[MrWonderful]

Scientific 'facts' do not describe the world as is, only a chosen model of the world as may be.

"You have a dizzying intellect." - The Man in Black in Princess Bride

Please provide the audience with your three or four "models of the world," as described by science as you pretend to *understand* it.

[ingliz]

Please provide... "models of the world," as described by science

A cosmological model is a mathematical description of the Universe that attempts to explain its current behavior and evolution over time.

Cosmological models are based on direct observations.

Cosmological Models (1917-2007)

Einstein Universe with a cosmological constant

De Sitter universe

MacMillan universe

Friedmann universe, spherical space

Friedmann universe, hyperbolic space

Dirac large numbers hypothesis

Friedmann zero-curvature

The original Big Bang

Oscillating universe

Eddington universe

Milne universe of kinematic relativity

Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker class of models

Steady-state (Bondi; Gold)

Steady-state (Hoyle)

Ambiplasma

Brans–Dicke theory

Cosmic inflation

Eternal inflation (a multiple universe model)

Cyclic model (Steinhardt; Turok)

Cyclic model (Baum; Frampton)

as you pretend to *understand* it.

Scientific models are not created to be factual statements about the world. They don't need to be. A model that enables us to make predictions and test them is more valuable.

* The above was edited for clarity and to reduce wordiness.

[Verv]

Do you want a medal?

This is actually relevant because there are people who call me a Nazi right in this very forum for having different takes on things.

I found the irony in the fact that I have a more liberal perspectie than apaprently you do.

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that people who grow up in a peaceful environment are more peaceful in nature, something we would generally consider to be a virtue. Of course they might be unfit to live in a conflict zone.

P.S. That doesn't mean people cannot change to a great extent if put in a different environment.

But I would say that even someone who is more inclined to violent conflict resolution may only be guilty of believing something is necessary when it isn't.

How can we call somebody immoral when they act violently out of a perceived necessity?

Besides, a lot of this morality can only be really condemned if you subscribe to the idea that theft really is morally wrong. I am not sure how easy it is to come up with such a universal declaration without God, or why you would want to subscribe to one if there is no God, other than the very tentative "Hey-hey, guys, I got lots of good stuff in my house because the economy is good; make it illegal to steal."

But if we are both tribesmen in the highlands with a long history of feuds & reasons to kill & steal from each other, I do not even know if a concept like "theft" can even exist between us. It's not really relevant in our lexicon.

Likewise, what does 'theft' mean to someone born into a home that survives off of less than $800 a year when he is "robbing" some elite who spends $800 on a Tuesday on new clothes without batting an eye..? In such systems, it is hard to fathom if we can make moral judgments at all about property; so how could there be a universal law about this without a God stating that there is something morally damaging about theft as an act, in a way that makes it a universal principle.

[late]

Besides, a lot of this morality can only be really condemned if you subscribe to the idea that theft really is morally wrong. I am not sure how easy it is to come up with such a universal declaration without God

Why do you keep using words like 'universal' and 'absolute'? There are cultures that have no concept of property, everything is shared.

This gets back to the need to maintain order. Theft is disruptive, it can lead to violence, and it's going to have all sorts of potential negative secondary effects. I don't need a deity to tell me that repeatedly slamming my head into a brick wall is a bad idea. Common sense will suffice.

[Verv]

Why do you keep using words like 'universal' and 'absolute'? There are cultures that have no concept of property, everything is shared.

This gets back to the need to maintain order. Theft is disruptive, it can lead to violence, and it's going to have all sorts of potential negative secondary effects. I don't need a deity to tell me that repeatedly slamming my head into a brick wall is a bad idea. Common sense will suffice.

Atheists resort to overly obvious examples - "Doing really painful things to yourself is bad." Of course! But let's also remember, tribes will ritually mutilate designs into their bodies occasionally; hell, they have practiced artificial skull deformation -- and "I don't need no God to tell me that you shouldn't wrap a growing child's head with bands and turn 'em into a conehead!"

I bring up universal declarations precisely because of what you shwo here... there are tribes with very loose senses of property. There are societies with really vigorous ideas about property.

Our ideas about "theft" in a godless universe will always be relative, won't they?

There can be no distinct morality here. There can be no truth in it, without God.

[Pants-of-dog]

Atheists resort to overly obvious examples - "Doing really painful things to yourself is bad." Of course! But let's also remember, tribes will ritually mutilate designs into their bodies occasionally;

Abrahamic theists call it “circumcision” when they do it.

hell, they have practiced artificial skull deformation -- and "I don't need no God to tell me that you shouldn't wrap a growing child's head with bands and turn 'em into a conehead!"

Is artificial cranial deformation a sin?

I bring up universal declarations precisely because of what you shwo here... there are tribes with very loose senses of property. There are societies with really vigorous ideas about property.

Our ideas about "theft" in a godless universe will always be relative, won't they?

There can be no distinct morality here. There can be no truth in it, without God.

By “truth” do you mean that without god, there can be no one true correct way of looking at, for example, theft?

Does there need to be a “true” idea about theft or any other moral issue?

[late]

Our ideas about "theft" in a godless universe will always be relative, won't they?

It's always relative.

Making the punishment fit the crime is relating the punishment to the severity of the offense. IOW, relative to the offense.

I've tried being nice, so here it is. Law has been secular here since the beginning of the Republic. Religious yak is forbidden.

Starting with the Enlightenment, schools of law and ethics have evolved that have no need to justify themselves with a fantasy.

There are a lot of details I am skipping over here, but you get the picture. You can define things, for yourself, in any way you want. And no one will care.

But the idea you need a fantasy to explain anything, much less a secular legal tradition, is beyond silly.

[Verv]

Abrahamic theists call it “circumcision” when they do it.

That's right. I do not personally support it but for cultural reasons it is likely that I must do it as it could cause complications with legal statuses and the future for my sons who may be subject to Islamic jurisdiction. My wife, after all, is from the Islamic world.

Is artificial cranial deformation a sin?

I wouldn't do it.

But it is not clearly established as a sin, nor is 'tattooing.' Even very conservative theologians like James White have come down in interesting ways on this -- White even has a tat!

By “truth” do you mean that without god, there can be no one true correct way of looking at, for example, theft?

Does there need to be a “true” idea about theft or any other moral issue?

Yes, I mean that, without God, there is no reason to believe that there is some special quality to theft that makes it universally a negative and morally wrong for all people.

[Verv]

It's always relative.

Making the punishment fit the crime is relating the punishment to the severity of the offense. IOW, relative to the offense.

I've tried being nice, so here it is. Law has been secular here since the beginning of the Republic. Religious yak is forbidden.

Starting with the Enlightenment, schools of law and ethics have evolved that have no need to justify themselves with a fantasy.

There are a lot of details I am skipping over here, but you get the picture. You can define things, for yourself, in any way you want. And no one will care.

But the idea you need a fantasy to explain anything, much less a secular legal tradition, is beyond silly.

But these laws were 'secular' because the Founding Fathers consisted of a bunch of Christians of rival denominations & Deists. There is only one that perhaps could have been said to be an atheist, Thomas Paine. Maybe Ethan Allen. My memory is unclear.

Secularism was a theory about the government fulfilling its duties and not interfering with man's God-given rights, which included the right to free worship & speech, things that state religions intefered with. It was also rooted in Puritan ideas about the corruption of the state & church and the necessity of massive decentralization and independence.

The foundations of human rights & moral law is either Christianity or it is a very Deistic 'natural theology', you could call it: making conclusions about the right/wrong morally based on the nature of the human condition as created by God.

I think most atheist political philosophy would find it difficult to make strong cases for what we now understand to be our American rights. Of course, they can, I mean, anybody can do anything. But when you rely heavily on tactical nihilism like modern atheists, it just results in us sighing while Sam Harris & Stefan Molyneux try to invent a universal No-Harm principle.

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes, I mean that, without God, there is no reason to believe that there is some special quality to theft that makes it universally a negative and morally wrong for all people.

Does there need to be “some special quality to theft that makes it universally a negative and morally wrong for all people”? Or can we just have a whole bunch of relative ideas about theft that are not universal?

[Verv]

Definitely, you can totally have thousands & thousands of ideas about theft that are relative.

But I think that only contributes to an environment like what we have now in many nations, where a lot of meaning is lost, and the bonds between people are rather severed. And where they are not severed, they actually create fissures to some degree. For instance, the tight knit hippy community isn't on friendly terms with the tight knit Mormons, etc.

Obviously, societies can go on perhaps indefinitely in this way, provided the economy isn't broken and the state is adequate in preventing crime. But it is not the ideal form, and I do not see these societies persisting very well in times of hardship. Hell, even in times of peace, the different communities will attempt to exert influence over the rest of the community for their own personal profit at the expense of others.

[late]

But these laws were 'secular' because the Founding Fathers consisted of a bunch of Christians of rival denominations & Deists. There is only one that perhaps could have been said to be an atheist, Thomas Paine. Maybe Ethan Allen. My memory is unclear.


The foundations of human rights & moral law is either Christianity or it is a very Deistic 'natural theology', you could call it: making conclusions about the right/wrong morally based on the nature of the human condition as created by God.

I think most atheist political philosophy would find it difficult to make strong cases for what we now understand to be our American rights. Of course, they can, I mean, anybody can do anything. But when you rely heavily on tactical nihilism like modern atheists, it just results in us sighing while Sam Harris & Stefan Molyneux try to invent a universal No-Harm principle.

No, law is secular because they wanted to avoid sectarian conflict. The religious wars in Europe were recent history to them.

Doesn't matter. You are desperately hunting for excuses. It's a snipe hunt.

You are babbling. And repeating yourself...

"Rorty's pragmatist appropriation of Darwin also defuses the significance of reduction. He rejects as representationalist the sort of naturalism that implies a program of nomological or conceptual reduction to terms at home in a basic science. Rorty's naturalism echoes Nietzsche's perspectivism; a descriptive vocabulary is useful insofar as the patterns it highlights are usefully attended to by creatures with needs and interests like ours. Darwinian naturalism, for Rorty, implies that there is no one privileged vocabulary whose purpose it is to serve as a critical touchstone for our various descriptive practices.

Typically, Rorty justifies his own commitment to Darwinian naturalism by suggesting that this vocabulary is suited to further the secularization and democratization of society that Rorty thinks we should aim for. Accordingly, there is a close tie between Rorty's construal of the naturalism he endorses and his most basic political convictions.

The task of the intellectual, with respect to social justice, is not to provide refinements of social theory, but to sensitize us to the suffering of others, and refine, deepen and expand our ability to identify with others, to think of others as like ourselves in morally relevant ways. (EHO Part III; CIS Part III) Reformist liberalism with its commitment to the expansion of democratic freedoms in ever wider political solidarities is, on Rorty's view, an historical contingency which has no philosophical foundation, and needs none."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/#3

[annatar1914]

No, law is secular because they wanted to avoid sectarian conflict. The religious wars in Europe were recent history to them.

Doesn't matter. You are desperately hunting for excuses. It's a snipe hunt.

You are babbling. And repeating yourself...

"Rorty's pragmatist appropriation of Darwin also defuses the significance of reduction. He rejects as representationalist the sort of naturalism that implies a program of nomological or conceptual reduction to terms at home in a basic science. Rorty's naturalism echoes Nietzsche's perspectivism; a descriptive vocabulary is useful insofar as the patterns it highlights are usefully attended to by creatures with needs and interests like ours. Darwinian naturalism, for Rorty, implies that there is no one privileged vocabulary whose purpose it is to serve as a critical touchstone for our various descriptive practices.

Typically, Rorty justifies his own commitment to Darwinian naturalism by suggesting that this vocabulary is suited to further the secularization and democratization of society that Rorty thinks we should aim for. Accordingly, there is a close tie between Rorty's construal of the naturalism he endorses and his most basic political convictions.

The task of the intellectual, with respect to social justice, is not to provide refinements of social theory, but to sensitize us to the suffering of others, and refine, deepen and expand our ability to identify with others, to think of others as like ourselves in morally relevant ways. (EHO Part III; CIS Part III) Reformist liberalism with its commitment to the expansion of democratic freedoms in ever wider political solidarities is, on Rorty's view, an historical contingency which has no philosophical foundation, and needs none."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/#3

@late

I. E.; It doesn't matter if it's true or not, as long as it has utility as a bludgeon to beat our enemies into submission with it.

Got it.

[late]

@late

I. E.; It doesn't matter if it's true or not, as long as it has utility as a bludgeon to beat our enemies into submission with it.

Got it.

Irony lives!!

You've got it backwards.

There are different ways to tackle this. You can take the philosophy on it's own terms, but that would require knowing the philosophy.

You can contrast your philosophy from what Rorty is saying, assuming you have a philosophy
that is academically rigorous enough with which to form a valid argument.

Or you can declare victory, and retreat.

[Potemkin]

@late

I. E.; It doesn't matter if it's true or not, as long as it has utility as a bludgeon to beat our enemies into submission with it.

Got it.

Not quite. I think Rorty's position was that all political activity - and therefore all political ideologies - exist in a particular historical context, and only in that particular historical context. Abstracting them from that context is like removing a fish from water - it kills them. Attempting to universalise a given political position to all times and places using philosophy would therefore be, according to Rorty, an abuse of philosophy. In this respect, Rorty agrees with Marx, who foresaw that once a communist society has been achieved, then there would be no further need for Marxism itself, which would therefore wither away just as the state apparatus will wither away.

[late]

I've posted this before, if we are going to get into Rorty's thinking on religion, this would be a good reference:

http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/91840/Rorty%20on%20Religion%20-%20Selman%20Nur%20-%20200320.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

[annatar1914]

@late ;

Irony lives!!

You've got it backwards.

On what basis can you make these statements?

There are different ways to tackle this. You can take the philosophy on it's own terms, but that would require knowing the philosophy.

I find Rorty to be terribly superficial, much as when I read G.B. Shaw or Einstein's lame attempts to philosophize (Spinoza did it far better, referring to Einstein). I get that same sense when I have read William James or Ayn Rand. Terribly stunted, and very unaware of their deformity.

You can contrast your philosophy from what Rorty is saying, assuming you have a philosophy
that is academically rigorous enough with which to form a valid argument.

Ha, I find this comment to be most interesting personally speaking, and rather vain. No, you'll get no return on this kind of banal sophistry from me. God, how I wish to speak with a Nietzsche instead...

Or you can declare victory, and retreat.

I wasn't very aware that ''victory'' or ''defeat'' would make much sense with such a worldview ultimately, but on reflection, it might be all you have, those little things. As it is, such a ''philosophy'' would not concede a defeat in any case, and you know it...

[annatar1914]

Not quite. I think Rorty's position was that all political activity - and therefore all political ideologies - exist in a particular historical context, and only in that particular historical context. Abstracting them from that context is like removing a fish from water - it kills them. Attempting to universalise a given political position to all times and places using philosophy would therefore be, according to Rorty, an abuse of philosophy. In this respect, Rorty agrees with Marx, who foresaw that once a communist society has been achieved, then there would be no further need for Marxism itself, which would therefore wither away just as the state apparatus will wither away.

@Potemkin ;

I concede your point in that particular political and historical context, but only because man's present anthropological calamity makes it thus.

As for the ''uses of philosophy'', one might argue that philosophy ''isn't worth an hour's pain'', lol. So no, I can't say that I agree with universalizing such abstractions, else I could not maintain my own political position re; actual Socialism.

What is important politically as an axiom is the common good, otherwise all is lost and no progress (loosely defined) can occur at all, nor a society as a possibility.

[Crantag]

I just sacrificed 6 goats.

This thread offends me, but whatever, I think a term like "cancel culture" is an aberration of English (it doesn't seem grammatical), and this thread is fine to exist, but if it exists, it might get trolled by me now and then.

Atheism is just not being religious, though. I never went to church, and only learned of the bible through pop culture and history classes.

So, I am atheist. As in, not at all religious.

Fuck your thread.

[Rugoz]

But I would say that even someone who is more inclined to violent conflict resolution may only be guilty of believing something is necessary when it isn't.

How can we call somebody immoral when they act violently out of a perceived necessity?

It's a matter of character, not only belief, though the latter shapes the former. At least if you buy into virtue ethics, which I'm currently reading about .

If they believe something is necessary when it isn't, they are ignorant. Not sure that makes them immoral, but I'm not interested in that question, since I don't believe in free will in the first place.

Besides, a lot of this morality can only be really condemned if you subscribe to the idea that theft really is morally wrong. I am not sure how easy it is to come up with such a universal declaration without God, or why you would want to subscribe to one if there is no God, other than the very tentative "Hey-hey, guys, I got lots of good stuff in my house because the economy is good; make it illegal to steal."

But if we are both tribesmen in the highlands with a long history of feuds & reasons to kill & steal from each other, I do not even know if a concept like "theft" can even exist between us. It's not really relevant in our lexicon.

Likewise, what does 'theft' mean to someone born into a home that survives off of less than $800 a year when he is "robbing" some elite who spends $800 on a Tuesday on new clothes without batting an eye..? In such systems, it is hard to fathom if we can make moral judgments at all about property;

Who steals from whom though?

so how could there be a universal law about this without a God stating that there is something morally damaging about theft as an act, in a way that makes it a universal principle.

Depends on what moral philosophy you adhere to. How does God solve anything in that regard? It's just a tool that has ceased to be effective, if it ever was.