Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by DaveDodo007 » Thu Dec 17, 2015 3:41 am

Brian Peacock wrote:Don't be silly Hermy, Mr Dodo embodies the normative standards of all rational thinking. :tea:
Yes because you lefties are so logical and rational how can anyone disagree with your politics, all those re-education camps and gulags and millions of dead people are all just a bureaucratic oversight. :roll:
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Dec 17, 2015 3:45 am

Seth wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:
Seth wrote:Besides, the more unlikely he makes it that we even exist, the more he supports the notion that we are here by design not chance.
:funny:
Well, I didn't say it was a truth, just a notion that generates more skepticism about his claims. The basis of his argument against God in TGD is that God is more improbable than evolution, so by now saying that any individual human's existence is highly improbable he's playing into the very argument theists use to criticize the theory of evolution.

And, of course, he completely forgets, both here and in TGD that his bridling at the notion that God exists is actually a fallacy that has an actual name: argument from incredulity.

No matter how improbable it is that God might exist, the probability is non-zero, even according to Dawkins.

Therefore to claim that God did or did not do this or that is based on probabilities not on actual science. Just because Dawkins cannot understand how or why God might exist or act in the universe isn't a rational argument.

Besides, the entirety of TGD is based on his cherry-picking "God Hypothesis" that is nothing more than an iteration of the Atheist's Fallacy.
Your ontology is weak. God is just one of a vast number of mythological agents credited through the ages with the creation of the universe, and imagining God, with his host of blindly asserted and uniquely godly remits and responsibilities, to be a more likely universal progenitor than any of those other mythological agents, than any of the possible as yet unimagined or un-uttered agents, or than no agent at all, because there's no reason to think anything in particular in this regard, is turtles all the way down. Like the Creationist, to posit God on the basis of your own incredulity about the role and ability of science to secure its claims evidentially to your satisfaction is bogus, and hints at a basic misunderstanding about the role and operation of scientific endeavour. Your arguments are non-arguments for the existence of God, one's prosecuted on the basis on a self-declared necessity to take due account, as you see it, of some blindly asserted contingent God-factor. Well, the way to address that is to rationally support a God-claim rather than shifting the burden on to others - though I expect your reply to skirt over this and continue your pet project of re-focusing on the supposed 'logic and rationality' of that burden shifting exercise while taking issue with anything and everything any atheist might have to say on this, or any, matter with all the apparent zeal of a true believer.

If you want people to accept God as a rational proposition then the ball is entirely in your court.
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Dec 17, 2015 3:48 am

DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Don't be silly Hermy, Mr Dodo embodies the normative standards of all rational thinking. :tea:
Yes because you lefties are so logical and rational how can anyone disagree with your politics, all those re-education camps and gulags and millions of dead people are all just a bureaucratic oversight. :roll:
Defining a prototypical group, then ascribing people to that group, and then lambasting them on the basis of their membership of that group, is indistinguishable from trolling: "The problem with all you Xs is that you're just so fucking wrong all the time!"

How are those ad homs working out for you, eh?
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by DaveDodo007 » Thu Dec 17, 2015 4:19 am

Brian Peacock wrote:
DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Don't be silly Hermy, Mr Dodo embodies the normative standards of all rational thinking. :tea:
Yes because you lefties are so logical and rational how can anyone disagree with your politics, all those re-education camps and gulags and millions of dead people are all just a bureaucratic oversight. :roll:
Defining a prototypical group, then ascribing people to that group, and then lambasting them on the basis of their membership of that group, is indistinguishable from trolling: "The problem with all you Xs is that you're just so fucking wrong all the time!"

How are those ad homs working out for you, eh?
Inside every lefty is a genocidal maniac who is authoritarian through and through, they are right because reasons and if anybody dares to disagree with them, then that person is worse than Hitler. Their absolutist's stance is frightening to behold and every day they eat away at our liberty and freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. My tolerance of their intolerance is paper thin right now and I'm beginning to hate them all. Seriously, fuck all lefty totalitarian cunts, fuck them, fuck them for ever.
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by JimC » Thu Dec 17, 2015 5:03 am

DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:
DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Don't be silly Hermy, Mr Dodo embodies the normative standards of all rational thinking. :tea:
Yes because you lefties are so logical and rational how can anyone disagree with your politics, all those re-education camps and gulags and millions of dead people are all just a bureaucratic oversight. :roll:
Defining a prototypical group, then ascribing people to that group, and then lambasting them on the basis of their membership of that group, is indistinguishable from trolling: "The problem with all you Xs is that you're just so fucking wrong all the time!"

How are those ad homs working out for you, eh?
Inside every lefty is a genocidal maniac who is authoritarian through and through, they are right because reasons and if anybody dares to disagree with them, then that person is worse than Hitler. Their absolutist's stance is frightening to behold and every day they eat away at our liberty and freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. My tolerance of their intolerance is paper thin right now and I'm beginning to hate them all. Seriously, fuck all lefty totalitarian cunts, fuck them, fuck them for ever.
A very similar degree of over-generalisation to your rants about feminists. Left wing politics is a very broad church indeed, particularly from the vantage point of someone like Seth. ;)

Within the very wide part of the political spectrum that could be genuinely called leftist, there is a relatively small strand of those who take a hard-left, dogmatic position. And yes, for them, a description that involves very little tolerance for dissenting views and an inclination for rigid, authoritarian positions is certainly valid. In the remote chance they achieved politic power, they would slide into totalitarian dictatorship very quickly, ignoring the lessons of the past. Less severe case of this condition can be irritating, too, joining militant feminism in their rather absurd form of political correctness.

But, as usual, your rant ascribes all the sins of a few to a very large group of people who are simply working for policies that attempt to balance the power of corporations and the state, and give the masses of working people a better deal.
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:39 am

Forty Two wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:
Forty Two wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:
Forty Two wrote:Utterly alone in the world? Join the club! :-)

We are born naked and alone, and we die naked and alone.

But, if we're lucky, we get 75 or so years on the planet to feel pleasure, pain, joy, happiness, sadness, jealousy, envy, compassion, kindness and all the rest. We are the lucky few who even got to be alive in the first place.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” - Richard Dawkins.
I actually really hate that quote as it's overtly dualist. I can't believe he ever thought that was a good argument to prosecute.
How can "existence vs. nonexistence" be anything but dualist? Or, is your complaint that there are some DNA iterations other than the one an individual has that would still be that individual?

If I understand you correctly, you don't like the duality of you are here as DNA combination A, and that any other DNA combination is another person who by happenstance did not come to exist. I think that's a fair question, although, it certainly would be a foundational question -- would a person born with ALMOST my DNA combination still be me? Would my "consciousness" be the same or similar enough to still be perceived by me as me? Is that where your objection lies?
That I'm supposed to have some feelings about "potential people". I can't have feelings for something that doesn't exist or even make sense. The only way it can make sense is if we adopt dualism. That is there's a bunch of souls floating around out there just waiting to be born and I was picked and other souls weren't. It's nonsense. Even more so from a monist atheist like Dawkins.
Dawkins isn't positing a batch of souls in his quote. He is positing that you have only a small chance of ever being born.
You've just confirmed that he is positing just that. There is no "you" and the concept of chance before birth. "You" only appear at a couple of months age, give or take. "You" are no more than a particular combination of genes and environmental influences. There literally can't be other you-like entities out there that missed out. It's nonsense.
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:43 am

rEvolutionist wrote:
Forty Two wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:
Forty Two wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote: I actually really hate that quote as it's overtly dualist. I can't believe he ever thought that was a good argument to prosecute.
How can "existence vs. nonexistence" be anything but dualist? Or, is your complaint that there are some DNA iterations other than the one an individual has that would still be that individual?

If I understand you correctly, you don't like the duality of you are here as DNA combination A, and that any other DNA combination is another person who by happenstance did not come to exist. I think that's a fair question, although, it certainly would be a foundational question -- would a person born with ALMOST my DNA combination still be me? Would my "consciousness" be the same or similar enough to still be perceived by me as me? Is that where your objection lies?
That I'm supposed to have some feelings about "potential people". I can't have feelings for something that doesn't exist or even make sense. The only way it can make sense is if we adopt dualism. That is there's a bunch of souls floating around out there just waiting to be born and I was picked and other souls weren't. It's nonsense. Even more so from a monist atheist like Dawkins.
Dawkins isn't positing a batch of souls in his quote. He is positing that you have only a small chance of ever being born.
You've just confirmed that he is positing just that. There is no "you" and the concept of chance before birth. "You" only appear at a couple of months age, give or take. "You" are no more than a particular combination of genes and environmental influences. There literally can't be other you-like entities out there that missed out. It's nonsense.
While that is true "you" is also a set of senses, a history of experiences, a bunch of memories, a load of thoughts. There's nothing to be gained by reducing human to an arbitrary collection of molecules. There aren't other yous 'out there' that didn't/don't exist, Dawkins was just speaking to the great unlikely-ness of your existence.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:23 am

It's still nonsensical. "Environmental influences" covers the stuff you said. You can't talk about probabilities when the 'full set' is based in wibble.
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Seth » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:04 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:Your ontology is weak. God is just one of a vast number of mythological agents credited through the ages with the creation of the universe, and imagining God, with his host of blindly asserted and uniquely godly remits and responsibilities, to be a more likely universal progenitor than any of those other mythological agents, than any of the possible as yet unimagined or un-uttered agents, or than no agent at all, because there's no reason to think anything in particular in this regard, is turtles all the way down.
More improbability fallacies. Let's see some actual science here. Where's the detection, inspection, quantification and explanation to a scientific certainty that excludes absolutely all possibility of an intelligent agency we are currently unable to detect, inspect, quantify or explain? Oh, wait, that's self-explanatory isn't it: We don't have any scientific evidence pointing in either direction, for or against the existence of some intelligent entity that could be responsible for the creation of this universe.

So, it's actually your ontology that's faulty.
Like the Creationist, to posit God on the basis of your own incredulity about the role and ability of science to secure its claims evidentially to your satisfaction is bogus, and hints at a basic misunderstanding about the role and operation of scientific endeavour.
Who's positing God? Not me. I've never posited or claimed that God exists or does not exist. I've repeatedly said quite clearly that I don't know the answer to that question. Dawkins and I happen to agree on the fact that the existence of God or gods is quintessentially a scientific question: Either God/gods exist or they do not exist. According to his own ontological orthodoxy science is able to determine the absolute truth with respect to the existence of God/gods because, ontologically speaking, his religious orthodoxy insists that all things are material and natural and are therefor subject to physical examination using the scientific method, and that nothing "supernatural" (as described by theists) exists except as a figment of human imagination, and therefore, since such imaginary concepts are immune to scientific investigation they are therefor false and imaginary.

Do you see the tautology involved? "God is a non-real imaginary being because theists claim that God is a supernatural being and because something that is supernatural is axiomatically not natural, and because (according to my own religious orthodoxy) all things that exist are natural and therefor subject to scientific examination, God cannot exist because theists claim that God is a supernatural being which must therefor be immune from scientific examination because (according to my own religious orthodoxy) things supernatural do not exist because they are not natural and therefor not subject to scientific examination...."(repeat as many times as you like...)

Dawkins does nothing but use smoke, mirrors and mendacious rhetoric to set up strawman arguments that he can then demolish that sound reasonable to anyone who doesn't see through the fallacies and illogic of his religious arguments. I call this sort of false reasoning "The Atheist's Fallacy" because it is in such common use by Atheists.

My critique is of Dawkin's fallacious premises upon which he bases his criticism of theism in general and Christianity specifically. His entire ontological arguments against religion are self-admittedly based upon and explicitly restricted to an iteration of the Atheist's Fallacy in which he premises his entire Atheist philosophy on a specific description of a specific deity he deliberately fine-tunes to suit his purpose of denigrating religious belief in favor of his own nihilistic view of reality.

Dawkins is the most prominent purveyor of the Atheist's Fallacy, and certainly the most notable, but he is hardly the only snake-oil Atheist religious orthodoxy salesman out there.

The obvious refutation of Dawkins' iterations of the Atheist's Fallacy is simple enough for a child to understand: "Well, Professor Dawkins, what if the Christians are wrong about the actual nature, intentions and/or abilities of God? What if God exists but is not as the Old and New Testaments describe he/she/it? What if those opinions and interpretations are false, inaccurate, mistaken or flatly made up and God is something else entirely? What if the descriptions and ascribed intentions and wishes of God are the result of human inability to accurately detect, examine, quantify and describe God? How then would this affect your Atheistic orthodoxy? What would it mean to your religious beliefs if God does exist and is not, as theists describe, at all "supernatural" and therefore outside of science's ability to detect, examine, quantify and describe? What if God is entirely natural and is in fact subject to scientific examination, but not by we humans at our present level of scientific expertise and understanding of the universe(s) and their natural functions? After all, Prof. Dawkins, CERN thinks it's discovered yet another sub-atomic particle that was previously undetectable and therefor to our knowledge was "supernatural," right up until it was "discovered." Of course if it actually exists (and isn't some sort of false artifact of the process) then it has probably always existed from the beginning of the universe, and the fact that science didn't know about it doesn't mean it came into existence when CERN "created" it (unless that's what CERN actually did, in a very god-like fashion).

Why then is God not like this new sub-atomic particle in that God exists but we puny human bags of pointless, useless, ultimately doomed to extinction DNA are simply too primitive to detect, examine, quantify and describe the purely physical phenomenon that is, or might be, God?"

Your arguments are non-arguments for the existence of God, one's prosecuted on the basis on a self-declared necessity to take due account, as you see it, of some blindly asserted contingent God-factor.
Well, that would be because they are in no way to be interpreted as arguments for the existence of God in the first place, and you are wrongly viewing those arguments through the distorted lens of your own religious orthodoxy, which is very irrational of you.
Well, the way to address that is to rationally support a God-claim rather than shifting the burden on to others - though I expect your reply to skirt over this and continue your pet project of re-focusing on the supposed 'logic and rationality' of that burden shifting exercise while taking issue with anything and everything any atheist might have to say on this, or any, matter with all the apparent zeal of a true believer.

If you want people to accept God as a rational proposition then the ball is entirely in your court.
Who said I want people to accept God as a rational proposition? Not me.

I merely want people to understand that rejecting God as a rational and entirely scientific proposition is an irrational act not based in either reason, logic or science.

There's a substantial difference between the two intents.
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Seth » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:11 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Don't be silly Hermy, Mr Dodo embodies the normative standards of all rational thinking. :tea:
Yes because you lefties are so logical and rational how can anyone disagree with your politics, all those re-education camps and gulags and millions of dead people are all just a bureaucratic oversight. :roll:
Defining a prototypical group, then ascribing people to that group, and then lambasting them on the basis of their membership of that group, is indistinguishable from trolling: "The problem with all you Xs is that you're just so fucking wrong all the time!"

How are those ad homs working out for you, eh?
You should know, lefty that you are, because that's straight out of the Marxist dialectic as expounded upon most recently by Saul Alinsky.

Pot, kettle, black and what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

It will be amusing to plop your statement into every reply to a post where some lefty does exactly that to anyone not a lefty. Thanks! :td:
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Seth » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:14 pm

DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:
DaveDodo007 wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Don't be silly Hermy, Mr Dodo embodies the normative standards of all rational thinking. :tea:
Yes because you lefties are so logical and rational how can anyone disagree with your politics, all those re-education camps and gulags and millions of dead people are all just a bureaucratic oversight. :roll:
Defining a prototypical group, then ascribing people to that group, and then lambasting them on the basis of their membership of that group, is indistinguishable from trolling: "The problem with all you Xs is that you're just so fucking wrong all the time!"

How are those ad homs working out for you, eh?
Inside every lefty is a genocidal maniac who is authoritarian through and through, they are right because reasons and if anybody dares to disagree with them, then that person is worse than Hitler. Their absolutist's stance is frightening to behold and every day they eat away at our liberty and freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. My tolerance of their intolerance is paper thin right now and I'm beginning to hate them all. Seriously, fuck all lefty totalitarian cunts, fuck them, fuck them for ever.
Well said! :td:
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Seth » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:20 pm

JimC wrote: But, as usual, your rant ascribes all the sins of a few to a very large group of people who are simply working for policies that attempt to balance the power of corporations and the state, and give the masses of working people a better deal.
Well, that's because it's not the "sins of a few" it is in fact the sins of a very large group of people who, perhaps (and most charitably) unwittingly in their dullard proletarian existence, attempt to balance the vacuous and imaginary "power" of corporations by creating instead, to their ultimate demise, a totalitarian state whose policies are not based on equality, fairness or individual liberty at all, but are in fact based on enslaving the dullard proletarians to their own avarice and greed by manipulating them into giving up essential liberties in order to (entirely theoretically) gain some temporary safety and "fairness" for the "masses of working people" who are under the mistaken impression that their totalitarian state gives a single flying fuck about giving them a "better deal," which it most certainly and universally does not.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:27 pm

rEvolutionist wrote:It's still nonsensical. "Environmental influences" covers the stuff you said. You can't talk about probabilities when the 'full set' is based in wibble.
Whether you want to view your 'experience' as distinct from the molecules which comprise you is a matter of taste or philosophy, but would you go as far as to deny that humans have experiences, memories, emotions, thoughts etc?
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There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by JimC » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:28 pm

Seth wrote:
JimC wrote: But, as usual, your rant ascribes all the sins of a few to a very large group of people who are simply working for policies that attempt to balance the power of corporations and the state, and give the masses of working people a better deal.
Well, that's because it's not the "sins of a few" it is in fact the sins of a very large group of people who, perhaps (and most charitably) unwittingly in their dullard proletarian existence, attempt to balance the vacuous and imaginary "power" of corporations by creating instead, to their ultimate demise, a totalitarian state whose policies are not based on equality, fairness or individual liberty at all, but are in fact based on enslaving the dullard proletarians to their own avarice and greed by manipulating them into giving up essential liberties in order to (entirely theoretically) gain some temporary safety and "fairness" for the "masses of working people" who are under the mistaken impression that their totalitarian state gives a single flying fuck about giving them a "better deal," which it most certainly and universally does not.
What nonsense. Centre left groups are not heading in the direction of a totalitarian state. They recognise that free enterprise is a vital component within the standard mixed economy of developed countries, but simply want government policies that protect ordinary working people from exploitation and corporate plundering, via policies on social spending and taxation. We are talking about democratically elected governments here, not revolutionaries overthrowing the system. If a centre left party fails to deliver, or damages an economy badly, it will (rightly) suffer the consequences in the next election.
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

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Re: Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

Post by JimC » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:30 pm

Brian Peacock wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:It's still nonsensical. "Environmental influences" covers the stuff you said. You can't talk about probabilities when the 'full set' is based in wibble.
Whether you want to view your 'experience' as distinct from the molecules which comprise you is a matter of taste or philosophy, but would you go as far as to deny that humans have experiences, memories, emotions, thoughts etc?
Sure, but where is the need to bring in a horde of non-existent possible humans?
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!

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