Merged The razor of Hitchens and the Spirits!

Calderaro said:
Let us suppose that, by some circumstance, an entire people were to acquire the certainty that in eight days, in a month, in a year if you will, they would be annihilated, and that no individual would survive, that there would be no trace of themselves after death; what would they do during this time? Would they work for their betterment, for their education? Would they devote themselves to work in order to live? Would they respect the rights, the goods, the lives of their fellow men? Would they submit to the laws, to any authority, even the most legitimate: paternal authority? Would they have any duty whatsoever? Certainly not. Well then! What cannot be achieved en masse, the doctrine of nihilism achieves, each day, individually. If the consequences of this are not as disastrous as they might be, it is firstly because among the majority of unbelievers there is more bravado than true incredulity, more doubt than conviction, and because they are more afraid of nothingness than they try to appear: the title of strong-mindedness flatters their self-esteem; secondly, because absolute unbelievers are a tiny minority; despite themselves, they feel the ascendancy of the contrary opinion and are maintained by a material force; but if absolute incredulity were one day to become the opinion of the majority, society would be in dissolution. This is what the propagation of the doctrine of nihilism tends to do.
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Disagreed.
 
Calderaro said:
Let us suppose that, by some circumstance, an entire people were to acquire the certainty that in eight days, in a month, in a year if you will, they would be annihilated, and that no individual would survive, that there would be no trace of themselves after death; what would they do during this time? Would they work for their betterment, for their education? Would they devote themselves to work in order to live? Would they respect the rights, the goods, the lives of their fellow men? Would they submit to the laws, to any authority, even the most legitimate: paternal authority? Would they have any duty whatsoever? Certainly not. Well then! What cannot be achieved en masse, the doctrine of nihilism achieves, each day, individually. If the consequences of this are not as disastrous as they might be, it is firstly because among the majority of unbelievers there is more bravado than true incredulity, more doubt than conviction, and because they are more afraid of nothingness than they try to appear: the title of strong-mindedness flatters their self-esteem; secondly, because absolute unbelievers are a tiny minority; despite themselves, they feel the ascendancy of the contrary opinion and are maintained by a material force; but if absolute incredulity were one day to become the opinion of the majority, society would be in dissolution. This is what the propagation of the doctrine of nihilism tends to do.
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I still think The Shawshank Redemption is your greatest performance ever. It really is magical.
 
Calderaro said:
Let us suppose that, by some circumstance, an entire people were to acquire the certainty that in eight days, in a month, in a year if you will, they would be annihilated, and that no individual would survive, that there would be no trace of themselves after death; what would they do during this time? Would they work for their betterment, for their education? Would they devote themselves to work in order to live? Would they respect the rights, the goods, the lives of their fellow men? Would they submit to the laws, to any authority, even the most legitimate: paternal authority? Would they have any duty whatsoever? Certainly not. Well then! What cannot be achieved en masse, the doctrine of nihilism achieves, each day, individually. If the consequences of this are not as disastrous as they might be, it is firstly because among the majority of unbelievers there is more bravado than true incredulity, more doubt than conviction, and because they are more afraid of nothingness than they try to appear: the title of strong-mindedness flatters their self-esteem; secondly, because absolute unbelievers are a tiny minority; despite themselves, they feel the ascendancy of the contrary opinion and are maintained by a material force; but if absolute incredulity were one day to become the opinion of the majority, society would be in dissolution. This is what the propagation of the doctrine of nihilism tends to do.
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You shouldn't judge everyone else by your own standards.
 
Good skeptics accept that not everything can be understood through current scientific frameworks, which allows for a degree of uncertainty, but still advocate for evidence-based conclusions.
 
Calderaro said:
Let us suppose that, by some circumstance, an entire people were to acquire the certainty that in eight days, in a month, in a year if you will, they would be annihilated, and that no individual would survive, that there would be no trace of themselves after death; what would they do during this time? Would they work for their betterment, for their education? Would they devote themselves to work in order to live? Would they respect the rights, the goods, the lives of their fellow men? Would they submit to the laws, to any authority, even the most legitimate: paternal authority? Would they have any duty whatsoever? Certainly not. Well then! What cannot be achieved en masse, the doctrine of nihilism achieves, each day, individually. If the consequences of this are not as disastrous as they might be, it is firstly because among the majority of unbelievers there is more bravado than true incredulity, more doubt than conviction, and because they are more afraid of nothingness than they try to appear: the title of strong-mindedness flatters their self-esteem; secondly, because absolute unbelievers are a tiny minority; despite themselves, they feel the ascendancy of the contrary opinion and are maintained by a material force; but if absolute incredulity were one day to become the opinion of the majority, society would be in dissolution. This is what the propagation of the doctrine of nihilism tends to do.
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No, we don't all secretly believe that you're right. No, we aren't dangerous "nihlists" simply because we don't believe in your fairy tales.
 
Calderaro said:
Let us suppose that, by some circumstance, an entire people were to acquire the certainty that in eight days, in a month, in a year if you will, they would be annihilated, and that no individual would survive, that there would be no trace of themselves after death; what would they do during this time? Would they work for their betterment, for their education? Would they devote themselves to work in order to live? Would they respect the rights, the goods, the lives of their fellow men? Would they submit to the laws, to any authority, even the most legitimate: paternal authority? Would they have any duty whatsoever? Certainly not. Well then! What cannot be achieved en masse, the doctrine of nihilism achieves, each day, individually. If the consequences of this are not as disastrous as they might be, it is firstly because among the majority of unbelievers there is more bravado than true incredulity, more doubt than conviction, and because they are more afraid of nothingness than they try to appear: the title of strong-mindedness flatters their self-esteem; secondly, because absolute unbelievers are a tiny minority; despite themselves, they feel the ascendancy of the contrary opinion and are maintained by a material force; but if absolute incredulity were one day to become the opinion of the majority, society would be in dissolution. This is what the propagation of the doctrine of nihilism tends to do.
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An argument based on consequences from the absence of a particular belief is not evidence for the truth of that belief. Anyway, I'm sure it wouldn't be all that difficult to find examples from history of folks with a (state-sanctioned) belief "respect[ing] the rights, the goods, the lives of their fellow men" by doing things like, I don't know, maybe killing them all and letting god sort them out.
 
I'm feeling like we should consult a Ouija Board about the existence of spirits, but I'm fairly sure it would tell us to ◊◊◊◊ off.
 
Come on Calderaro.

I threw you a big bone to flesh out and you haven't tried yet.

You say a spirit is a bodyless soul.
I said there was a study to see what a soul weighs.
Another recalled it weighed 21 grams.

Then another asked : 21 grams of what?

This is where you and your lab partner Perplexity step in to find all old research, find follow up work on it and then show us how to detect that 21 grams of ??? by more than a scale. We don't know what we are looking for yet.

Accomplish this task and you have evidence we could get behind. We couldn't refute it!
That's what you want, right?
 
How about "can you accept other than empirical evidence?" and "can we start the debate over?" He seems to have those down pretty pat.
 
Calderaro said:
Let us suppose that, by some circumstance...
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I wonder who you're quoting this time. Anyway, I see that you are trying a new gambit of suggesting that we are only pretending not to believe in spirits.

This seems to suggest you have difficulty in conceiving that people can sincerely hold different beliefs to your own. Is that really so hard for you?
 
Calderaro said:
anecdotal evidence in certain cases can be considered?
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No. At best, anecdotes can indicate a potential interesting area of inquiry. But anecdotes are not evidence, because you can just make stuff up, or be wrong about something.

When you are wrong about something, how do you find out?
 
If we want the AI in this thread to learn there's a point where you just don't win (hello, Joshua) then perhaps we should invite it to play pong :

 
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