03:40:59 AM
Err...yeah? Semantics is branch of the linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. That is the discussion.

You use the word 'semantics' like a 'magic' word as if it would reduces the names of concepts into some meaningless indistinguishable "you call it John or Peter whatever catches yuor fancy'.

What a strawman....*whistle.

And that 'semantic' is not an 'argument' against or for anything. :lol:

You are correct but i think he is talking about how arguments can delve into pointless semantics discussion which in reality are just people trying to impose their preferred definitions after both sides have already made their definitions clear instead of agreeing on terms for the sake of the discussion and moving on or delving into their deeper semantic reasoning (justifying your definition)

Quote from: mauricio on February 09, 2016, 03:56:24 AM
You are correct but i think he is talking about how arguments can delve into pointless semantics discussion which in reality are just people trying to impose their preferred definitions after both sides have already made their definitions clear instead of agreeing on terms for the sake of the discussion and moving on or delving into their deeper semantic reasoning (justifying your definition)

That's the Holywood movie definition of semantics I am talking about. I tried to talk about Sprachkritik as much as I could do it which was rejected as 'bullshit'. This is a very hard, long subject with a huge scholarship noone actually has a full grasp of considering the scope. This doesn't have an end and can't. It's about thinking on it, reading pieces, messing up with it and producing ideas, angles. Not to mention it is the basics of written cultural heritage of the Western civilisation. Which we rely on by the way if he didn't notice.   

If he thinks that is a 'pointless semantic discussion' or that his ideas and opinions exist out of it, he is pretty much out of it. :lol: Whatever I say I am the bad guy here as usual.

How pathetic is that trying hard to look down on a discussion or a topic -doesn't matter how it goes- that includes knowledge in it; forces people to think. This is not 'how did Noah build the ark?' ffs.

It's basically "I don't get it and I don't like it, then it is bullshit!" Why that sounds so familiar? Hmmm  :think:

Myeh...

(http://troll.me/images/obama-isnt-happy/not-this-shit-again-thumb.jpg)

(https://49.media.tumblr.com/6e06acbc4112098c5c2efde1bdacd5cf/tumblr_nd6w582xQa1td6eplo1_500.gif)

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 09, 2016, 04:19:55 AM
That's the Holywood movie definition of semantics I am talking about. I tried to talk about Sprachkritik as much as I could do it which was rejected as 'bullshit'. This is a very hard, long subject with a huge scholarship noone actually has a full grasp of considering the scope. This doesn't have an end and can't. It's about thinking on it, reading pieces, messing up with it and producing ideas, angles. Not to mention it is the basics of written cultural heritage of the Western civilisation. Which we rely on by the way if he didn't notice.   

If he thinks that is a 'pointless semantic discussion' or that his ideas and opinions exist out of it, he is pretty much out of it. :lol: Whatever I say I am the bad guy here as usual.

How pathetic is that trying hard to look down on a discussion or a topic -doesn't matter how it goes- that includes knowledge in it; forces people to think. This is not 'how did Noah build the ark?' ffs.

It's basically "I don't get it and I don't like it, then it is bullshit!" Why that sounds so familiar? Hmmm  :think:

Myeh...

i don't understand you. Why would you refer to my observation as something based on a "hollywood version"  of semantics which i guess means superficial. Don't you see how a semantic discussion can indeed be pointless if it takes the form of what i described? Now whether that applies to your recent endevours I cannot say, but i have seen many discussions delve into nonsense due to the inhability to agree on definitions or to exteriorize the underlaying semantic reasoning which dictates said definitions. If your purpose is NOT to debate semantics and you already understand the meaning of your opponent statements you are missing the point by continuing debating semantics. Thats what i call a pointless semantic discussion. And i think that is what the other user meant by saying that semantics are not a good argument.

Quote from: mauricio on February 09, 2016, 05:09:15 PM
i don't understand you. Why would you refer to my observation as something based on a "hollywood version"  of semantics which i guess means superficial. Don't you see how a semantic discussion can indeed be pointless if it takes the form of what i described? Now whether that applies to your recent endevours I cannot say, but i have seen many discussions delve into nonsense due to the inhability to agree on definitions or to exteriorize the underlaying semantic reasoning which dictates said definitions. If your purpose is NOT to debate semantics and you already understand the meaning of your opponent statements you are missing the point by continuing debating semantics. Thats what i call a pointless semantic discussion. And i think that is what the other user meant by saying that semantics are not a good argument.

You didn't read the thread. You felt the need (!) to explain another poster to me. I said, 'then this is it as what happened here'. And now you are trying to make me accept something you think I should, in a discussion I haven't had with the exact definition I made for the conversation above.

And I am 'sending' you back to holywood just for using the word 'opponent'. It seems you people can't think outside of it. If you are calling people 'opponents', you are not in a place to judge their expressions as superficial, esp. if you don't understand what they are talking about.

I shouldn't have answered to your post. You came back and the same bullshit began. You are just randomly posting to mess up with so you can get an opportunity pour down a specific anger which I have a good idea what it is. Nice, I guess. Do it with someone else. I'm guessing you are around 20. Until you grow out of that 'teenage angst' it's not worth it, waste of time and energy.

Quote from: stromboli on February 09, 2016, 05:59:08 AM
(http://troll.me/images/obama-isnt-happy/not-this-shit-again-thumb.jpg)

(https://49.media.tumblr.com/2e4c76460cf40eaa5ba253f0641669d4/tumblr_nb1t6fZyGm1sgl0ajo1_500.gif)

Quote from: drunkenshoe on February 09, 2016, 05:45:55 PM
You didn't read the thread. You felt the need (!) to explain another poster to me. I said, 'then this is it as what happened here'. And now you are trying to make me accept something you think I should, in a discussion I haven't had with the exact definition I made for the conversation above.

And I am 'sending' you back to holywood just for using the word 'opponent'. It seems you people can't think outside of it. If you are calling people 'opponents', you are not in a place to judge their expressions as superficial, esp. if you don't understand what they are talking about.

I shouldn't have answered to your post. You came back and the same bullshit began. You are just randomly posting to mess up with so you can get an opportunity pour down a specific anger which I have a good idea what it is. Nice, I guess. Do it with someone else. I'm guessing you are around 20. Until you grow out of that 'teenage angst' it's not worth it, waste of time and energy.

Lol what are you even talking about. What do you think im trying to make you accept exactly? Im not talking about what happened in this thread previously, i was just trying to give my interpretation of a sentence which me and you had different interpretations of. Also what did i judge as superficial? I only was trying to understand what you mean by "hollywood version", I thought you meant superficial version, a watered down or distorted view of the actual thing. The word opponent can carry many connotations i just used it in a neutral way to mean the person you are arguing against in an argument. The opposite position, not an enemy. I do not think you understand my motivations or even my text at all.