Nihilism and Atheism

[Syntax]

And o_mlly blackballed all of humanity, not to mention the fact that they spat in the face of reality. People are complicated, and to say that the devil is complicated is to imply that being complicated is “evil” or “sinful” or “imperfect.” My conclusion, then, is that o_mlly either despises our complexity or is blissfully unaware of it. **** I think the former is more likely. The constant bleating of “simplicity good, complexity bad!” is just an excuse for people to remain simpleminded and ignorant. People do this because they don’t like the idea of being obligated to learn or to understand the positions of those they disagree with.

Just listen to yourself talk! You just did to o_mlly what you accuse o_mlly of doing! Your *very own *criticism is incredibly irreverant and *simple-minded *yourself. As a Catholic, I know exactly what o_mlly meant by that, and I *don’t *construe that remark the way you are construing it at all. It’s true that people are **very complex **and have their own **personal background **that influences their choice of words in remarks like that, so quit assuming you know all about people. You continued to commit the exact same simple-minded blunders in the Aristotle thread about Aristotle. So why don’t you try actually inquiring for once instead of passing premature and uninformed judgments all the time about things you don’t know.

 

[Darryl1958]

The authority of the Catholic Church to say so doesn’t make anything so, so whether or not the Catholicism holds that human life is objectively sacred is a separate issue from whether or not human life is objectively sacred.

 

[Darryl1958]

Why do you think that there could be no truth to the statement “humans should treat one another with dignity” if God does not exist?

What is it in human nature that would lead to the conclusion that humans ought to treat others with dignity?

Your answer from above seems to be, because “there is no reason to believe that anything has any more value over anything else” if God does not exist.

I am not answering from a position as from above, but from low places.
Dare to feel my disease?

Is it sufficient to say that no reason exists because you have never been convinced by anyone else’s reasons for having the values we have?

What reasons have you yet given me?

Also, do we even need a reason to love one another? Does the fact that God says you ought to love others make you love your children more than you otherwise would?

Evolution supplies reason enough for love and hate.
The greater question still avoided, without God, why bring children into this world of suffering, strife and toil at all? Where is the love in subjecting the children you would love to the genetic ravages of the human condition, the depressions, the insecurities, the anxieties, the humiliations, the ridicule?

As Albert Camus might say, everyone knows that life is not worth it.

What kind of love is it that would submit a child to world where the very existence of more children entail that destruction of natural world under the weight of SUV’s bringing them to their beloved sports events and rictals and activities.

Is it really love that would subject children to the ravages of war and hatred and racism, the Hiroshimas and the Mai Lais, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, Bushes armies?

As a matter of love for their unborn, more and more of us Westerner haveeconcluding “No!”

Nihilism is not normally sociopathic after all.

You know who really needs an answer to the question “but why should we love one another?” Some one who does not already love anyone else–the sociopath. The rest of us grew up already loving others before we learned how to ask any questions about why we should do what we ought to do.

Why is loving one another the ultimate concern? Why not power?

People like that exist, of course, but psychology has given us some ideas about what this pathology is and how this pathology comes about. A sociopath’s self-conception contains no relations to others, either due to genetics or because of absent or abusive parents or some combination of genetics and upbringing. What no psychologist ever asserts as far as I know is that the sociopath is not a person who has given up on certain ideas about ultimate reality–that was never taught that God says that he ought to love others. Instead psychologists tell us that a sociopath is a person who never developed trust for loving parents in early childhood as human beings almost always do. Children do not grow up to be sociopaths because they lacked the right metaphysical foundation for ethics, but rather because they had some wires crossed as a function of genetics or because lacked loving homes.

Sociopaths exist for sure. I agree.

Psychologists tell us what we parents need to do if want our children to develop morally. Instead of telling our children that they will be punished for hurting others–that their behavior towards others has consequences only for themselves, we should rather ask them, “how do you think you would feel if someone did the same thing to you?” We should convince them that we need to be concerned about hurting others because it has consquences for others. It is the power of human imagination to put ourselves in another’s shoes that will help us progess morally. Psychologists tell us that teaching children only about the threat of personal consequences for their behavior toward others results in sociopaths. Teaching our children to do what a Church commands out of fear of personal punishment by eternal damnation (not that religious people actually do that), would be one way of doing just that. That is the sort of moral teaching that results in sociopaths, people concerned only for their own well-being or their own souls rather than people with a capacity for empathy for other human beings. Hell keeps people in line just like our legal system but it doesn’t make them more moral. That is why religious people teach their children about how to love others in the same way that nonreligious people do, by trying to get their children to imagine what it would be like to be in another’s shoes.

Psychologists certainly have been given a lot of authority to define reality in our societies.

It turns out then that this sociopath–this nihilist that atheists are apt to become–is a lot like the Cartesian skeptic–a philosophical boogie man that we are supposedly supposed to have to answer for, but who doesn’t need to scare us anymore. If we really were sociopaths, then we would indeed have no good answer to the question of “why aren’t we all thieves and murders and rapists,” but thank goodness we are not sociopaths.

Some of us are sociopaths and some of are not. Nature versus nurture as to why or why not.

Our self-conceptions do include relations to others. Caring for those close to us comes naturally to us.

Does caring for others come naturally to us? Well, then so does dominating others, and will to power and selfishness and a whole host of other human attributes.
What else resides is human nature?

 

[Darryl1958]

We love at least some others as we love ourselves–not “like we love ourselves” but “as ourselves” in that some others literally are ourselves to some degree. The more we can expand and deepen this web of relations that we identify as part of ourselves, the more morally developed we are. We don’t need to think of ourselves as sociopaths that need to be properly restrained or grounded in a metaphysical foundation, but rather humans concerned with relating to other humans who need to be nurtured, especially when we are young, in order to develop the trust in other humans that makes progressive expansion and deepening of this web of relations possible.

Humanism as a value, still runs strong in post-Christian society, yes. Maybe it may yet muster up the will to procreate itself.

As scientists we all ought to closely consider the numbers before we decide the likelihood of that outcome, don’t you think?

 

[Oreoracle]

As a Catholic, I know exactly what o_mlly meant by that, and I *don’t *construe that remark the way you are construing it at all. It’s true that people are **very complex **and have their own **personal background **that influences their choice of words in remarks like that…

You act as though interpreting these assertions is such a difficult process. Unlike you, however, I don’t assume that my fellows and my favorite philosophers always produce statements with profound and relevant meaning that require meticulous translation to be understood. I assume that people say what they mean. If an assertion appears to be blunt, insensitive, and the result of pure ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, I’m not going to rationalize the mistake.

Also, being a Catholic does not grant you immediate knowledge of the beliefs of other Catholics. Catholics are a varied group of people,–from the self-righteously pious to the apologists to the people who whine about attending Mass on Sundays–and so it is dishonest for one Catholic to claim to know what the others think merely because he is Catholic.

 

[Syntax]

You act as though interpreting these assertions is such a difficult process…

You act as if deducing a person’s complex personally held belief-structure from their one-line assertions is a relatively *easy *process.

Unlike you, however, I don’t assume that my fellows and my favorite philosophers always produce statements with profound and relevant meaning that require meticulous translation to be understood.

Unlike you, however, I don’t assume that my fellow and favorite philosophers always mean something completely nonsensical simply because I am flatly ignorant of their philosphies while having a difficult time understanding them.

I assume that people say what they mean. If an assertion appears to be blunt, insensitive, and the result of pure ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, I’m not going to rationalize the mistake.

I assume people are always more complex than their mere words will make them out to be, and that they are usually smarter than they take themselves to be. So I give my fellow man the benefit of the doubt before I judge ignorantly and one-sidedly. I’m not going to continue to rationalize my own premature and poorly-made judgments simply because I know very little about them, which is precisely what you are doing

Also, being a Catholic does not grant you immediate knowledge of the beliefs of other Catholics. Catholics are a varied group of people,–from the self-righteously pious to the apologists to the people who whine about attending Mass on Sundays–and so it is dishonest for one Catholic to claim to know what the others think merely because he is Catholic.

No, but similarities in beliefs makes it more likely I know bettter than you where this remark is coming from. Your inferences rely purely on your own ignorance of Catholic belief-structure and the reasons why a Catholic would say this. You’ve interpreted it as a direct defiance toward complicated topics because the person wants “an excuse not to think.” Whereas I interpret it as expressing the deeper thought that a simple relationship with God has more private importance for this person than winning a superficial argument.

 

[o_mlly]

And o_mlly blackballed all of humanity, not to mention the fact that they spat in the face of reality. People are complicated, and to say that the devil is complicated is to imply that being complicated is “evil” or “sinful” or “imperfect.” My conclusion, then, is that o_mlly either despises our complexity or is blissfully unaware of it. I think the former is more likely. The constant bleating of “simplicity good, complexity bad!” is just an excuse for people to remain simpleminded and ignorant. People do this because they don’t like the idea of being obligated to learn or to understand the positions of those they disagree with.

Isn’t this the “Philosophy” forum? I suggest you review your truth tables: If a statement is true, only the contrapositive can be inferred as logically true. Since your premise is logicaly invalid, we can fortunately dismiss the drivel that follows.

Wait. That may not be entirely fair. What you post is original and good. Unfortunately, what is good is not original, and what is original is not good at all.

 

[Leela]

The theory that people ought to be treated with dignity is rather rare in human history. It is based upon the ideas developed out of Christian humanism.

I think it is based in our love for one another. I think people loved one another before Jesus told them they ought to. Love is not the possession of any religious tradition.

Ought people be treated with respect?

Yes.

Historically, the question has been answered in the negative by human societies much more than in the affirmative, and for good reason.

I agree. Humans have progressed morally over the millennia.

Perhaps it would be preferable for the powerful to become gods and the powerless to be slaves. Great and powerful societies have been molded on that very principle. Pagan Rome and Han China, and the caliphates of the Islamic Empires most certainly have shone without any notions of universal human dignity.

Why do you think that might be better?

 

[Leela]

What is it in human nature that would lead to the conclusion that humans ought to treat others with dignity?

This is a wrong question. I don’t think we should be looking to some Human Nature to tell us how we ought to behave, do you? Inquiry into Human Nature isn’t what we mean by moral progress anymore than it is what we mean by scientific progress. We don’t learn more about physics by trying to nail down our limitations as humans but by trying to overcome our current limitations. The same is true about ethical inquiry. The facts of evolution have nothing to do with how we ought to behave to become more than mere animals. I don’t see humans as too limited by any Nature. What is “natural” about Beethoven’s symphonies or the Sistine Chapel? Nothing. But I see nothing “unnatural” about them either. The natural/unnatural question is moot compared to human participation in their own creation and the limitless possibilities for what we can become.

We progress morally not be getting ourselves better in touch with some intrinsic Nature but thought he expansion of our moral imagination. We progress by becoming better able to put ourselves in another’s shoes and seeing others as also ourselves. As our scientific understanding has progressed through individual genius, so have we also progressed morally by being influenced by “moral geniuses” such as Jesus, Gandhi, King who have shown us better utopian visions to help us make real new possibilities for human community solidarity that we perhaps could not have imagined on our own. I see no reason why we need be so concerned about our Nature to think that we cannot make even more progress in the future.

I am not answering from a position as from above, but from low places.
Dare to feel my disease?

I’m not sure I understand what you are getting at. Are you saying that you are one of those people who need a reason to love others? I’m afraid people who need a reason to love others will probably never really love others. At least the carrots and sticks offered by secular law and religions continue to keep such people from hurting others or else, sadly, in prison.

What reasons have you yet given me?

You are missing my point. I have never once looked at my daughter and asked for any reason why I ought to love her. Loving others is what all of us know we ought to do who have ourselves been loved. People who cannot love are the product of genetic problems or the lack of a loving home growing up. They are not the product of a lack of the proper metaphysical foundation. Anyone who needs to ask the question, “yes, but WHY should we love one another?” will not get the point by being told that God says so.

Evolution supplies reason enough for love and hate.
The greater question still avoided, without God, why bring children into this world of suffering, strife and toil at all? Where is the love in subjecting the children you would love to the genetic ravages of the human condition, the depressions, the insecurities, the anxieties, the humiliations, the ridicule?

As Albert Camus might say, everyone knows that life is not worth it.

I don’t share your pessimism about the world, so I can’t help you here.

What kind of love is it that would submit a child to world where the very existence of more children entail that destruction of natural world under the weight of SUV’s bringing them to their beloved sports events and rictals and activities.

Is it really love that would subject children to the ravages of war and hatred and racism, the Hiroshimas and the Mai Lais, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, Bushes armies?

As a matter of love for their unborn, more and more of us Westerner haveeconcluding “No!”

People make decisions about the number of children to have or to have them at all for many different reasons. You seem to be concerned that the world will run out of people. That doesn’t appear to be the trend, does it? The question is more about how we can find ways to clothe, feed, and find water for the world population as it continues to grow.

Why is loving one another the ultimate concern?

Answering the question “why?” is just one small human concern. It is not itself one’s ultimate concern. One must already have an ultimate concern before asking this question, otherwise, where could this question come from?

Children raised in loving homes already love others before they know enough about the world to ask “why?” about anything. You are putting the cart before the horse.

I hope these aren’t serious concerns that you have about yourself. I suspect that they are just hypotheticals, and that you are just playing the skeptic. Are these real doubts? Do you really need a reason to love others? I’m afraid that a love for another that is based on such reasons is not real love, it is only the product of a successful negotiation.

Best,
Leela

 

[Darryl1958]

I think it is based in our love for one another. I think people loved one another before Jesus told them they ought to. Love is not the possession of any religious tradition.

 

[Oreoracle]

Isn’t this the “Philosophy” forum? I suggest you review your truth tables: If a statement is true, only the contrapositive can be inferred as logically true. Since your premise is logicaly invalid, we can fortunately dismiss the drivel that follows.

Actually, a contrapositive is the converse of the inverse (or vice-versa) of a conditional statement. Nobody made a conditional statement.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Actually, the desire to earn a living occurs in the moment. The decision to go out and earn it occurs in the moment. Taking into account the likely effects of actions similarly occurs in the moment.

Very good - but all these decisions relate to the future - you don’t decide to work when we are in the state of working - every morning we do things in order that in the future we will be doing something else. Living exclusively in the now doesn’t account for why we plan, and would also make the past something of a nothing, because it is no longer the now.

Of course, you can get nice and mystic about it, but that would be against your principles, surely?

While I’m at the party, I would have to take into account the likely effects of actions before I decide on them. The fact that I might not remember the party the next day is irrelevant.

For example, to take the surprising example you brought up, I wouldn’t kill anyone at the party…I would have to take into account the fact that if I did so, the other members of the party would gang up on me and do something highly unpleasant to me.

Yes, killing someone isn’t neccesarily something you might want to do, although being based on personal inclination in general isn’t much of a reason not to, and I suppose goes back to the last argument we were talking about all this… and yes, as I mentioned at the end, I’m a little uneasy about encouraging people to realise that their belief system doesn’t give them any reason not to do something nasty… to be quite honest, I generally find there are lots of nasty people, and I can think of numerous people (come to think of it, generally atheists) who’ve expressed their only restraint from killing people is the fact there is a law against it…

Of course, if the only thing keeping you from being a loony killer is the idea that there’s some “objective value” to the universe, then by all means, keep believing in it. Just be sure to stay well away from me…

Well, OK, I admit I’m about as violent as a daisy…

…but in such a situation, despite our inclinations against it, would it matter whether the individual had died then or not? how would it matter whether we have had fulfilled lives or not, if when they end, so do we? The whole point is, there’s no real consequence of any of this, after the party. In order to you to refute that consequence isn’t something that in reality is our concern, you’re going to have to come up with a more convincing argument as to how you live in the now rather than for a future

Well, if that’s what “scientism” is, then I don’t subscribe to it, and I don’t know anyone else who does.

There are all kinds of things that happen every single day that “cannot be verified by science.” The warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I look up at the clouds, for example, lies beyond science’s ability to detect and verify.

“Verification” only comes into play when we want to determine what’s true – assuming that we define “true” as “the actual state of things,” which obviously needs to be verified in order to be called “true” – and “verification” isn’t always scientific. In my daily life, I make all kinds of verifications that aren’t “scientific” – I can observe things and verify my ideas perfectly well without forming hypotheses and engaging in double-blind experiments.

But verification necessitates relying on evidence of some kind, and the more serious we are about verifying things, the more serious we are about gathering enough evidence and making the best judgment that we can because we know that it’s so easy for us to fool ourselves. For example, my senses reveal to me the sun at different positions at different times of day. My reason operates on this evidence and tells me that the sun is traveling around the earth. I thus have the experience of observing the sun traveling around the earth, and it’s a perfectly “real” and “valid” experience. I’m not denying that that experience happens. But if I really became interested in whether it was true that the sun travels around the earth – that is, if I really wanted to determine the “actual state of things” – I might investigate and discover that my reason was operating on faulty data to begin with.

In short, no one denies “possibilities that cannot be verified by science.” But the truth of claims is something that has to be verified, and the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence needed to verify it.

But if there’s a regular form of experience which doesn’t even appear to be physical of nature, hence rendering science impotent in evaluating it as a possibility, scientific interpretation will seek to find an alternative explanation, regardless of whether that seems more logical or not. The recent attempts to re-jiggle the conception of statistics in order to up the likelihood of abiogenesis from absurdly remote to absolute certainty make that obvious to me, at least.

Science can only really deal with physical possibilities. I see such phenomenal attempts to justify such bizarre unlikelihoods when the implication leads to (or at least one closer to) a theistically held view than, say, a Darwinistic one, and one which physically limited scientific investigation loses effective authority over, to indicate a certain dogmaticism in refusing to consider possibilities outside of our limited ability to physically verify, even to the point of defending a position which is statistically absurd in preference

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure there are theories as to why you feel warm a fuzzy feelings looking at clouds - I’d be surprised if the issue hasn’t been the topic of at least 5 theses and a book by now!

 

[Syntax]

Thank you. God is unified and simple; the devil is divided and complicated.

Allow me to edit Oreoraclian-kinds of mistakes:

And *** *o_mlly blackballed all of humanity, not to mention the fact that **** -]they/-] **[her or she] **spat in the face of reality. People are complicated, and to say that the devil is complicated is -]to imply /-] [merely what I take to indicate] that **[o_mlly is actually saying] **being complicated is “evil” or “sinful” or “imperfect.” My **[logically invalid] **conclusion, then, is that o_mlly either despises our complexity or is blissfully unaware of it.

(1) That “the devil is complicated” does not logically imply that “alll who are complicated are evil, sinful, or imperfect.” An existential statement about one complicated person (the devil), does not logically entail a conclusion about the class of **all **complicated persons. This is the fallacy of generalization which infers a statement about *one or more *persons to a statement about all persons.

(2) *Even if *the existential statement did entail this universal generalization (which it clearly does not), it still does *not entail *your further false *disjuncitve conclusion *(P or Q) that “o_mlly either despises complexity or is unaware of it.”
Oreoracle;6343351:

I -]think /-] [groundlessly assume]

the former is more likely. The constant bleating of “simplicity good, complexity bad!” is just -]an excuse for /-] [my own groundless conclusion invalidly inferred from my other groundless assumption that these people are proposing] to remain simpleminded and ignorant [when these people say things like “the devil is complicated.”]** People -]do this /-] **[say the “devil is complicated”] **because *** *** they don’t like the idea of being obligated to learn or to understand the positions of those they disagree with.

Isn’t this the “Philosophy” forum? I suggest you review your -]truth tables/-] [truth conditions for categorical claims involving quantification]

If a statement is true, only the contrapositive can be inferred as logically true **[since they are logically equivalent] ** [this is correct, but it is irrelevent to the charge that Oreoracle is making unwarranted assumptions and drawing invalid inferences.] Since your -]premise is/-] [various assumptions] ** are -]logicaly invalid,/-] ** [severely lacking any support and your inference logically invalid] we can fortunately dismiss the drivel that follows.

-]Wait. /-] -]That may not be /-] **[My own criticisms are] **entirely fair. What you post is **[neither]**original -]and /-]-]good/-] [nor plausible whatsoever]. -]Unfortunately, what is good is not original, and what is original is not good at all/-].

Actually, a contrapositive [switches the order of the antecedent and consequent and denies both in]

-]is the converse of the inverse (or vice-versa) of /-] a conditional statement. -]Nobody/-] [But I] made -]a conditional statement./-] [groundless categorical assumptions and drew logically invalid inferences]

O_mally just misses the point. But I’ve never heard more logical nonsense than Oreoracle’s reasoning above. So who is being more rationally-minded here?..hmmm…

 

[Oreoracle]

Oh Syntax, you continue to entertain me. You’re trying to make our exchange into some kind of logical battle, but that simply isn’t the case. O_mlly made an inflammatory remark (pithy statements tend to count as wisdom around here) and I pointed out the reason the remark was made. Now you can say that my accusation didn’t “logically follow” from the statement, but sometimes logic isn’t the way to break down peoples’ statements. For example, if a man walked up to a woman and said, “Women are whores!” we can expect the woman to be upset, right? BUT…we can say that “women are whores” is not necessarily a universal statement; it may be construed as a particular statement. If it is a particular statement, then it is true, because there are some women who are whores. So you might say that the woman wasn’t justified in being angry. However, this man obviously didn’t intend for the statement to be interpreted that way. He simply made an inflammatory remark to upset the woman, and we don’t need logic to tell us that.

It’s really a matter of common sense, I’m afraid. If your religion makes “the devil” out to be the epitome of evil–the intial Hell-bound individual who was an affront to all that is good–then comparing another’s traits or actions to the devil’s is a bit rude, no?

 

[Syntax]

If your religion makes “the devil” out to be the epitome of evil–the intial Hell-bound individual who was an affront to all that is good–then comparing another’s traits or actions to the devil’s is a bit rude, no?

You miss the point like you always do. The question is not about the *rudeness *of the remark. The matter concerns your very poor and presumptuous inferences about the person making that remark.

Oh Syntax, you continue to entertain me. You’re trying to make our exchange into some kind of logical battle, but that simply isn’t the case. O_mlly made an inflammatory remark (pithy statements tend to count as wisdom around here) and I pointed out the reason the remark was made.

That’s precisely the problem. You are arriving at completely unjustified opinions about the person’s character, psychological motives, and actual belief structure based on a single assertion. Here are your unwarranted conclusions, in case you forgot them:

(1) o_mlly condemns all rational thought (including his or her own rationality)
(2) o_mlly condemns all thinkers (including myself)
(3) o_mlly believes all rational thought is from the devil (so all of us, including myself, are caught in the devil’s snares.)
(4) o_mlly’s psychological motives are to avoid all thinking and to remain as ignorant as possible.

But all of these are presumptuous conclusions of your own making that are not implied by the remark at all. I see no remark condemning the use of reason; I see no remark that says reason is from devil. The remark is about people overly complicating things. o_mlly said “God is simple; the devil is complicated” in response to AntiTheist’s bludgeoning misguided USE of reason.–and I completely agree with this remark. In fact, most of our reasoning involves very simple matters in our day to day affairs. So the remark is NOT condemning reason tout court at all. It is a remark about the simplicity of God versus your own arrogance that continues to complicate matters so as to avoid what is really important, such as a relationship with God. So there’s more reason to think this remark means that a relationship with God matters more than trying to overly complicate matters in this forum, and that individuals so presumptuous as yourself who think you understand everything in one sudden intuitive grasp of rational insight are totally arrogant and one-sided. So I totally agree with it! It IS offensive–and it’s *true. *

After all, getting lost down the rabbit-hole of rational thinking will make a person go completely mad, just as Nietzsche went mad–and the devil himself caught Nietzsche by the balls. So employing our reason all the time in matters where it should not be employed is faulty, since love, relationship, and commitment to God are much more important than trying to find a proof for His existence anyways. So the person’s remark is more likely a value judgment that relationships are to be valued over enganging in the enterprise of finding solutions to all of our intellectual riddles. And o_mlly is right: so long as you continue to complicate matters without having a grounded relationship with God you will go very much astray, just as you continue to do.

So your conclusions are totally unwarranted. Let’s just ask o_mlly which interpretation most likely conforms to his or her thoughts on the matters, shall we? I guaranteee o_mlly would agree much more with my own inductive inferences than yours. Your own conclusion is a result of your own simple-minded attempt to box people in so that you don’t have to deal with them. It makes you feel superior and more intelligent. But I hate to break it you, your own critical thinking abilities are greatly impoverished.

Now you can say that my accusation didn’t “logically follow” from the statement, but sometimes logic isn’t the way to break down peoples’ statements.

But that’s what you just did! You employed logical terms such as “person does X because,” and “my conclusion therefore follows.” You don’t just get to invent your own standards of what counts as a plausible deduction if you want to be taken seriously in these forums.

For example, if a man walked up to a woman and said, “Women are whores!” we can expect the woman to be upset, right? BUT…we can say that “women are whores” is not necessarily a universal statement; it may be construed as a particular statement. If it is a particular statement, then it is true, because there are some women who are whores. So you might say that the woman wasn’t justified in being angry. However, this man obviously didn’t intend for the statement to be interpreted that way. He simply made an inflammatory remark to upset the woman, and we don’t need logic to tell us that.

I don’t see “God is simple; the devil is complicated” as even remotely equivalent to the inflammatory remark “Women are whores.” Now you’re stretching into disanalogies to rationalize your own unjustified conclusions about the person’s character and psychological motives for saying X. Nice try; but you fail to persuade.

It’s really a matter of common sense, I’m afraid.

Whose “common sense”? Yours? I am afraid your sense is not all that common, Oreo.

 

[o_mlly]

…O_mally just misses the point. But I’ve never heard more logical nonsense than Oreoracle’s reasoning above. So who is being more rationally-minded here?..hmmm…

Well, I don’t think I missed the point; I just didn’t think we all had to go back to PH101. Any proposition with a subject and descriptive predicate can be restated as a conditional.

Conditional:
A. If a thing is the devil, then it is divided and complicated.
Contrapostitive:
B. If a thing is not divided and not complicated, then it is not the devil.
If A is true, B is true.

How Oreocookie took my proposition to be the equivalent to: People are complicated, and to say that the devil is complicated is to imply that being complicated is “evil” or “sinful” or “imperfect.”
is beyond logic. He also errs in a confusion of categories.

 

[Syntax]

Well, I don’t think I missed the point; I just didn’t think we all had to go back to PH101. Any proposition with a subject and descriptive predicate can be restated as a conditional.

Conditional:
A. If a thing is the devil, then it is divided and complicated.
Contrapostitive:
B. If a thing is not divided and not complicated, then it is not the devil.
If A is true, B is true.

Fair enough.

Yes, the form of the above contrapositives are logically equivalent. However, if you wanted to argue the matter in further discussion, a simple suggestion would be to clarify what you mean by “divided” and “complicated” since they are a little ambiguous. But that’s a different topic altogether requiring more investigation. As a Catholic, however, I do understand what you are driving at.

How Oreocookie took my proposition to be the equivalent to: People are complicated, and to say that the devil is complicated is to imply that being complicated is “evil” or “sinful” or “imperfect.”
is beyond logic. He also errs in a confusion of categories.

Yes, Oreo made this big mistake. His construal doesn’t follow whatsoever from your conditional premise.

(1) If a thing is the devil, then it is divided and complicated.

is not logically equivalent to

(2) If a thing is divided and complicated, then it is the devil.

The two statements are not logically equivalent.

Nice job in articulating your actual view. It puts Oreo back his in playpen.

 

[Syntax]

Well, I don’t think I missed the point; I just didn’t think we all had to go back to PH101. Any proposition with a subject and descriptive predicate can be restated as a conditional.

Conditional:
A. If a thing is the devil, then it is divided and complicated.
Contrapostitive:
B. If a thing is not divided and not complicated, then it is not the devil.
If A is true, B is true.

But we DID have to go back to Logic 101; it just wasn’t your fault. It was Oreo’s irrational jumping to conclusions that made us have to do that…In case you haven’t noticed already, Oreo does this quite often.

Yes, the form of the above contrapositives are logically equivalent. However, if you wanted to argue the matter in further discussion, a simple suggestion would be to clarify what you mean by “divided” and “complicated” since they are a little ambiguous. But that’s a different topic altogether requiring more investigation. As a Catholic, however, I do understand what you are driving at.

How Oreocookie took my proposition to be the equivalent to: People are complicated, and to say that the devil is complicated is to imply that being complicated is “evil” or “sinful” or “imperfect.”
-]is beyond logic/-] *** *** He also errs in a confusion of categories**.[Yes, very much so] **

Yes, Oreo made this big mistake. Oreo’s construal doesn’t follow whatsoever from your conditional premise.

(1) If a thing is the devil, then it is divided and complicated,

is not logically equivalent to

(2) If a thing is divided and complicated, then it is the devil.

The two statements are not logically equivalent.

And Oreo’s “category error” involved further incorrectly interpreting you as saying,

(3) If a thing is divided and complicated, then it is evil.

But (3) is clearly false too. So much the worse for Oreo!

Nice job in articulating your actual view. It puts Oreo back his in playpen.

 

[Oreoracle]

You miss the point like you always do. The question is not about the *rudeness *of the remark. The matter concerns your very poor and presumptuous inferences about the person making that remark.

It seems fair to assume that there are powerful emotions behind rude remarks. Either that, or the person is simply oblivious to the rudeness of their remarks. I’ll let o_mlly decide which category they fall under. Heck, maybe o_mlly falls under both categories!

After all, getting lost down the rabbit-hole of rational thinking will make a person go completely mad, just as Nietzsche went mad–and the devil himself caught Nietzsche by the balls.

Haha. And you say I attack other philosophers groundlessly! Geez…

I really don’t care to continue with your shenanigans. You can keep thinking that, for some, life is a battle against your imaginary friend, and o_mlly can continue attributing qualities to said imaginary friend. Oh wait…maybe I should say that the devil is the imaginary enemy of another imaginary friend of yours. Alas, such comments will get me banned!

So employing our reason all the time in matters where it should not be employed is faulty, since love, relationship, and commitment to God are much more important than trying to find a proof for His existence anyways.

I’m not surprised that you would say that. “Um, yeah, reasoning is great and all, except whenever it gets in the way of the things I like…” If that doesn’t sound like a warrant for simplemindedness, I don’t know what does. You’re simply saying that because you have a cherished belief, it is beyond criticism. In fact, you talk as though criticism of your beliefs isn’t worthwhile; assuming they are true is somehow “more important.” Nothing says “don’t think, just be a sheep” quite like that!

 

[Syntax]

It seems fair to assume that there are powerful emotions behind rude remarks. Either that, or the person is simply oblivious to the rudeness of their remarks. I’ll let o_mlly decide which category they fall under. Heck, maybe o_mlly falls under both categories!

Considering the extent to which you continue to falsely accuse people of being “ignorant,” “blind,” “unintelligent,” “close-minded,” and “condemning” without inquiring further, it’s difficult to see how o_mlly and I are not far from the truth about individuals like yourself.

Haha. And you say I attack other philosophers groundlessly! Geez…

Oh please… Considering I’ve read all of his books several times over, taken many courses in graduate profession as a philosopher, written several papers on him, discussed his views at great lengths with other philosophers for over 15 years, and being a personal fan for over 6 years–it is really difficult to see your point, Mr. Presumption.

I really don’t care to continue with your shenanigans. You can keep thinking that, for some, life is a battle against your imaginary friend, and o_mlly can continue attributing qualities to said imaginary friend. Oh wait…maybe I should say that the devil is the imaginary enemy of another imaginary friend of yours. Alas, such comments will get me banned!

I get it. So when you find out o_mlly is much more intelligent than you thought because we both refuted your dumb generalizations in the last post, you result to using ad hominem attacks. Clearly, you lack the ability to say anything intelligent, informative, and interesting. It’s truly a wonder what your own motives are for joining a Catholic forum…

I’m not surprised that you would say that. “Um, yeah, reasoning is great and all, except whenever it gets in the way of the things I like…” If that doesn’t sound like a warrant for simplemindedness, I don’t know what does. You’re simply saying that because you have a cherished belief, it is beyond criticism. In fact, you talk as though criticism of your beliefs isn’t worthwhile; assuming they are true is somehow “more important.” Nothing says “don’t think, just be a sheep” quite like that!

There you go again: presumptively strawmanning every Christian believer you come across without inquiring further… Interestingly enough, I haven’t heard even one rational argument from you at all–only false generalizations about mine and everyone else’s actual beliefs. I wonder: were you born without any rational capacities, or do you just enjoy slamming everyone because you’re so insecure?