Taking the time to write this because it'll enable me to get into the writing mode as it were.
I got caught up in Philosophy of Religion when I was about 16 or 17. It wasn't that I was some Christian and I got caught up discovering that I was wrong and became an atheist. It wasn't that. What actually happened was I was introduced to a guy called VenomfangX on youtube.
He was a creationist. I fucking loved it. It wasn't that he was new and persuasive, no, none of that. He was just hilarious. Unintentionally hilarious. The very first video I watched was 'Satan invented evolution'. It was just a barrel of laughs hearing stuff which me, someone who only had a double GCSE in Science and knew little else of, could refute. Well, 3/4s of it.
Anyway, I had never met a creationist before in my life, well... I remember my girlfriend when I was 15 who told me that she believed that the world was created by God in 7 days, and that was enough to blow my mind. But to meet someone who tried to argue by science that it was created by God a few thousand years ago? Seriously, it honestly blew my mind. I couldn't comprehend it.
From there I got caught up in creationism and evolution. I started reading articles and some popular science stuff on evolution and I learnt more through other people. I gave me a decent comprehension on how it worked and it was good fun.
But through this it gets irritating. I see someone people flicking in a coin into the pool which just ruins it. Thought I'd go through a few of these quickly.
Firstly, theistic evolution. I don't understand this. To my recollection there's two views associated with this label. There's one which states that evolution was done with God's assistance and the other which states that God created the beings which evolved.
Few criticisms. You've got an all powerful God who can do absolutely anything he wants and then he decides 'you know what, I could create humans at the flick of my fingers, BUT! I got a better idea. I'll evolve them over millions of years. It'll be fantastic! By the time they get to them they'll even have the spine for a quadruped thus giving them back pain in later life! Aho, I am a smart God.' It's long, unnecessary, not worth it, and it produces problems.
With the 'he created them to evolve', you can raise the 'why didn't he just create them' thing or, if they are more deist and believe he created them and fucked off basically, two things come to mind. Number one - evolution is still evolution. Evolution says nothing about the origins of life, so why not just say 'evolution'? Secondly, in a hugely isolated world of billions and billions of lifeless systems, why did he think 'yeah, right there, on that place which is still deadly and in many places uninhabitable but that'll do.'
The other thing that comes in is the idea that religion and science still go together. Apart from the fact that not only, let's say, Christianity is self contradictory by almost any possible interpretation, plus the idea that their conception of their God is logically impossible, let's ignore that for a quick second.
Please, explain to me how Genesis 1, which explicitly says over and over that God created the world, man and more, is a metaphorical account. Or, you could go with the idea that 'aww, that was just when they didn't know any better.' Yeah? Does that mean their direct contact with God throughout the Old Testament was simply because 'they didn't know any better'? If they simply 'didn't know any better', what credibility does your religion still hold?
It doesn't, you're jumping through hoops and playing mental gymnastics. This applies to anyone who defends religion even though they are not religious. But blah blah blah...
I’ve decided to this because this is a topic which everyone seems to be interested in and yet, at the same time, not many seem to be able appreciate it or are unaware at the glowing problems.
The cogito. What is the cogito?
It’s best described by bringing up the context, and in doing so I would like to explain Philosophical scepticism (which in terms of Descartes' scepticism should be known as the Method of Doubt), why it's important and to offer a level of appreciation of it.
Rene Descartes is commonly known was the father of Western Philosophy, and rightly so. He offered ground breaking ideas which broke away from the Philosophical slump in Philosophy which was brought by the middle age and the dominance of religion.
The old approach to discover things that you were sceptical about was to ask someone of authority to explain it to you. This may be a neighbourhoodly priest who knows his theology inside and out.
Descartes offers a different method. He goes as far that people can use their own reason and their own intellect to solve these problems by themselves. A simple idea, but dangerous in time and context.
In finding that there were internal contradictions and problems in what he knew, he decided to wipe away everything he knew. He decided to be sceptical about absolutely everything.
He placed ridiculous amounts of scepticism upon everything which the senses derive. For example, he sensed the external world, so he doubted it. He sensed his own body, so he doubted, and so forth.
Someone who has never encountered Descartes before will rightly go ‘hang on a second’ here. It seems utterly ridiculous for someone to do this. They may even get frustrated and wonder why he is doing it, or even question his sanity.
The reader shouldn’t do this though. Descartes doesn’t really doubt what he calls his ‘habitual knowledge’, being that the world exists as it is and all that. What Descartes does is to wipe away everything which can be ‘doubted’ – he puts it to one side for one reason: he wishes to establish a foundation for all knowledge. He wants to see if he can know anything for certain so he has a model for all knowledge.
Descartes
does not doubt everything to clear himself of ‘knowledge’, but to find
knowledge. Descartes wants to be constructing instead of
deconstructing, but it just so happens that he has to deconstruct
before he constructs. He needs to find out what works and what doesn’t
work. A house won’t stand if the foundations aren’t secure, and
Descartes wants a secure foundation before building the house. Anyway, why would he doubt the senses? Well, have you seen an object before, perceived it as something but instead it turned out to be something else? Much like you wouldn’t lend money to a friend because he did not pay you back the last time, you wouldn’t offer complete trust to the senses.
But if he doubts all senses, what can he even talk about?
Reason. Descartes will later establish that the foundation of knowledge is dependent on reason.
Let’s bring this back a little bit anyway.
I’d like to bring us back to Descartes when he started doubted everything, and had not established his foundation of knowledge.
He asked himself what he can know for certain. He discovered that he is thinking, and something has to exist in order to think.
Therefore, he declares ‘ego sum, ego existo’, ‘I am, I exist’. This is the wording he uses in the Meditations on First Philosophy, his most important Philosophical work. The more famous wording ‘cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think, therefore I am’ was in a different work, Discourse on the Method.
I think this is fairly straight forward and doesn’t require any further explanation.
Some people have hailed this as the most important Philosophical discoveries ever made, or have even said that it’s one of the few things you can truly savage from Philosophy.
Let’s simply take ‘I think’. Let’s break this down. You know that thought is occurring, so there is thinking. The ‘I’ is more curious – we immediately attach this to ‘think’ because we assume that we are the authors of our own thoughts. We are the ones who device our thoughts and think them.
We don’t, however, take a second to think that that is simply an assumption. You cannot prove that you are the author of your own thoughts. The thoughts you are experiencing could be produced by something completely different. Some crazy transcendent being could be giving you those thoughts, including the thought that they are your own thoughts.
We do, however, experience. We are experiencing thought. Something has to exist in order to experience something. We experience thus we exist. If we were to use Descartes Method of Doubt properly, this would be the conclusion he should make. However, because we cannot be sure that we are even the authors of our own thoughts, the Method of Doubt then falls flat onto it's face.
Descartes’ cogito is not impressive because it reaches a solid conclusion by using a false premise. It would be like saying ‘God told me Craig is real therefore Craig is real’. You can find out whether or not I exist without depending on God and God did not tell you that I am real. There is nothing impressive there.
Alas, some people have argued that ‘what’s the point of discovering that you exist?’ or argued that Descartes does a good job in discovering that. I would reject this. Descartes asks himself ‘when giving the highest amount of possible doubt, what is left certain?’ The fact that he exists is one of those things. He then asks what makes it so certain. He concludes that it is certain because it is clear and distinct. Thus, everything which is clear and distinct is certain.
Few things that annoy me and I'm going to let out here as I want to write something which isn't my Philosophy essay.
I'm a Christian but I do hate religion! Who needs religion when you have Jesus?
Dear me. What the hell. You're religious. You have a God you pray to, you have religious ethics to pertain to, you have a divine model you respect. You are religious. End of. I don't care how much you hate the Church with all the bad things it does.
Do you want to know something to? A third of the world's population is Christian and this can be explained Historically. The Church getting strength back in Roman times, how Catholicism dominated Europe, how white colonies expanded across the world taking their Christianity with them plus missionaries... If it wasn't for the Church you most likely wouldn't be a Christian to be fair.
I couldn't care if you hate the Church, it's highly understandable. However, you are religious. End of.
I hate politics so I don't know anything about it - here's my opinion of politics!
What the hell? How the fuck can you announce that you have no knowledge about something and then give an opinion on it? It's almost like telling a doctor 'hey, sorry I know nothing about medicine because I hate the sciences, however I think your diagnosis of cancer is bullshit'. You're talking shit - you are speculating and advancing an opinion on something which you shouldn't be talking about. Why? Because you said it yourself - you're ignorant on that topic.
Philosophy is pointless!
If people are talking about academic arena of Philosophy, fine, I've got no issue with you placing priority on other things.
However, when you say straight up indiscriminately, 'Philosophy is pointless!', to me you look like a fool.
Have you ever discussed art, language, aesthetics, religion, politics? Then you've discussed Philosophy. Philosophy discusses so much, yet when someone dabbles their toes in the shallow waters before the ocean of epistemology, they criticise it because it's too cold, harsh, precise and pointless to them. However, everyone has discussed Philosophy. Philosophy includes art, language, aesthetics (c'mon UG -AX7 isn't metal? Yeah, that was a discussion Philosophical in nature), religion, politics and so much more - topics which if you haven't discussed at some point by now in your life you might as well top yourself off as you're a boring person.
You've willingly engaged in these conversations - and probably enjoyed them. You'd be willing to do it again, and you regularly do. You take part in Philosophy all the time, yet you sit back and have the audacity to say 'Philosophy is pointless!'
You know what, you're pointless.
Also, let's count up what Philosophy has brought to the world: Linguistics, Theology, Philogy, History, Maths, Science... And I'm not joking. These things can stem back to Philosophy or is Philosophy.
I don't care if you're not interested in academic Philosophy, just please, don't be so silly.
And I've now got myself into a writing mode so I'm now able to finish off my essay. If you bothered to read this pretentious rant, kudos.
This instantly reminded me of my own perception of ethics which as vast as it is, I'm going to draw in a specific idea and use it to illustrate a point in relation of Meths blog what it is and how it works.
Firstly you have to understand that I'm opposed to the idea that ethics or morals exist as an idea within themselves. They don't exist independently and within themselves. They only exist as a perception of action and conduct between people.
Ethics as a concept which we talk about have emerged from social norms as we're social creatures. Being nice to one another surprisingly is how we learnt to survive as a species. Being nice to others was an evolutionary advantage to us, among side plenty of other creatures, even within bacteria. Those things we're inclined to think as being good, which is further emphasised as a learnt conduct through generations. We've learnt them as being ethical, and we've even rationalised these ideas in language as our language has developed, advancing those things from survival techniques made into inclinations into fully rationalised and thought out ideas. It's not just learnt behaviour.
How ethical a person is when we rationally judge them is down to a coherentism-esque method.
Let's step out and define coherentism first; coherentism is the idea that beliefs are better supported if they tie in with other beliefs. The more beliefs it ties in with, the more justified a belief is to us.
Now imagine ethics. The more someone adheres to our perception of what is ethical in action and conduct, the more they fit into those beliefs or ideas or inclinations of what is ethical, the better of a person they will seem to use when we judge them.
Because ethics is not a personal thing and also operates on a collective level though because of how they generated, there is also a collective idea of what is ethical which is emergent. Those who appear more in that ethical framework to the community will seem more ethical. However, if they don't, the person overall is less ethical on the basis of judging how well they fit into the ethical frame work. The less he fits into that framework, the less ethical they will appear.
This works with ideas. Moderation is that framework as we perceive it. Those with extreme politics, or extreme ideas, or even extreme art, it will be less socially accepted because of the framework they're in. It's less socially accepted as it doesn't seem as rational to those people.
However, someone may be completely outside of that framework, but it doesn't make them bad. It just makes them completely different, and the community will seem less rational by that person's own framework ironically enough. Because there's nothing absolutely set into stone, extremism of any sort is only understood in relative terms which can be understood loosely in this way.
It's 6.36am. I haven't slept. I will edit this for spelling and grammar making sure it makes sense tomorrow. I just wanted to get this done and out of the way quickly though I'm not the most coherent after little sleep.
Or, why should we? This was brought up in a lecture and we got a number of different answers, including 'to learn from the past', 'so we don't make the same mistakes', etc etc. And these are the sort of answers that most people come up with.
And we also teach in schools things like these because of the 'importance of History' and all that which may be for similar reasons.
I think the reason why we study History though as species is much, much simpler.
I thought I'd address this here as I also thought it might be easy to copy and paste into the actual forum when needed.
If you're not familiar with me, I do argue on these forums. A lot. As much as people say UG is full of stupid teenage virgins, there's a rich variety of pretty intelligent people on UG who are always worth coming back to UG for. They're always fun to argue or discuss with. I also do the same in other parts of the forums on UG.
Yet I still hear that mantra, now almost sounding erotic to their ears:
'Arguing on the internet is like the special Olympics, even if you win you're still retarded.'
This statement is fucking retarded.
We argue all the time in the religion and philosophy thread. We can get pretty angry with each other. But, it's good fun. Surprise surprise, some people argue because they take leisure out of it. I study Philosophy for fucks sake. That subject would be no where near as interesting and exciting if it wasn't for arguing. What the fuck is wrong in that?
Also, the religion and philosophy thread, the politics thread, these threads have served me well. They have educated me, the regulars, and even the many lurkers. Through arguing we learn things, and we've learnt all sorts of great things. We learn things through arguing. What the fuck is wrong in that?
And then there's 'you're not going to change anyone's mind'. Bullshit. I have had my mind changed. I have changed other people's minds. Even if you don't get them to admit they're wrong there and then they can have their mind changed because of you at a later date, if they're honest enough to recap over arguments they had.
Not that arguments are just about changing minds; the honest man will assert thoughts, ideas and opinions with a good mind to argue, but will honestly back down from their argument once they realise they are wrong. The person making the argument can find out that they are talking a crock of bullshit when meeting opposition, thus they are able to correct themselves. People who have opinions and never seek out opposition to their opinions will never find out if they are wrong or not. They are doing themselves a disservice.
Also, the only key difference between arguing on the internet and in real life is that arguing on the internet has a text based medium. If you want to be consistent, why not not argue at all?
If you want to do that, feel free to take the liberty to be a boring person, oppressed because you do not wish to take up any arguments.
Final notes: I'm getting pissed off with these comments I get on the forums now.
'Oh, internet tough guy, uh?'
Fuck no. I will argue on the net as I do in real life, minus some minor changes.
'Why are you so angry?'
I'm not. I'm rarely angry, surprisingly. I can only think of two scenarios which thoroughly made me angry on UG.
As much as people of the Western world would like to think of themselves as free thinking people, we show signs of conditioning or social conditioning all the time. There are plenty of occasions where social conditioning is good, for example teaching kids not to steal and all that. Interestingly enough, Western society has been brought up to have kneejerk reactions against Fascism as if it was the devil itself embodied in political ideology. Which is fine, fascism is a horrible ideology. However, as much as people would like to think they are champions of the idea that fascism is a bad thing, they lack the understanding of what fascism encompasses, when in fact fascist ideas are fairly common in society (particularly British society).
Whilst there is great Historical debate on what the tenets of fascism are (which I believe is wrong; the tenets of fascism should be known through advocates of fascism – we should actually listen to open fascists and their debates to find out what fascism is) there are strong recurring themes. Anti-globalisation, anti-capitalism, anti-individualism, anti-racial diversity, anti-liberalism, anti-conservativism, anti-socialism, anti-sexual liberalism – it would seem to some that fascism is just ‘anti-everything’. This would be wrong; they are of a more unique position (state dictated but not owned and controlled economy to note alongside strong authoritarian rule; single party state and lots of police power tend to be important). These are in play to keep traditional state values yet to make them nationally secure. It’s definitely worth reading further to get a grasp at what fascism is; I would actually recommend the Wikipedia article on it because it’s surprisingly good.
Now, I’m not arguing that fascism is popular in the UK, but fascist esque ideas are. The best selling newspaper in the UK, The Daily Mail, openly discusses these. They openly express contempt for greedy bankers yet always support the market system and they need to be sorted (control on economy yet not ownership of the economy), they openly devalue those who are apparently detrimental to society (which isn’t too far off from Nazi’s set of ‘asocials’ ), support fighting back on drugs and alcohol abuse and believe that prisioners should have harsher sentences (anti-liberalism, pro-more police power), moan about the Conservative elite in Britain (some taste of anti-Conservativism there), views for the ‘family unit’ and open dislike of working Mums on the basis that their primary concern is their children (anti-individualism, anti-sexual liberalism), and so forth. I could go on; they hold up on pro-national dignity and hold up those ‘time honoured values’ and pretty much dislike everything else and work against that threatens it. This is a simplified view, but nevertheless; I actually encourage people to go check out the Daily Mail and make comparisons for themselves. Daily Mail is definitely a Nationalist paper, which usually at the heart at of it shows many tenets of fascism.
Yet this isn’t born of a nation of fascists; this is born from a nation of bitter, cynical, borderline apathetic bastards who have always had a Conservative tradition (British Conservativism, none of that Republican nonsense) and fascist ideas are born from this. However, we’re not active fascists for several reasons; political apathy, our ‘go Labour or Conservative’ esque nature of politics, and social conditioning against the idea of fascism due to World War II, integration of liberal values through Human Rights, etc. And this is evident; the Daily Mail will moan for things like ‘too many CCTVs go away 1984’; they do uphold some ideas which are integrated through the rise of some liberal values. However, just because some liberal values have snuck into their perception of tradition doesn’t cause everything else there to go away.
As much as we moan about fascism in this country, it’s highly hypocritical for plenty of people to think that we’re better than them simply because we do not practice fascism. When plenty of people in this country hold fascist ideas as opinions, they really are no better.
However, is this something to worry about? Not particularly. It’s just the way we’ve always been. For one, our political laziness might just be useful considering some people.
'Ohh but people aren't equal,' are words which bring forth bile and rage to Craig's ears. 'People have different talents and are better at doing things than others, people could never be equal.'
Actually, you don't know what equality means in this context at all. You can't take the numerical value of a person and compare it to the
numerical value of another and say 'ho ha - they're different, thus
we're not equal'. That beats the bloody point. Nor is it good to do the
same with subjective quality of a person.
The term equal in terms of humans is derivative of liberalism. It
occurred in a number of ways but kinda existed in the same sort of way.
Though there may be differences, it tends to run that the concept of
equality of people is the term for when we are treated equally under
certain recognised rights. It gives everyone the same capacity to be
treated the same as others in alignment to certain rights.
For example, Americans are held equal under constitutional rights. That's their equality;- they are equal under shared rights which everyone is allowed to have, and everyone is equal to criminal liability as the next person. That is the equality of an American citizen.
It's not the numerical value of the person; it's being treated the same
in accordance of a certain set of rights. You're taking one meaning of
the word 'equal' and applying it to a scenario where it doesn't fit.
It's worth making note here that these rights often change; for example, the American rights given also include to ensure economic liberty, whilst some Socialist rights ensure liberty of the individual by making sure they are not liable to be exploited by business owners.
The rights may be different, but the people under the set of rights and rules are all equal to each other in terms of being allowed and being accounted to those things.
The good ol' unforgettable rhetoric, asserted and glorified by pro-lifers; 'this fetus has potential, how can you get rid of such a potential human being?'
Which, is true; fetuses whilst are not human beings are potential human beings.
But why is this such a thing to miss out on? I've missed out on many possibilities in my life. For example, I've been out or around my establishment of education and thought 'that girl looks kinda cute.' If I had a bit more guts, a bit more courage, or in some cases, a bit more alcohol, I could of gone up to unspecified cute girl and started talking to her.
And maybe she was single and maybe some how found me attractive and somehow loved my ridiculous sense of humour and put up with my cynical ramblings and decided that she wanted more of me in her life. And maybe I liked her too and we entered a relationship. That's potential.
My inaction of never speaking to her led me to never enter a relationship of someone who could potentially would be my life long partner who would make my life complete. I lost out of that potential. Have I suffered? Not a bit.
And of course, I'm not measuring consequences as consequences are a horrid way to judge actions. However, this is besides the simple point I am trying to illustrate. An aborted fetus who has never lived, has never experienced, has no concept of qualia or consciousness has nothing to lose but potential, and will never suffer from losing potential.
Thought I'd do this before I wanted to start working today. Why do people tip toe around religions? I mean, yeah it's fair enough if you're not up for discussing beliefs you may have, that's all fine, but why are people so hypersensitive about their beliefs when people do put them on the table to discuss? Of course this doesn't apply to everyone.
You can argue against capitalists, existentialists, Marxists, people with all sorts of beliefs and you'll never see them do what some religious people to. They'll be up for discussing their beliefs but you have to do it with upmost respect - and for some reason upmost respect means even when you throw your beliefs into the realm of discussion you're not allowed to discuss it.
They may dislike dissent or hearing contrary opinion and then may even accuse the sceptics 'why are you so concerned?' or 'why can't you let people have their faith?' - questions which are actually placed in non issues.
Some might go with the whole 'because the atheists on UG are arrogant and patronising'. Actually pop into the religion and philosophy thread and we really aren't - come in with awful logic, failure to discuss honestly and we'll hit on that, but we won't hit on you because you believe in God.
If you're willing to put your faith onto the table for discussion, expect criticism and expect sceptical questioning. It's completely fine and it won't hurt you. If you're not up for it, don't bother raising it.
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Craigo's blogs, last updated : December 15, 2009
