Do clever people outsmart themselves?

[halleyscomet]

I don't say intelligent people cannot be happy. But the consensus of opinions on this forum is there is no God. Therefore most people here have to face a universe without a meaning or purpose. But religious people have belief in immortality of the soul and feel comforted by that.

Nonsense. That’s a self-serving platitude with no substance behind it. Here are two counter-arguments.

http://rabbisacks.org/danger-ahead-there-are-good-reasons-why-god-created-atheists/

”Do you believe,” the disciple asked the rabbi, “that God created everything for a purpose?”

“I do,” replied the rabbi.

“Well,” asked the disciple, “why did God create atheists?”

The rabbi paused before giving an answer, and when he spoke his voice was soft and intense. “Sometimes we who believe, believe too much. We see the cruelty, the suffering, the injustice in the world and we say: ‘This is the will of God.’ We accept what we should not accept. That is when God sends us atheists to remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion. Sometimes what we accept in the name of God is what we should be fighting against in the name of God.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/5f0iep/why_did_god_create_atheists_a_rabbis_beautiful/

When the Rabbi was asked "Why did God create atheists?"...

"God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all - the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right.

When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say "I'll pray that God will help you." Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist - imagine there is no God who could help, and say "I will help you"."

What your argument really does is accuse the religious of being sociopathic narcissists. You are claiming that without a cosmic sky-Daddy ready to spank them for all eternity the religious will find no motivation, inspiration, or empathy in the world around them. In short, you’re claiming the religious are amoral monsters who won’t help unless a space-wizard forces them to.

Your message is a degenerate one that denigrates your fellow humans.

 

[halleyscomet]

 

[Darat]

I don't have a clue how science could do that. Ethics and morality are social constructs. Science merely informs those constructs.

As joe says, or as I would usually put it ethics and morality are human behaviours. If we can model human behaviours (and we can more and more) then there is nothing in principle that means we can't tell Jane that she "should" do X in circumstances Y.

 

[Darat]

Yes, I think that science more or less deals itself out of moraity and ethics.



Philosophy is not much help either.



And yet we all can't avoid having to make moral and ethical decisions all the time.



How do we do it? Common sense I suppose.

Heuristic solutions embedded in hardware, quite easy to explain. Nothing mysterious as to why a system "chooses" to do X in circumstances Y.

Fiendishly complicated of course.

 

[JoeMorgue]

As joe says, or as I would usually put it ethics and morality are human behaviours. If we can model human behaviours (and we can more and more) then there is nothing in principle that means we can't tell Jane that she "should" do X in circumstances Y.

This.

Now, again, I know the game and Philosophizer Peanut Gallery is going to run in demanding what basically amounts to ethical solipsism where we have to prove suffering is bad or some other nonsense, but that's the gist of it.

The only ethics/morality I care about, as I in the only ethics/morality question I consider valid are questions about the reducing the suffering of conscious creatures. That's it. And that's not some mystical thing we don't have and/or can't get data on.

It's possible to reduce people's suffering. We can collect, analyze data on that. We can alter what we do based on that data.

That is science. Just because it's not someone in a labcoat holding a beaker of blue fluid over a Bunsen Burner doesn't make it not science.

All the other various angels dancing on the head of a pin trolley problems aren't valid questions.

 

[Darat]

What is boring is scientists holding forth on things like reductionism, emergence, free will and "something from nothing" without really defining their terms or not realising that anything useful they can say on the subject has already been said decades or even centuries ago and if they had only just deigned to talk it over with someone in the philosophy department they could have saved themselves valuable time.

I don't mind people not wanting to do philosophy, but if so they should stay away from those subjects and not try to reinvent philosophical wheels, especially those that philosophers themselves have long given up as a pointless exercise.

Which philosopher explained how the universe arose, or let me not even make.either that hard, which one explained the initial inflation of the universe?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Which philosopher explained how the universe arose, or let me not even make.either that hard, which one explained the initial inflation of the universe?

None of them.

Apparently philosophy is supposed to get credit for NOT answering questions nobody else has also answered.

Apparently when science can't answer questions yet it loses, when philosophy never answers questions it wins.

 

[Robin]

As joe says, or as I would usually put it ethics and morality are human behaviours. If we can model human behaviours (and we can more and more) then there is nothing in principle that means we can't tell Jane that she "should" do X in circumstances Y.

There is nothing in principle that means that we can't throw a dice and tell Jane that she "should" do X in circumstance Y.

 

[Robin]

None of them.

Apparently philosophy is supposed to get credit for NOT answering questions nobody else has also answered.

Apparently when science can't answer questions yet it loses, when philosophy never answers questions it wins.

Can you give me an example of any of this happening?

Oh, I forgot, you are allowed to make claims and then cast your inability to back them up as some kind of intellectual superiority.

 

[HansMustermann]

There is nothing in principle that means that we can't throw a dice and tell Jane that she "should" do X in circumstance Y.

You certainly could. But I think the more relevant point is that if you only base it on what some supposedly smart guy pulled out of the ass, then yeah, you're not in any way more justified than when you just rolled some dice.

I repeat, "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." And "some famous dead guy said so" is not really more evidence than if I cast the runes, or yes, rolled some dice.

 

[Robin]

Now, again, I know the game and Philosophizer Peanut Gallery is going to run in demanding what basically amounts to ethical solipsism where we have to prove suffering is bad or some other nonsense, but that's the gist of it.

No-one has done this.

Why don't you deal with what people actually are saying rather than the thing you arbitrarily pretend they are going to say?

 

[Robin]

Which philosopher explained how the universe arose, or let me not even make.either that hard, which one explained the initial inflation of the universe?

Does that really seem to you like a reasonable response to what I said?

 

[HansMustermann]

Does that really seem to you like a reasonable response to what I said?

Seems more than reasonable to me. A lot more polite than what I would have said, too.

 

[Robin]

You certainly could. But I think the more relevant point is that if you only base it on what some supposedly smart guy pulled out of the ass, then yeah, you're not in any way more justified than when you just rolled some dice.

I repeat, "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." And "some famous dead guy said so" is not really more evidence than if I cast the runes, or yes, rolled some dice.

Keep it up, I haven't completed my "dumb straw man cracks about philosophy" bingo card yet.

 

[HansMustermann]

Keep it up, I haven't completed my "dumb straw man cracks about philosophy" bingo card yet.

Right. So you can't actually address any actual objection that has been raised, you can only do the above dumbassery. Duly noted.

 

[Robin]

Seems more than reasonable to me. A lot more polite than what I would have said, too.

Suppose a physicist tried re-plumbing your house and made a dog's breakfast of it so that there were leaks springing up everywhere. Would you say "Yeah, that's OK, because what plumber ever told us how the universe began?".

 

[HansMustermann]

Suppose a physicist tried re-plumbing your house and made a dog's breakfast of it so that there were leaks springing up everywhere. Would you say "Yeah, that's OK, because what plumber ever told us how the universe began?".

No, but I would say you're definitely in the dumb flailing and handwaving stage at this point.

Because THAT has nothing to do with what Darat said and why it was an apropriate response.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Suppose a physicist tried re-plumbing your house and made a dog's breakfast of it so that there were leaks springing up everywhere. Would you say "Yeah, that's OK, because what plumber ever told us how the universe began?".

No, I'd probably say, "At least it's a better job than the philosopher did last week."

Dave

 

[Robin]

Right. So you can't actually address any actual objection that has been raised, you can only do the above dumbassery. Duly noted.

Er which "actual objection"? I am very certain that asserting stuff without evidence is numbers 1 through 9 of the top ten "thou shalt not"s of any self respecting philosopher.

Just because you say that philosophers do something does not make it true.

 

[Robin]

No, but I would say you're definitely in the dumb flailing and handwaving stage at this point.

You are projecting again.

Because THAT has nothing to do with what Darat said and why it was an apropriate response.

I am betting that you didn't even read the post Darat was responding to, because mine was a pretty close analogy.