What would falsify your paradigm?

[Ayjaydee]

Some things that are truth to one are fantasy to another.
The truths we can all agree upon are the ones that are
not faith-based. Like the truths about ourselves.

I have yet to know the truth about myself

 

[blü 2]

This conversation brought to mind another thing that would have been a deep mystery to traditional Pharisaic or Sadduceean leaning people - the issue of grace to the Messianic figure. Why would a warrior king show grace or majesty?

What has that to do with today's price of fish?

These are the cues many religious Jews missed in reading scripture.

The cue they didn't miss is that look at it as you may, Jesus is not repeat not a Jewish messiah, being nor civil nor military nor religious leader nor anointed by the priesthood. The notion that the Jews recognized Jesus as the Messiah but chose to reject him is unadulterated bunkum. There's not the slightest evidence that they even noticed him at the time.

We know that James and John were well-to-do as they left their father's business.

That may mean nothing more than that they fished from his boat (singular).

The issue with Pelosi is that her hate of Trump led her behave like Trump - so why hate someone for doing what you are doing? This is the essence of Christianity (not Roman Catholicism or Protestantism) Did Jesus act like those who sought to destroy Him?

Sure. He took a weapon to the money changers in the Temple, who were practicing an ancient and traditional profession with all the permits required, and which formed part of the economy of the Temple establishment, hence the Jerusalem religious scene. What say someone turns up at your next religious service and takes a lash to the folk who pass round the plate, smashes up the tithes office and deletes / burns the records, and sends all the money in the bank to some remote charity?

 

[Galateasdream]

As an aside from this thread:

It strikes me that quite a few people either aren't really able to specify what would falsify their views, or they have rather outrageous standards for falsification that it seems unlikely they'd accept for other people's POVs.

Interesting.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Why is there a difference between non-believer and diehard atheist?

But even then, you're saying if I can find one credible report of a true athiest being nice to a believer, your POV is falsified?

I will try to explain.
For you to spot a diehard atheist, you make a check list of different positions and the more you get winged off the higher the probability that you have a diehard atheist. You make such a list based on your own observations and then check what you find other claim about what makes a diehard atheist so. It is a form of field observation, you observe the media, literature and so on. But more importantly the Internet.
So what would a checklist look like? I,e, what is behind the different positions you check for? E.g. epistemological realism, a strong belief in rationality/objectivity, that natural science/empiricism is the only source of knowledge, that (only) science makes for a better society, that relativism is wrong and so on.
Well, it has nothing to do with them being diehard atheists.
Rather it is this:
The certainty they hold, that their cultural and intellectual understanding of reality is the correct one in an universal sense. But that is not unique to them. That holds for all versions of understanding that turn into being diehard. It is the certainty of holding the correct position that marks all diehards for the following 3 categories: They know what the correct methodology for knowledge is, they know that reality really is and they know objective good.
So now we go wide and look at 2 theories of morality.

Moral Foundations Theory | moralfoundations.org

https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html

Now a general note about the truth of these theories. They are neither true nor false as such in a strong sense. They are different ways of looking at morality and the more ways you used the more nuanced it gets. Not that this is objectively better, rather it changes how you understand morality.

So here it goes: Where does a diehard atheist fall within these 2 models and what do they have in common.
It is about the authority, the certainty with which they speak for all humans. They speak with fixed rules for how to understand good, truth and reality and it is about loyalty, authority and sanctity.
You are loyal to science as the only form of knowledge. Science is the only authority and the sanctity of a human is to be rational as them and only use science.

You catch them here and differentiate between the actual science and how they use science.
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do

As per the link above.
Yes, science can do morality.
No, aesthetics are meaningless, unless it is about the beauty in understanding reality through science.
Yes, science tells you know to use knowledge, because science is the only form of knowledge.
No, of course science tells you that there are no gods, because science has solved metaphysics and epistemology.

That is how you "catch" a diehard atheist. It has nothing to do with atheism as such, as they will point out. It is all about scientism and not actual science.
It is those 4 and if you get all 4 in a strong, certain way you "got" a diehard atheist.

A note about organized religion today. Because we in the part of the world where we all have access to the Internet, in-groups(psychology) can form on the Internet. Diehard atheists are not an organized, centralized, formal power structure. They are an informal group of humans, who share a certain paradigm. But it is not codified, legal or organized. It is the result of being on fora, like this one.
So are they religious?

religion | Definition & List of Religions
Yes, rationality and science are sacred and worthy of especial reverence..
Yes, they know what happens, when we die.
Yes, their religion is naturalistic and not supernatural, they "worhship" the world, they can see.
Yes, they have sacred texts or rather concepts from within the philosophy of science, philosophy and science. Empiricism; materialism/physicalism, theoretical physics and evolution are the main ones.
The last one about how they congregate and worship in groups is the results of culture and technology. We in this part of the world, liberal democracies with Internet mainly, have individuals, who form in-groups on the Internet. Their rituals center around confirming rationality and science in debates and discussions.

So if you look for religion versus non-religion in the traditional sense you "see" one thing. If you look for religion as a human behavior and not the part of being supernatural you can find religious atheists.
Here is a short joke about definition of words. In the Victorian Era atheism was defined as amoral. Not that atheism is amoral, rather the paradigm was that atheism is amoral.
So what is to a diehard atheist the definition of religion; - it is the belief in supernatural magic. What happens if you look closer? Religion is a cultural, psychological behavior in nature and as such natural. So is science BTW. It is a culture in time and not universal. There is no single of factor explanation of what neither religion nor science are.

Rather science is over time the combined human effort to explain and understand reality with as many factors as needed. Dogmatic religion, not religion as such, is to reduce reality down to as few True factors as possible and claim Objective Authority over all humans.

So:

Not a non-believer, a diehard atheist. Not one has ever been able to resist ad homs, curses, etc.

How it is that? Because traditional religion is "tabu", it is irrational and irrational is the worst thing you can be. It makes you non-human and should be mocked, ridiculed and so on and "explained" away by using psychological defense mechanism.

It is, when it comes to sufficiently functional humans as per cognition/psychology, always in part as necessary but not sufficient nature/nurture/psychology/morality/aesthetics rolled into a "mess" of, what matters to a given individual?!!
The trick in understanding a given human as for their overall paradigm is to understand how and what reasons they give for what matters to them?!!
It is a method in humaniora, where you make a model of another human by figuring out what matters to that given individual.

So to "see" a diehard atheist, you see religion and non-religion as natural, cultural and so on and don't look for single factor
definitions. You look for "markers" of what you asked for. A paradigm.

With regards

PS - don't treat this as gospel. It is a limited relative view of a part of reality and has nothing to do with Truth and all that.

 

[PruePhillip]

What has that to do with today's price of fish?
The cue they didn't miss is that look at it as you may, Jesus is not repeat not a Jewish messiah, being nor civil nor military nor religious leader nor anointed by the priesthood. The notion that the Jews recognized Jesus as the Messiah but chose to reject him is unadulterated bunkum. There's not the slightest evidence that they even noticed him at the time.
That may mean nothing more than that they fished from his boat (singular).
Sure. He took a weapon to the money changers in the Temple, who were practicing an ancient and traditional profession with all the permits required, and which formed part of the economy of the Temple establishment, hence the Jerusalem religious scene. What say someone turns up at your next religious service and takes a lash to the folk who pass round the plate, smashes up the tithes office and deletes / burns the records, and sends all the money in the bank to some remote charity?

Certainly, the Messiah as Redeemer holds to no religious qualification, no worldly authority,
no power, no military interest and no civic responsibility. The Redeemer must be one who
dies for His people. "I know that my redeemer lives and he shall stand upon the earth in
the latter days" said Job. That is a Mystery to many Jews - why redeemer and not conqueror?
someone who is already alive? Someone who will arrive upon the earth? isn't a redeemer
someone who pays the price for our sins? If so, how?
"Despised the rejected of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief" wrote Isaiah.
Someone who's hands and feet were pierced wrote David. Someone who would bring
grace and be the headstone rejected said Jeremiah. Someone "like me" said the meekest
man in all the world. Someone who come again, a second time, as warrior and king wrote
Zechariah. Someone who's shoe latchet he was unworthy to unloose said the greatest
prophet that ever lived.

 

[PruePhillip]

I have yet to know the truth about myself

Shouldn't you be interrogating your own biases?
recalling your own failings? learning from your
own mistakes? forgiving others as you want
them to forgive you? are you guilty of being the
person you accuse of being?
That kind of personal truth.

 

[PruePhillip]

I would say it has no residence. There is nothing we can point at and try to express, "that's it," without constraining it, making it conform to the internal wiring that makes up how we think and behave. Yet, we each know it intimately.

So there's no truth. Why then do we hate Nazis?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I had to take some time to analyse this and try to find a proper way to answer.
When I understand you correctly, you think that it's not only the rules that are arbitrary but the whole concept of morality. In other words: you attack the premise. I understand that position and should not argue against it since that is my position towards gods. But ... with that logic we can declare any human idea as non existent. There will always be people who don't agree with a definition. That doesn't mean that there is no consensus about what morality is. (Though I admit that I'm too lazy to show that that consensus exits.) So I give you the choice to define your idea of morality and simply add a condition to my argument.
If morality exists and is defined as a non empty set of rules to live by, then, by definition, treating people equal in equal situations, is objectively moral, independent of the rules in the set.

You are so close and you are good at this.
So my subjective, individual, relative definition of normative ethics as a rule:
In the abstract as a rule all humans are sacred and should be treated with dignity and worth. This is the ideal, what you ought to aim for. In ethics it is to start with a mentality towards other humans as being equal to you as per the abstract rule. That is the objective part.

Now the problem is for all situations involving 2 humans or more in practice humans are not equal. They never are. They are individual and no 2 situations are equally the same, because they happen in time, space and change with culture, technology and changes in humans over time(psychology/physiology) and so on
So rather than having actual rules for equal situations, you have a toolbox of theories, practices and an ongoing evaluation of your practice as time goes on.
So where did I get that from? Well, it is not my own. It is what is "hammered" into social workers. Get as broad understanding of science, social science, humanities and so on relevant for deal with humans as humans in the moral sense. I.e. tools to spot what is going on in a given contexts.
There is single overall universal rule for how to treat another human in practice because the context is always different.
There is no one rule/theory for treating people equal in equal situations, because it is impossible to make a formal set as a strict theory of everything for morality.
The universal is the mentality of how you are. What worth you treat yourself and other humans with. That is either equal or not.

So how have I learned that? Well, I learned it as a professional soldier. Any complex plan(what you call a rule) will break down, when in comes in contact with the enemy, for which... What comes after ... is not relevant as such for morality.
But it is the same for morality as a practice versus the theory/rule/plan. All humans are in part complex and any marker you place on a situation can break down, if you look closer. Take an intolerant human and then another one. Is that equal? No, because the context can be different, i.e. what is at play and the reason for them being intolerant can be different and that can mean that you have to act differently.

So you are close. It is about objectivity and being equal but that is not a rule as you stated it for equal situations. It is a mindset, that you either have or learn.
In the abstract as a rule all humans are sacred and should be treated with dignity and worth.
In practice it never stops, because we are all fallible and contexts differ, So you always with reflection check your day and learn from it. It never stops.
My wife is a social worker and we always go over her day. She regularity attend further education and learn new theories and practices. She is an old "hand" at it now, but she still learns and it never stops.
That is in practice the practice of normative ethics based on the experience of doing it in practice.

So now the philosophy of sets and rules in regards to practice. There is no single formal, rational, abstract and what not set/theory for everything with it comes to humans. How? Because not all humans are rational and you can't treat all humans as rational. How do you in the name of rationality treat an irrational human? You don't, you treat her/him as sacred and with dignity and worth.

PS as for society that is how democracy is better. It is self adjusting. No law is written in stone and adapt. It is the same.for rights; e.g. freedom of speech is not absolute and so on. There are never equal situations, there are similarities and difference in practice.

 

[Ayjaydee]

Shouldn't you be interrogating your own biases?
recalling your own failings? learning from your
own mistakes? forgiving others as you want
them to forgive you? are you guilty of being the
person you accuse of being?
That kind of personal truth.

It's one thing see who you are, another to understand how you got that way and where it's best be headed

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So there's no truth. Why then do we hate Nazis?

As long as you insist on the singular, you will find that there is no single universal truth.
The answer is a combination of similarities and differences.
In the absurd sense of even A is A, that is not true, because it is 2 different As. You can take all of reality and claim one truth for all case, but then it will break down, because in some other cases, others humans can do it differently.
We share e.g. gravity, but we don't share the same truth of how reality matters. That is it. Truth depends on context. For some similar contexts the given truth is the same, but reality is not one and there is no single truth for all of reality.

 

[PruePhillip]

As long as you insist on the singular, you will find that there is no single universal truth.
The answer is a combination of similarities and differences.
In the absurd sense of even A is A, that is not true, because it is 2 different As. You can take all of reality and claim one truth for all case, but then it will break down, because in some other cases, others humans can do it differently.
We share e.g. gravity, but we don't share the same truth of how reality matters. That is it. Truth depends on context. For some similar contexts the given truth is the same, but reality is not one and there is no single truth for all of reality.

So you are a German who has been told Jews rule the world and the Slavs
will one day be industrialized and exterminate you - so you have to kill first.
Is that a "context truth." ?

 

[PruePhillip]

It's one thing see who you are, another to understand how you got that way and where it's best be headed

If there's no truth then there's no "best" way to go. All ways are valid.
This is nihilism.

 

[Ayjaydee]

If there's no truth then there's no "best" way to go. All ways are valid.
This is nihilism.

But there is truth and perhaps one day I'll see it

 

[Aupmanyav]

The truths we can all agree upon are the ones that are not faith-based. Like the truths about ourselves.

So, you agree that existence of God is faith-based and is a fantasy? What truth do you know about yourself?

I have yet to know the truth about myself

Buddha taught me the truth about myself. How come he did not teach it to you?

It strikes me that quite a few people either aren't really able to specify what would falsify their views, or they have rather outrageous standards for falsification that it seems unlikely they'd accept for other people's POVs.

Any scientifically validated evidence about God, his prophets / sons / messengers / manifestations / mahdis, about judgement / heaven / hell will do. I am not too fuzzy about it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So you are a German who has been told Jews rule the world and the Slavs
will one day be industrialized and exterminate you - so you have to kill first.
Is that a "context truth." ?

Back to morality and hate versus truth of "objective" facts.
The truth of gravity is not the same truth as whether is wrong to kill another human? Yes or no?

 

[Ayjaydee]

So, you agree that existence of God is faith-based and is a fantasy? What truth do you know about yourself?Buddha taught me the truth about myself. How come he did not teach it to you?Any scientifically validated evidence about God, his prophets / sons / messengers / manifestations / mahdis, about judgement / heaven / hell will do. I am not too fuzzy about it.

Because what I heard from my studies was that he admonished me NOT to take his word for it and meditate until I saw it for myself. He even provided a suggested roadmap

 

[blü 2]

As an aside from this thread:

It strikes me that quite a few people either aren't really able to specify what would falsify their views, or they have rather outrageous standards for falsification that it seems unlikely they'd accept for other people's POVs.

Interesting.

I had to give it some thought, and I rejected quite a few options.

How would you authenticate an apparent ghost of someone you knew, for example? I couldn't think of a way to do that, so it wouldn't serve to answer your question.

Incidentally, what's your answer to your question?

 

[Galateasdream]

Incidentally, what's your answer to your question?

From page 2:

I think that God's existence or non-existence is, strictly speaking, neither verifiable nor falsifiable (it runs into the invisible gardener problem, and the epistemological problem of fallible beings being unable to test for omniscience). It is similar to solipsism, the existence of p-zombies, or the existence of the past in that regard.

This is why I think belief in God (as bare theism) is best considered from the point of view of reasonableness + balance of probability.

ie - to believe in God, as I do, I must be convinced that such a concept is reasonable (logically coherent, has some explanatory power) and is at least equal to, but preferably more likely (however slightly) than the alternative (God does not exist).

Psychologically, I also am aware that I favour beliefs with benefits and which are optimistic, so I will tend to more readily commit to a belief that is pragmatic and joyful than one that is difficult and depressing, given a roughly equal balance of probabilities or a choice between similar balanced/evidence paradigms.

To convince me to abandon belief in God, then, I would simply need to be shown evidence/arguments that either rendered theism incoherent or which pushed the probability of God obviously below half (or just less than half if it could also be shown it was non-pragmatic and/or depressing).

#28 Galateasdream, Tuesday at 1:58 PM

 

[blü 2]

Certainly, the Messiah as Redeemer holds to no religious qualification, no worldly authority, no power, no military interest and no civic responsibility.

That is, he's not a Jewish messiah at all ─ the Christians invented a new job description but used, or stole for political reasons, an old name for it.

The Redeemer must be one who dies for His people.

The Messiah isn't. He's the one who restores their political independence, by military defeat of the enemies of the Jewish people if needs be. And by doing so he gets to be the leader, or one of the ruling clique anyway.

"I know that my redeemer lives and he shall stand upon the earth in the latter days" said Job.

Sure, but Job is an out and out morality tale, not a piece of history (giving us the problem that we're glad it's not history, but appalled by the morality).

That is a Mystery to many Jews - why redeemer and not conqueror?

Indeed, why not? An excellent point.

someone who pays the price for our sins? If so, how?

Yes, the t-shirt, "If you don't sin then Jesus died for nothing". But what was the price of sin, to whom was it payable, and how come the bill involved a suicide mission?

"Despised the rejected of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief" wrote Isaiah.

I think you mean "despised AND rejected" but don't let me put words in your mouth. Anyway, the author of that part of Isaiah was talking about the Suffering Servant, who stands for the nation of Israel as it was in that author's time, and has nothing to do with the future or with Jesus. I mean, that isn't even controversial.

 

[PureX]

From the American Atheist Association:

"Atheism is one thing: A lack of belief in gods.
Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

Older dictionaries define atheism as “a belief that there is no God.” Clearly, theistic influence taints these definitions. The fact that dictionaries define Atheism as “there is no God” betrays the (mono)theistic influence. Without the (mono)theistic influence, the definition would at least read “there are no gods.”

Atheism is not a belief system nor is it a religion.
While there are some religions that are atheistic (certain sects of Buddhism, for example), that does not mean that atheism is a religion. To put it in a more humorous way: If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."

What is Atheism? | American Atheists

I think these guys know what they are talking about more than you do.

I am capable of using my own mind to work out the logical definitions of these terms, and of explaining to others why and how I have done so. So I don't have to rely blindly on the propaganda posted by liars and fools on the internet.