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Are all sceptics materialists?

Jrrarglblarg said:
Google is your friend

"Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions. It was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago."
.....
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You live and learn. Thanks.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
"Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions. It was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago."
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You forgot to mention that Zoroaster conquered all of Africa on his own.
 
TheAdversary said:
Islam however ... it happened and it worked. So, Islam trumps both of those unproven hypothesises in evidence.
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Evidence of what? There certainly is evidence of an Muslim empire within a generation of Muhammad's death. But I fail to understand how this connects to any cosmology or supernatural claims of Islam.

As far as I understand, the religion was not even the main reason for the Muslim success. Plenty of non-Muslim forces fought for the Muslims, and the prospect of plunder and slaves was the driving force. The two empires they fought were weakened by civil wars, and as we know, the Persian empire immediately collapsed, whereas the Roman (Byzantine) empire proved too tough to crack, at least for the next 800 years.

Muhammad himself was not much of a commander, but chose his generals well. The empire he founded was not based on religion until about two hundred years later after two bloody civil wars when emperors (caliphs) tried to gain authority through their piety rather than their blood lines to the prophet.

So Muhammad founded an empire (which by the way ended up larger than the Roman empire ever was - people tend to forget that it contained most of Central Asia, and parts of Pakistan), but so have many others. There are Chinese conquerors with more success in their own life time.

The durability of the Muslim empire seems to be based on their incorporation of existing imperial structures and civil servants in their system. The Muslims were not at all primitive nomadic people, but intelligent administrators who could recognize a good system when they saw it.

So tell us again, just how is the Muslim success evidence of anything connected to their religion?
 
Porpoise of Life said:
Becoming the dominant power in a region is not evidence for the validity of the religion of the conquerors.
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The whole idea behind becoming a dominant power is that it becomes very difficult to question the validity of whatever the dominant power tells you.
In essence, you get punished when you go against Law. It's the region of criminals and heroes.
Now, the more the Law is actually Just, the less we need the heroes. And it's my conviction that a just Law requires a Master and that it's in the
succession of the Masters and the rectification of Law where the supernatural is to be found. The majority of the people nowadays take the word
of the scientist as religious law. Very few actually make an attempt to ascertain the validity of the claims by themselves, as an ideal scientist
should, contrary to the intention of the Heroes of science. I've questioned the validity of many ideas myself, always met with lots of opposition.
So the question of validity is a lot more complicated than that.

I've repeated the original argument enough now. I took a different route here.

Porpoise of Life said:
You're accusing scientists or sceptics of being dogmatic in claiming the brain is the mind (your 'definition' of a materialist), because they don't
take unevidenced religious claims more seriously than they do a thought experiment for which no scientist claims to have evidence anyway.
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Except that this 'thought experiment' is taking the place of religion. And those are utter **** religions that can't keep a society stable and are
in fact now tearing the world asunder. It's just pure stupidity unleashed, shoved down the throats of everybody and cannot be questioned because
(it used to be) Science!
 
Lol at "Zorroastrianism".

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Sorry. Carry on.
 
steenkh said:
Muhammad himself was not much of a commander, but chose his generals well.
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This is pure nonsense. The ability to choose the correct subordinates is what defines a good leader.
 
Are all sceptics materialists?

No.

I am a sceptic. I understand the importance of the material in relation to my position as an individual but I also understand that there is possibly more than meets the eye.

Being sceptical is a very good rational attribute. I am sceptical of theism and atheism equally.
 
TheAdversary said:
This is pure nonsense. The ability to choose the correct subordinates is what defines a good leader.
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In any case, Muhammad was not present at any of the major battles, and that is what I was talking about. Even if he had been (lots of other conquerors were), would it be evidence that his religion was correct?
 
TheAdversary said:
Except that this 'thought experiment' is taking the place of religion. And those are utter **** religions that can't keep a society stable and are
in fact now tearing the world asunder. It's just pure stupidity unleashed, shoved down the throats of everybody and cannot be questioned because
(it used to be) Science!
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Nonsense.
Tell me, which scientists actually believe in a simulated reality, and claim it's science? Names please.
And note that this is not enough to create a religion.
So, also tell me which of these scientists, who believe in simulated reality, create rituals to appease the Invisible Simulators, and hand down rules by Divine/IT mandate? You know, religion...

You want to complain about science because it doesn't view human society like you do. You especially want to complain about psychology and psychiatry, by your own admission due to your own experiences with professionals in these fields.

For some reason you've chosen to attack physics, by misconstruing a postulate from philosophy, to criticize psychology and sociology. Because you know, they're all science...

Even if any of it would stick (and it doesn't), this does not bring you one inch closer to providing evidence for your own views.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
Nonsense.
Tell me, which scientists actually believe in a simulated reality, and claim it's science? Names please.
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Silas R. Beane

https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/silas/

Porpoise of Life said:
And note that this is not enough to create a religion.
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They say it's a thought experiment, but in reality they have no other option intellectually because the 'mind is the brain'-idea forces them to never consider
the 'traditional' supernatural. So they can only end up with a metaphysics, a religion, that doesn't contradict Neuroscience.
So it has the same effect as religion, accept for the fact that those theories cannot stabilize a society and provide a framework for further development.
Materialist metaphysics just turns into childish science fiction fantasies; Something like Islam is much more mature.
Note how they'll keep trying to come up with experiments to try to find proof, much like the religious always tried to come up with proofs for the existence of God.
And the people who keep insisting that we should come up with experiments ... they're the True Believers.

Porpoise of Life said:
So, also tell me which of these scientists, who believe in simulated reality, create rituals to appease the Invisible Simulators, and hand down rules by
Divine/IT mandate? You know, religion...
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Computer Simulation believers are talking about trying to find code in string theory, DNA etc. So they're actively looking for communications from the
programmers. Exactly like religion. And what do you think is going to happen when someone finds an actual communication from them? It'll be treated
as the Word of God, then. No different from religion except that most religions make a Hell of a lot more sense.

Porpoise of Life said:
You want to complain about science because it doesn't view human society like you do. You especially want to complain about psychology and psychiatry,
by your own admission due to your own experiences with professionals in these fields.
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I do not complain about psychiatrists because of my 'experiences' with them. That's your reading. I complain that they are unscientific in their bias to
Materialism and that they are a danger to Liberty because of this.

Porpoise of Life said:
For some reason you've chosen to attack physics, by misconstruing a postulate from philosophy, to criticize psychology and sociology. Because you know, they're all science...
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The reason is that I think the bias towards Materialism or the 'mind-is-the-brain' is unscientific and treated as dogma. And this is a danger to Liberty
especially in the case of the mind-sciences and those sciences dealing with human behaviour.

Porpoise of Life said:
Even if any of it would stick (and it doesn't), this does not bring you one inch closer to providing evidence for your own views.
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Anything that doesn't fit your world view isn't 'evidence' to you. This is the essence of false science. Mandate on what constitutes evidence.
I have provided evidence continually, on many threads but ... you're the evidence, actually. The proof of how corrupt Western academic science really is ...
 
Just think about it for a second... If you think that the academy is that rotten and ********** up, that's truly depressing. How we think about the Christian Middle Ages is how this guy thinks about modern science, there are massive industries of mental health doctors who are totally screwing with people's brains with voodoo science. That's depressing, if I believed that, it would be truly horrifying on a scale that I'm at a loss to describe in detail.
 
Joey McGee said:
That's depressing, if I believed that, it would be truly horrifying on a scale that I'm at a loss to describe in detail.
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Yes, that's why I called it a Holocaust.
 
AdamSK said:
I strongly disagree. The rise of Islam in that part of the world is can be well understood in terms of the cultural, political, and economic factors that existed at the time. As others have pointed out, it is no more miraculous than the rapid growth of other empires and cultural phenomena.
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True, for example Islam probably wouldn't have been a significant factor without the economic, social and cultural disruption caused by the Event of 535CE.
 
TheAdversary said:
Silas R. Beane
https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/silas/
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I'll look into that, thanks.

ETA: I looked into it. Professor Beane has co-authored an article with a proposal for how one particular kind of simulation hypothesis could be falsified. So, a guy doing his job, and no mention about personal beliefs.

TheAdversary said:
Anything that doesn't fit your world view isn't 'evidence' to you. This is the essence of false science. Mandate on what constitutes evidence.
I have provided evidence continually, on many threads but ... you're the evidence, actually. The proof of how corrupt Western academic science really is ...
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To the highlighted: You don't know very much at all about my world view.
I'd suggest you put away the Crowley books for a while and look up the difference between evidence and assertion.

You accuse modern science of being false because they have standards for what counts as evidence, but you feel completely justified in dismissing all scientific evidence you don't like because it's 'corrupt'.
Any more irony and you'd be ferromagnetic, sir.

Your 'evidence' in this post is just fabrication. How can I be proof that science is corrupt when I do not represent science?
You keep confusing 'some guy on the internet' with 'academic professional', and 'personally held opinion' with 'scientific theory', that's why you linked to some random guy's blog when you were asked to cite a scientist before.
 
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Katy Perry has conquered the entirety of modern western civilization all on her own. Therefore there are no computer simulations, or something.
 
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