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Are all sceptics materialists?

Tale said:
If something we couldn't model, something complex, or bizzare, was interacting with the material world in ways that have distinct appreciable effects, but wasn't making an effort to hide itself, we'd still see it.

You don't have to know the whole model to see where the existing model fails.
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I entirely agree with all of this.

And if this was the situation we were in, then we'd continue to call the background stuff without any material interaction "hidden" or "immaterial" and we wouldn't claim to have collapsed dualism into monism.
 
TheAdversary said:
I've been arguing that I think that modern physical theories are moving towards absurdity. Computer Simulation or Multiverse is no better than religion; Religion even trumps those theories in evidence!
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i) Please define Materialist. There are several definitions in common use, and it would help your argument a lot if we knew which one you meant. and:

TheAdversary said:
Essentially, Materialism is the denial of Free Will.
Click to expand...

is not a helpful definition.

ii) Please can you change how you format your posts on
this forum without using
ENTER everytime you get to the edge of your
screen.

People view this site on
many devices and trying to follow what you are writing or
replying to
your posts, when you use ENTER to force a carriage return at random places
makes this annoying.

Just write a whole sentence out on one line until you come to the end of your sentence, or paragraph, or train of thought. Then hit ENTER. It'll make things much easier to read, especially for people using smaller screens, or devices using larger type or lower screen resoultions. Thank you.

Islam, [...] That's evidence. I doesn't trump Quantum Mechanics or
Relativity in evidence but it does trump Multiverse theory.
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There is no evidence to support Islam. It's a monotheistic religion. There's evidence that some guy existed a while ago, and wrote a book that many people read and believed in, but you can probably find people that take the Lord of The Rings or Song of Ice and Fire literally.

I consider myself a sceptic, and I believe that it's highly likely that we're all running on a computer simulation somewhere. I am not sure if that makes me a "non-materialist" by your definition or not.

Whether we are in a real world or a simulated world though makes little difference at the end of the day. Our lives are very short in the general scheme of things and I think it's better to make the most of what time you do have, and treat things as real in practice, even though I have sneaky suspicions, that in theory, this is all a kind of Matrix.
 
As far as the typing goes I am not seeing what looks like hard returns, Darat you copied his first post and I counted what appear to be nine hard returns but on my puter I don't see any. In fact his posts don't look any different than most. Certainly not saying you don't see them but maybe another explanation?
 
If your browser is wide enough that each of his lines of text displays on one line, you may not notice.
 
It's a formatting issue I've had when generating text in one platform or software, copy pasting it into a low functionality txt program like Notepad and copypasting it into forum software from there. Certain text programs actually shove their screen width into the document. I had it happen once or twice at Icke when using Notepad or Wordpad to generate long complicated debunks with pictures, charts and calculations, written offline to prevent loss of unposted work from forum glitches.

It isn't frequently seen because most people a)notice the problem b)give at least half a **** about presentation of their words and c) aren't routinely filtering text through some other software for some obscure reason probably related to hiding IP.
 
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Are any of the skeptics who don't accept materialism not naturalists? I doubt it, Darat and those who speak for the dead and celebrities may chime in.
 
Ambrosia said:
There is no evidence to support Islam. It's a monotheistic religion. There's evidence that some guy existed a while ago, and wrote a book that many people read and
believed in, but you can probably find people that take the Lord of The Rings or Song of Ice and Fire literally.
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Except that those writers didn't end up conquering the entire Middle East by themselves and stabilizing a society that our society now even depends on.
This is unlikely enough, to consider a supernatural explanation. It's not at the level of certainty of QM or Relativity though. I wouldn't claim that.

Ambrosia said:
I consider myself a sceptic, and I believe that it's highly likely that we're all running on a computer simulation somewhere. I am not sure if that makes me a
"non-materialist" by your definition or not.
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There is not a single shred of evidence for computer simulation. Islam's claim of Divinity trumps computer simulation in evidence. So the reason to prefer
computer simulation can't be evidence-based. In fact, if you're seeking evidence for magical programmers, you could listen to Mohammed, even.
Maybe he was contacted by a magical computer programmer who told him what to do. See that the position of the Materialists is becoming absurd?
 
TheAdversary said:
Except that those writers didn't end up conquering the entire Middle East by themselves and stabilizing a society that our society now even depends on.
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Non sequiter. The Roman Empire was even bigger but that didn't make their religion correct. The British Empire was the largest of all. Still not a correct religion.
 
TheAdversary said:
There is not a single shred of evidence for computer simulation. Islam's claim of Divinity trumps computer simulation in evidence. So the reason to prefer
computer simulation can't be evidence-based. In fact, if you're seeking evidence for magical programmers, you could listen to Mohammed, even.
Maybe he was contacted by a magical computer programmer who told him what to do. See that the position of the Materialists is becoming absurd?
Click to expand...

You're posting on a discussion forum. People have asked you for a working definition of a materialist multiple times, but you don't answer.
People have told you multiple times that simulated reality is not an accepted theory, neither in science, precisely because there is no evidence for it, nor in materialist philosophy (though determining any kind of consensus in philosophy is like herding cats).

You have ignored this every time. This can't be an accident.
If you don't mean to discuss anything, why start a thread on a discussion forum?
 
ehcks said:
Non sequiter. The Roman Empire was even bigger but that didn't make their religion correct. The British Empire was the largest of all. Still not a correct
religion.
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I never said that a Religion needs to be 'correct' to stabilize a society. I don't believe that any idea, even very rigorous ones like QM,
can ever be correct. It's a Thelemic doctrine that it's not possible to teach anything but falsehoods, only that some ideas are less wrong than others.
And sometimes, mankind just needs a 'correct lie' to progress further. Dennett's 'Consciousness Explained' is another example of such an idea.

Porpoise of Life said:
You're posting on a discussion forum. People have asked you for a working definition of a materialist multiple times, but you don't answer.
Click to expand...

Nonsense. I get this :

Originally Posted by TheAdversary
Essentially, Materialism is the denial of Free Will.

is not a helpful definition.

I also already said that 'Wij zijn ons brein'-'We are our brain' by Dick Swaab is a good definition of Materialism.
 
TheAdversary said:
Except that those writers didn't end up conquering the entire Middle East by themselves and stabilizing a society that our society now even depends on.
Click to expand...

In what year did Mohammed conquer the entire Middle East by himself?
 
TheAdversary said:
I also already said that 'Wij zijn ons brein'-'We are our brain' by Dick Swaab is a good definition of Materialism.
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Let me assert a definition based on this.

When you say "materialism" you really mean "mind reductionism" - the idea that the mind is entirely a product of the physical brain.

Is that correct? Can we just substitute every time you said "materialist" with "reductionist with respect to the philosophy of mind"?
 
The Adversary

I would be grateful for a translation of this:
also already said that 'Wij zijn ons brein'-'We are our brain' by Dick Swaab
Click to expand...
into something my screen reader can read!!!
Thank you.
 
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