@Arjuna,
Arjuna wrote:
failures art wrote:
Science is to technology as cooking is to food.
Yea... I can see that. Without food there would be no cooking. Some foods would not exist without the art of cooking.
Basically. Let us not trivialize that food is the more valuable of the two--Much like thinking is to philosophy.
Arjuna wrote:
You're free to put whatever you like at the front of the line. I think M-theory is nudging for position. Its warrant to special consideration is that it gives a coherent explanation for gravity and the big bang.
I am not sure where you are going here.
I'm talking about Christianity assuming the position as the definitive religion to be debunked. It is pushing to the front of the line as if it was somehow different than any other religion, or capable of meeting intellectual burdens they aren't. This just isn't true.
Arjuna wrote:
Unproved, and possibly unprovable... but still... previous outlooks had nothing to prove.
Let's be careful with language here. Gravity isn't provable. Matter being drawn together is. This is the difference between a theory and a law.
Religious theories seek to explain things that sometimes don't even exist.
E.g. - Because of early humans poor understanding of anatomy, religious explanations were made to explain why men had one less rib than women. Men and women have the same numbers of ribs, but our skeletal frames have different geometry.
A theory like the existence of god is built to explain events that never took place. Religion A, B, C or D might have different events, but they are built on the same flawed theory.
Arjuna wrote:
I'm not posing as an expert in the topic. I go on what the Japanese dude on the science channel said.... I'm not through with global warming yet.
I'm not sure how we have ended up on global warming.
Arjuna wrote:
By the way... I dont get the firing away of verbage bombs on invisible theists. What's that all about? This ain't a video game, dammit.
What is a...
1) Verbage bomb
2) Invisible theist
Arjuna wrote:
In the Vatican there's a painting that depicts Plato pointing up, and Aristotle motioning down. Philosophy and Religion, dude... some people find it fascinating and personally significant... some don't. But why give a critique of something you don't give a flip about?
Back to the cooking. I care greatly about being fed and having food. I even enjoy cooking. What I "don't give a flip about" is figuring out who is the best cook, or even just looking at food.
Let's bring it home. Still with the cooking analogy, a philosophical question.
Who is a greater cook: A person who can prepare a extravagant and gourmet dish with rare and difficult to use ingredients, or a cook that can in an prepare a large, nutritious, although simple meal that feeds many many people with affordable and easy to acquire ingredients?
I believe that ultimately we enjoy the gourmet meal, but the reason we eat is to be fed energy to sustain us. With philosophy and thinking, I believe much the same. Philosophical exercises are enjoyable, but in the end thinking is the objective.
Imagine please, building the most powerful computer in the world, installing the most powerful programs on to it, then turning it off. Or, imagine turning it on then over clocking it, but running none of the programs. After all of that, gather many people and argue about what the computer
could do. This is my problem with philosophy. I don't care about, nor need to know the history of previous computer that exist prior to this. I simply want the computer used.
There was a pretty good moral compass thread just before the Phil forum merger. In it, I expressed my concern there with another metaphor: A field medic in a war. They have two equally wounded men. It could be argued that the virtues of one of these men makes them more worth saving than the other. There is no doubt that letting both men die while the medic tries to figure out which would have been the better to save is a waste. Even if the medic chooses the "wrong man" unknowingly, the medic does the right thing by himself.
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