Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Dark Matter]

DM. Have you ever met an agnostic with a good quality of life, in your opinion, whom you admired?

The question to ask is if I've ever me met an agnostic whose world view is internally consistent, and the answer to that is no.

How does one even begin to formulate understanding concepts without having some idea of where to begin? To say it doesn't matter is to say it does't matter whether one is an "I" or an "it."

[Dark Matter]

“And if there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in eternity, came to no decision. ”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou

[Eduk]

No DM I deliberately asked you the question I meant to. I didn't need to ask you your question, I already knew the answer to that.

[Felix]

ThomasHobbes: A person's bias is the basis of all their opinion. Without a bias you cannot have a point of view.

Me, Myself, or I : Why is it important to have a point of view?

Belinda: Because cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable and may be unhealthy if not downright dangerous.

I don't see any cognitive dissonance is not having a personal bias - not being attached to a particular point of view. In fact quite the contrary, it's a new world every second. The person whose bias is the basis of their opinion is essentially an automaton.

Dark Matter: The question to ask is if I've ever me met an agnostic whose world view is internally consistent, and the answer to that is no.

As someone once said [Voltaire?]: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."

[ThomasHobbes]

If you read my earlier post, you'd find that question was addressed centuries ago.

I did not. But it was **** then and that has not changed.

[ThomasHobbes]

I don't see any cognitive dissonance is not having a personal bias - not being attached to a particular point of view. In fact quite the contrary, it's a new world every second. The person whose bias is the basis of their opinion is essentially an automaton.

You can't have ANY opinion without bias.
An opinion IS your bias.

[Sy Borg]

Your objections to agnosticism have been demolished so I understand why you'd seek a means of escape.

There may be others with the ability to sensibly question agnosticism but you don't seem to have the chops.

Your bias makes your claims suspect.

Case closed then. The only objections to agnosticism are yours, and our resident Twitterman here has been unable to address a single point raised, or to make a single valid point himself.

It's theists' own immature and sometimes unhinged behaviour that turns people away from religion.

If theists showed themselves to be admirable rather than one-eyed, self-serving, cruel, aggressive and impervious to reason then they might make some converts. Aside from one individual, the most honest, straightforward, reasonable, rational, civil and moral people I have encountered on online forums have been atheists, or at least not theists. The difference seems to largely be a matter of maturity.

[Dark Matter]

Your bias makes your claims suspect.

Case closed then. The only objections to agnosticism are yours, and our resident Twitterman here has been unable to address a single point raised, or to make a single valid point himself.

It's theists' own immature and sometimes unhinged behaviour that turns people away from religion.

If theists showed themselves to be admirable rather than one-eyed, self-serving, cruel, aggressive and impervious to reason then they might make some converts. Aside from one individual, the most honest, straightforward, reasonable, rational, civil and moral people I have encountered on online forums have been atheists, or at least not theists. The difference seems to largely be a matter of maturity.

Why the cattiness? Upset that someone dares to question the validity of your POV, that I don't need you for validation, or are you upset because I ask questions you can't or won't answer?

I ask what a human being is and all I get is a bunch of flowery words without actually answering the question; I ask how one even begins to formulate understanding concepts without having some idea of where to begin and give an example as to why it matters, all I get is more cattiness. (BTW, I'm still waiting for someone else to ask your questions, someone who might actually be interested in another's POV.)

[Sy Borg]

Case closed then. The only objections to agnosticism are yours, and our resident Twitterman here has been unable to address a single point raised, or to make a single valid point himself.

It's theists' own immature and sometimes unhinged behaviour that turns people away from religion.

If theists showed themselves to be admirable rather than one-eyed, self-serving, cruel, aggressive and impervious to reason then they might make some converts. Aside from one individual, the most honest, straightforward, reasonable, rational, civil and moral people I have encountered on online forums have been atheists, or at least not theists. The difference seems to largely be a matter of maturity.

Why the cattiness? Upset that someone dares to question the validity of your POV, that I don't need you for validation, or are you upset because I ask questions you can't or won't answer?

I ask what a human being is and all I get is a bunch of flowery words without actually answering the question; I ask how one even begins to formulate understanding concepts without having some idea of where to begin and give an example as to why it matters, all I get is more cattiness. (BTW, I'm still waiting for someone else to ask your questions, someone who might actually be interested in another's POV.)

Boring. I need content and you don't have it.

"Men of God" like you are a poor advertisement for belief. Who would possibly want to be like you? You come across as a pretty miserable human who takes himself very, very seriously. What qualities are there in you that one might want to emulate?

[Dark Matter]

Hate is the mask of fear. What are you afraid of, Greta? I’m not the target of your fear; your fear goes deeper than that.

[Sy Borg]

I'm no hater. You are just an annoying little man. I become irritated with you for a bit and then I settle. I'm personally afraid of boredom so that does make you a scary guy to me

I also note that your deep hatred of secularists has been long term and consistent on forums over years.

So the real question is why you are so afraid of secularists and secularism?

[Felix]

ThomasHobbes: You can't have ANY opinion without bias. An opinion IS your bias.

In my opinion, "unbiased opinion" is not necessarily an oxymoron.

[Sy Borg]

Nonetheless, DM's opinion (an objective opinion, not a subjective one!) he's never seen an agnostic with an "internally consistent" worldview.

I can assure the forum that DM has not seen inside of me.

One of DM's problems is that that our internal processes are, well, internal and thus can only be inferred based on simplistic assumptions.

The general issue with seeing inside had been previously noticed by Nagel who, along with Peter Singer, was probably unfairly overlooked in the Philosophy World Cup squads :(

[Dark Matter]

... our internal processes are, well, internal ...

Are they? How do you know? There are other possibilities.

[Sy Borg]

... our internal processes are, well, internal ...

Are they? How do you know?

In a nutshell: Nagel.

BTW, your recommended author, Rollo, had this to say:

“Another root of our malady is our loss of the sense of the worth and dignity of the human being. Nietzsche predicted this when he pointed out that the individual was being swallowed up in the herd, and that we were living by a “slave-morality.” Marx also predicted it when he proclaimed that modern man was being “de-humanized,” and Kafka showed in his amazing stories how people literally can lose their identity as persons.”

This is something that you and the Weil fan talk about much, and generally attribute the problems of dehumanisation to "secularism". Yet, the objections are being raised by ostensible atheists, or at least agnostics.

The problem is, in fact, population. We humans tend to have an idealistic sense that we should be able to live harmoniously in ridiculously huge groups when we are simply not evolved to cope with that level of complexity with so many shared dependencies and conflicts of interest. The happiest and most cohesive societies in the world are thus smallish nations with only a few million people. The nations are small enough that individuals semm to matter at least a little bit to each other.

The "out of control" rate of technological advancement is also a result of population. Progress is a genius-by-genius process, as they say, and the law of averages means that more people equals more geniuses. What we need is fewer people but no one is going to volunteer to be the sacrificial bunnies. So events are going to continue to build and become nasty until some thresholds are reached, systems break down, and people die. Meanwhile, people will continue to misguidedly, and mischievously, blame their ideological enemies for what is essentially a natural process.