No such thing as God.

Iconoclast, this is a philosophy site and we are discussing age old questions. Generally, when discussing these questions through the ages, man has considered one another's opinions, offered point and counter point, and generally tried to cultivate a discussion, a helpful dialog.

The YUXI wasn't cute the first time around, and continuing the supposed problem is getting old. If you'd like to address my argument's then you would have engaged yourself in philosophy. Until that time, you're just running around in circles proclaiming your own views, never taking the time to consider disagreement from peers as being serious and worth addressing. And that is a terrible shame.

I agree. God is the virtuousness within ourselves, the good, the sane, and frivolous when it comes to if it's corporeal or not. Simply believing in those fundamentals projects God, so in this sense, we believe in god. By being virtuous or whatever you want god to stand for, is it not the striving for perfection, therefore we have to believe in it and aren't it b/c we are far from perfect.
Being perfect is insane. Striving for perfection but knowing that it is unreachable is sane.:cool:

Didymos, I can't pretend to be a student of philosophy, but I have read a little of it, particularly the ancient Greek philosophers. And I have to say that it seemed to me that quite often they didn't even listen to each other at all. All the major philosophers had little good to say about what the fellows that came before them held to be true. In fact, they were often downright disdainful of former opinions. Not that I'm condoning their behaviour, but it seems a bit misleading to me to suggest that, historically, philosophers made a habit of engaging in sensible, two-way discussions. Perhaps it's better to suggest that we learn from their mistakes and cultivate dialogue.

I do agree entirely with your second paragraph though.

Anybody here read angels and demons? I like the quote where he says that god and science should exist at once. God is the why and science is the how. Yes we consciously evolve, it's called learning, adding neurons and other such matter if you want a physical sense. I believe that god won't run out of validity for a long time. Religion will. Or at least it will have to evolve into something else. Monotheism is starting to seem primitive to me, it'll be given the same perspective as paganism eventually. But what god stands for should be a everlasting unity for humanity. That's what helps make us sane.

I was halfway through writing a rant about how evolving and learning are not the same thing, but then I decided to scratch it. A) it's off-topic, and B) why should I care if people can't figure out the difference?

Look, I'm not a technical person and to me I see the same effect on what I am trying to say from using the word 'learning' and the word 'evolving'.:cool:

Although I would like to hear the difference, it is important.

Well, here's what I see as the danger in equating learning to evolving: If we say that a learned man is more evolved than an unlearned one, then aren't we saying that the learned man is evolutionary superior? I'm sure that I'm not the only person around here who sees that there's something unsettling with this type of thinking.

Well,to be honest, I think that people with wisdom have a greater advantage in life, to me knowledge can help generate wisdom, than those with less.
I think that the voting system should reward those with more wisdom and are more informed in some way that included the public not just the politicians. We would live in more virtue that way.

Are these the same thing? I don't think they have much to do with one another, certainly not directly.

Furthermore, if people who are apparently wiser or more informed also happen to be more educated, then what you've unfortunately advocated is shifting political power towards the wealthy. Because wealth is unambiguously a major facilitator of education.

Finally, is virtue a concept that can be universalized such that you would create a political system out of it?

No, it isn't. When we bear in mind that power corrupts, all we can look for is the least unvirtous system. (I know I'm applying a sort of double negative, but it's early and my brain won't wake up.)

As for wisom and learning, all I can say is that I've known some very well educated fools in my day, just as I know some rather poorly educated wise men. That being said, I suppose it would precipitate the wise to want to learn. But as you pointed out, education requires a certain amount of wealth, and not all wise men have access to it.

The YUXI provides only a situation constructed purely out of hypotheticals and you have yet to cite evidence for your claims that belief in god leads to extinction.
Consider this: X is an entitiy whom both utilizes, understands and develops upon a system y that is not mutually exculsive of an unrelated supposition z which completes perception p. X'(x prime) does not include the set of data comprising y and does not have the capacity to uderstand (include) y and thus cannot expand y. X' is a nonhomogenous set of objects who each contain a subset of y and either the supposition z or its negation and have a system y'(y prime) which may or may not contradict y. The flux in y' due to shifitng size of the average subset of y in X' can mitigate expansion of Y, thus slowing the set of objects mapped from Y into U( the set of objects which can alter the composition of X' and X in order to expand group E and L which increases both the set of X and X', this being the ultimate goal of expansion of Y). That X' can mitigate Y and thus work against its own priority shows that X' is self contradictory due to its incoplete set of Y, however, X is not entirely excluded from X' but is rather in dramatic overlap such that there is no definitive distiction between X and X'.
In short, all men are men of ignorance and self destrution arises from unforseen consequenses. Your argument forgets this and presupposes that this truth can be eliminate dispite thousands of years of a most tenacious existsnce.

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Being informed is having knowledge in a given area right?
If it can be directed as wisdom plz tell me.

Holiday, you are the one who wrote "I think that the voting system should reward those with more wisdom and are more informed." That's why I asked you to clarify whether you think these are the same thing.

To be more informed can contribute to wisdom, but then again so can age -- and neither is synonymous with wisdom. If you talk to enough young people, you will see a LOT of wisdom, even in the absence of experience and knowledge. This is because wisdom is the product of insight, and sometimes insight is innate.

Wisdom is unmeasurable, and furthermore no one is wise in all areas of life.

Finally, I don't think wisdom is particularly important in making an informed choice about whom to vote for. And this is mainly because there is a finite number of candidates, usually just 2, for any given elected office -- and thus the issue is really choosing between these two. Furthermore, being wise about economics or social issues or whatever doesn't necessarily mean that you'll find a candidate who reflects a 'wise' point of view on these issues. And wisdom doesn't usually solve practical problems either -- we've been utterly burned by "conventional" wisdom again and again, especially in Somalia and in Iraq, despite the supposedly obvious nature of "conventional" wisdom. Also, to be an informed voter also means being cynical and skeptical of things candidates say. Obama and McCain can give a 2 hour lecture on their plan for the economy, but in all honesty it doesn't matter -- because budgets are NEVER a close reflection of the presidents' plan.

Dear All,

I'm back - braodband at home! No more running up and down with a data stick, to the e-cafe and back, bearing your half baked objections to my obvious genuis! I'm plugged in, switched on and ready to set the record straight.

Solace, I want to pick up on your comments about conscious evolution. If you put that phrase into a forum search - key terms, about fifteen down you'll find my post entitled 'conscious evolution' - posted some time last year.

The proof you request, insofar as proof is possible, is founded in evolutionary theory, anthropology and archeology. About 35,000 years ago in Europe there was an abrupt change in human behaviour as evidenced in artifacts found by archeologists. There was no co-incident change in cranial capacity or environmental conditions that might explain this change.

To paraphrase James Shreeve, author of 'The Neanderthal Enigma' - 'If human evolution were an epic the upper paleolithic would be the chapter where the hero comes of age. Suddenly, after millenia of progress so slow it hardly seems like progress at all, human culture appears to take off in a creative explosion.'

This sudden busrt of creativity, and the subsequent formation of primitive societies from hunter-gatherer tribes, that had walked the earth unchanged for the previous million years, requires explanation.

As 'conscious evolution' states, i propose that this change occured as a result of primitive man consciously recognizing the link between artifact and artificer - and going on, following in the logic of this idea, to ask such questions as 'who made me?' and 'who made the world?'

Further, i propose that the answer to these questions changed man's understanding of himself and the world so radically that in an almost Neitzchian 'transvaluation of values' he developed a moral understanding that enabled hunter-gatherer tribes to form multi-tribal and social groups.

This not only explains the origin of the concept but explains why the concept of God has been so universal and central to societies throughout history and around the world. It further explains why human beings have developed into such distinct societies - defined by socially shared concepts of God.

Thus, the idea of God, by enabling society to occur has been hugely beneficial to man. But at last, scientific knowledge can provide us with better answers to these questions - indeed, better questions and a systematic way of achieving valid answers.

I propose centralizing this knowledge to a global society - bringing the tribes together and acting as a species to secure our common welfare, indeed, to secure our continued existence.

Congrats on getting broadband!

I don't think you're proposal is unreasonable, far from it, however, when you say that man evolved from the hunter/gatherer state to more advanced societies because they consciously conceived of the artifact/artificer relationship, it isn't necessitating that the whole species came to the this conscious breakthrough, but rather a few or, who knows, maybe even just one. Thus, if we want to call that the conscious evolution of the individual(s), I suppose that's fine, but that individual(s) went on to share the artifact/artificer ideas with others, thus directly influencing the behaviour of the rest of the species. As a species, then, we changed our way of doing things through the influence of the individual(s), and not a species-wide moment of enlightment that caused us all to ask the same questions about ourselves and our place in the universe. Again, this is an example of learning. The species learned what the individual(s) thought up. They then used what they learned to improve their lives.

Let's take a similar modern example of this sort of change; when 1st world aid workers go to Africa and teach the farmers there superior farming techniques, and the farmers use those techniques to improve their harvests, and thus their lives, have they just evolved? Or did they just learn something useful? Again, let me reiterate, there is an innate danger to suggesting that those who have less learning are less evolved. It's like saying that I am evolutionary superior to you because I know something that you don't. It strikes me that an awful lot of reppression and even genocide has occured because one group thought that, because they knew more, they were racially superior to others.

Ruthless Logic,

Quote: 'Your claim for equality is just a manifestation conjured from your over-indulgence in idealism, which is simply you way of reconciling the unsettlement you experience by viewing the indifferent feedback you receive from your ruthless, yet beautifully engineered natural world. I simply challenge you to find ONE SINGLE EXAMPLE in our dynamic natural world that reflects the static quality of equality.'

We don't live in a natural world. We're human. We live in relation to our understanding of the world - socially engineered understanding. But it's simply not necessary that material concerns should be central to our existence - if everyone can have more than enough within the bounds of environmental sustainability.

Admittedly though, this comittment addresses the necessity of forging agreement between divided peoples - some of whom have much more than enough, and many who have far too little, and reconciling thier material wants with environmental sustainability.

In time i don't think materiality will be such a big issue - for technology applied on the basis of scientifically concieved merit, rather than to satisfy the profit motive, can provide very well for humankind, without breaking the ecological bank.

That's because science is valid of reality - whereas you have to admit that capitalism stubbornly refuses to acknowledge limits to resources and the environments ability to absorb pollutants - and doesn't allow us to invest in the technologies we need to survive.

Now maybe, back in 1776 Adam Smith could justifiably view the world as an infinite resource to be freely expolited, but 240 years later, the world is smaller and more crowded. Climate change and the energy crisis are global problems reuqiring global solutions - unachievable by nations acting to protect capitalist economic interests.

So, at last, there's your equality - carry on as we are and we're all going to die.

Allow me to add that I agree with your basic premise here. Science is a more accurate and much more detailled form of governance than universal belief(s) in God. The main problem of the latter being there are too many differing views on the subject that cannot be reconciled, whereas differing scientific theories are often reconciled via experimentation. You mentioned that belief in God has been beneficial to man, but as we both stated earlier in this thread, it has also been very harmful at times. We can say the same thing for science, though. I imagine many of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki contribute their woe to science rather than God. Thus putting our faith in science may not be exactly misplaced, but putting our faith in mankind's beneficial use of science may be. A global government, built on any premise, simply takes the power out of the many hands of potential small-time tyrants, and puts it into the hands of a potential big-time one.

Solace,

I quite understand your concern here. (5:33pm) I want to reiterate that humankind is a single species occupying a single planetary environment - before i go on to say that, yes, some societies are more evolved than others. Consider though, this has occured in the context of political and economic competition that has refused development to a great many people by owning knowledge for political and economic purposes.

(5:56pm) I don't think we can say the same thing for science because science is not recognized as valid knowledge, and therefore honoured as a rule for the conduct of human affairs. Rather science is used as a tool by groups divided by thier concepts of god, in pursuit of politcal and economic interest built on this foundation.

That's where science comes in. Constututionally bound to adhere to scientific understanding the global government would be acting for the species, not for one group against another. Therefore the only tyranny is the tyranny of truth.

I think we need to make a distinction that the evolution of certain societies and the evolution of the species are two very different things. I agree that certain societies are more advanced than others, (sort of goes without saying I guess,) but social evolution isn't always a positive thing either, since those more advanced societies are the exact ones that are causing the problems that you hope to resolve. Even in this sense I hesitate to use the word evolution, because, to me at least, evolution suggests a selective development that is in harmony with the natural world. I realize I may be subverting the meaning of the word, but I see evolving as an ideal change for the general positive, not a self-serving perversion that is universally negligent. I think we see eye to eye on the evils that capitalism has reaped.

As for your solution, I don't think I can say much more of my thoughts for it than I have already made clear. I understand your honest and good intentions, I just don't agree with how you would apply it.

Quote:We don't live in a natural world. We're human. We live in relation to our understanding of the world - socially engineered understanding.

Your just kidding, right? If the above view is your real interpretation of the Human position within our Reality, well then you are hopelessly disconnected from the absolute evidence that is generated from our empirical environment for your cognitive consumption. Look, I temper my conjured ideals by testing them against what is on display in my natural world, because if the actual measurable behavior or process is quite different then what I conjured based on my perceived notion on how things should be, this tends to indicate to me that I am on the path to becoming a careless idiot, punch-drunk from emotional idealism. Make no mistake, our natural world holds sway over our existence, and just because you have the cognitive ability to respond emotionally (positive or negative) to empirical events, the natural world has proven processes that simply work, and does not care how you FEEL about it past your only expectation of survival and reproduction.