Theology Specialization: Comparative?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Perhaps I do, but I remembered that one a long time ago and it corrected any notion I had of buying into that line about questioning authority.

And yes correcting your child's opinion by surgery would be brainwashing.

And atheists have in fact supported the declaring of people as non-persons. Enough every year to equal a major war.

Oh, you mean aborting zygotes/fetuses? That has nothing to do with atheism. That's a completely separate issue of personhood. Most pro-choice people are religious, so I don't understand why you put atheists at fault.

I don't have the right to make a prospective child as healthy as I choose? I know that a child might be prone to having delusions, but I'm not allowed to reduce that chance? Do you loathe all prospective forms of preselecting sperm/ova/fetuses? Or just those that deny your beliefs on religion?
I really am curious. It would determine how far back up the chain of reasons we disagree.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

What you describe is embryo pantheism or a variation of animism or I'm not sure what, not materialism. And if materialism is true the concept of the "very elegant and complex and beautiful" has no meaning. Beauty is not a chemical reaction. It is-whatever it is. The smell of flowers is only for the purpose of attracting fertilizing organisms. Don't ask me why it attracts humans. The taste of pizza reflects the survival benefit of eating. And what the heck is a "positive" mental state?

Well I never said I was a materialist. I'm a skeptic, and no kind of [something]-ist at all. I even said I found the panprotoexperientialism (check the article, it's different from animism) philosophy appealing because it is hard for me to imagine qualia / subjective experience emerging from the purely material as it is currently defined. Appealing, but again, let's give cognitive neuroscience and the rest of the sciences a little time, right? Consciousness is the last bastion of the "mystical" only because every other province of the mystical and religious has been at least relatively well explained using scientific theories arrived at through empiricism, reductionism, and the overall scientific method.

A "positive" mental state, btw, means what it means - enjoying the taste of a good meal, the sound of a good piece of music, having a happy thought, and loads more. If these qualia are the result of purely physical processes, are they any less real? And the physical process typing this and calling itself "me" currently assigns certain value or meaning to those qualia (like "beauty"), why wouldn't that matter? Unless you have a prejudice against matter; some form of matter bigot. ;-)

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Free Will cannot be seen, heard, felt, touched, or tasted. And the professionals still have problems. And when every explanation I have heard simply doesn't fly, it draws the suspicion that the emperor has no clothes. And are what you call "professionals" in fact professionals in outside their field. Every single guess they have given is still a guess. It may have relevance inside their field. It has none outside. "Professionals" have no way to say an unexplainable phenomenon has ONLY survival benefits even when they can establish that it in fact has SOME survival benefit. And I have as little love for giving my autonomy to "professionals" as you have for giving your unexplainable autonomy to God. And I do not consider someone else's degrees reason to turn my mind or my heart off for their sake. However "silly" you may think it.

The only takeaway I can come up with here is that you don't understand the most basic concepts of evolution, but have very definite opinions about it.

I'm not aware of any branch of science that would ever even have any reason to say something like "an unexplainable phenomenon has ONLY survival benefits".

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Oh, you mean aborting zygotes/fetuses? That has nothing to do with atheism. That's a completely separate issue of personhood. Most pro-choice people are religious, so I don't understand why you put atheists at fault.

I don't have the right to make a prospective child as healthy as I choose? I know that a child might be prone to having delusions, but I'm not allowed to reduce that chance? Do you loathe all prospective forms of preselecting sperm/ova/fetuses? Or just those that deny your beliefs on religion?
I really am curious. It would determine how far back up the chain of reasons we disagree.

The classifying of opinions as disease is not merely not an excuse but in fact an aggravation. And yes the answer is I do loathe the idea of pre-selecting opinion in any form.

As that is a sci-fi idea, not a real one it has less relevance. And you will not understand my shock at the idea anyway. What you can at least understand is that corpse-counting contests hinge on definitions and are therefore counterproductive.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

The only takeaway I can come up with here is that you don't understand the most basic concepts of evolution, but have very definite opinions about it.

I'm not aware of any branch of science that would ever even have any reason to say something like "an unexplainable phenomenon has ONLY survival benefits".

It is materialism not evolution against which I am arguing.

My point is not that evolution did not take place. My point is that it cannot be the only thing. And no branch of science would have reason to say something like that because then it would cease to be science. The implication of such assumption however is inherant in the common appeal-to-science argument of materialism which is different from science itself.

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by Ragabash Moon

Whoa.

Ok, now that my question has been answered, I'd like to respectfully ask that we not continue this discussion of actual religion, as this is really starting to cross over into serious flame war. It's not there yet, but I can already see tinder.

This was a good idea. I started to write a response to other posts, but then realized that it was pointless. Much of this thread (the part that's spinning out of control) belongs elsewhere, IMO.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Well I never said I was a materialist. I'm a skeptic, and no kind of [something]-ist at all. I even said I found the panprotoexperientialism (check the article, it's different from animism) philosophy appealing because it is hard for me to imagine qualia / subjective experience emerging from the purely material as it is currently defined. Appealing, but again, let's give cognitive neuroscience and the rest of the sciences a little time, right? Consciousness is the last bastion of the "mystical" only because every other province of the mystical and religious has been at least relatively well explained using scientific theories arrived at through empiricism, reductionism, and the overall scientific method.

A "positive" mental state, btw, means what it means - enjoying the taste of a good meal, the sound of a good piece of music, having a happy thought, and loads more. If these qualia are the result of purely physical processes, are they any less real? And the physical process typing this and calling itself "me" currently assigns certain value or meaning to those qualia (like "beauty"), why wouldn't that matter? Unless you have a prejudice against matter; some form of matter bigot. ;-)

Fair enough. Except I specifically said it was materialism I couldn't believe in. From what you described, that is not something I couldn't believe, just something I don't.

And the statement: "The concept of beauty in matter is incompatible with strict materialism" is not "anti-matter bigotry". Beauty is itself an immaterial quality, however beautiful a given material object is.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

This was a good idea. I started to write a response to other posts, but then realized that it was pointless. Much of this thread (the part that's spinning out of control) belongs elsewhere, IMO.

Quite right. Apparently the great god Hackard at least exists. So let us mutually apologize and go off and sulk, or not sulk which is even better.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

And yes the answer is I do loathe the idea of pre-selecting opinion in any form.

Why do you loathe the idea, if you don't mind my asking?

On the broader of point of defining entities as persons vs non-persons, that is, sadly, not a matter of theism or atheism, but of legalism, and the nature of humans in large groups. Theological arguments for and against the personhood of women have existed for a long time and across multiple religions, but most notably the Catholics of the Middle Ages. The personhood of various races has come up from time to time to justify slavery and genocide. And today, a growing global movement has begun (with some European nations, starting in Spain) with legislation extending legal personhood to the great apes. Let's hope the secular trend of moral progress continues...

"The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'" was one of the pearls of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. That seems like the only good universal standard for extending moral consideration to a being. With this entirely secular and rationalist moral philosophy he was a supporter of the legal rights of women, the abolition of slavery, and one of the earliest true supporters of legal protections for nonhuman animals, at a time when none of these ideas were mainstream and in fact were quite unpopular.

Kicking a dog makes it show the behaviours I associate with pain, and its nervous system seems to agree. Doing that to any human has similar results. A fetus prior to a particular developmental stage? Definitely and measurably not so much; certainly not a zygote.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Quite right. Apparently the great god Hackard at least exists. So let us mutually apologize and go off and sulk, or not sulk which is even better.

I concur. :-)