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Deism

tosca1 said:
What spectrum of animal intelligence?? Do you equate yourself with a monkey?


Haven't you understood anything that was given, non-religious-wise?


You cannot make a non-religious argument that we are animals, since you got nothing to support your
evolutionary claim! All you've got are hypotheses and gross extrapolation!


On the other hand, I can!
Creation by God isn't off the table. At least, science-wise, I can point to the NAS statement for that!



It's kinda hard to accept that we are on the level with all these animals, when it's quite obvious - by leaps and bounds - we are definitely superior to them.

What is clear, WE HAVE DOMINION over them! You don't need science to tell you that!
hahaha....guess where that was written!

Look at the animals at the zoo, at your home, and in the farms.
They even rely on us to save and protect them from extinction!
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I'd like to see what kind of dominon you have over a shark while swimming. Or if you're ever in the mountains, be sure to quote the chapter out of the Bible that a grizzly bear will find pertinent toward not mauling you.

We are intelligent. We are not NOT animals.
 
Gonzo Rodeo said:
I'd like to see what kind of dominon you have over a shark while swimming. Or if you're ever in the mountains, be sure to quote the chapter out of the Bible that a grizzly bear will find pertinent toward not mauling you.
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They're not intelligent like us. They can't even understand simple words.....so, quoting the Bible to them won't do any good, will it?

Besides, if man is given the Scriptures - how do we know God didn't have separate code for animals?


The Bible seems to have made rules for animals against killing humans - I'm making an assumption based on this Bible verse which He had a covenant with Noah after the flood:

Genesis 9
5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

6
“Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.






Despite all the things we read in the news.....attacks by wild animals on humans, is still considered rare.


The bear's death was decried by some observers as an unjust sentence for an animal that may have been acting defensively. And it was the latest such killing to highlight the common reaction to most of the very rare attacks by wild animals on people in the United States: Capital punishment for the animal, and sometimes even for uninvolved animals located nearby.
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You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a shark.

Shark attack deaths are exceedingly rare.
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Fatal shark attacks: How rare they are and how to stay safe - LA Times



However serious injury caused by large animals is relatively rare, we hear of around one fatal animal attack every two years. We therefore estimate that the chances of being involved in such an incident are around 1 in 80,000.

Please refer to our section on safety for information on other risks when travelling in Africa.

The most dangerous large animals are elephants and hippos, more rarely lions and leopards.
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Animal attacks in Africa | ATR




We are intelligent.
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Quite obvious, isn't it? That we're way up there......that's a fact!
That places the onus on us to know better.



We are not NOT animals.
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That's your opinion.
If you're saying that we're scientifically classified as such - then yes, we are. But of course, that's not the implication of what you're actually saying here.
 
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Gonzo Rodeo said:
I'd like to see what kind of dominon you have over a shark while swimming. Or if you're ever in the mountains, be sure to quote the chapter out of the Bible that a grizzly bear will find pertinent toward not mauling you.

We are intelligent. We are not NOT animals.
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Actually, we are precisely animals. A very intelligent animal, but an animal never the less.
 
RAMOSS said:
Actually, we are precisely animals. A very intelligent animal, but an animal never the less.
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Yeah, *I* know that. Some people don't want to accept the reality of it though.
 
ataraxia said:
It seems to me to be analogous to how we create language to describe the world, and then wondering why the world so wondrously conforms to our language.
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Angel said:
Yours is an extremely sharp analogy, ataraxia, relating the mathematical nature of the cosmos to the ancient Greek concept of logos. My Sunday will be devoted to its contemplation. Your post has me giddy with intellectual excitement.
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ataraxia said:
I am so glad, Angel! Have fun today!:)

But there is a paradigm you seem to have that I am questioning. Sometimes the chicken and the egg question becomes a difficult one, and I guess this is one of those. Are mathematics and language things pre-existing in the universe which we find, or useful tools that we make up to deal with it? I tend to lean towards the latter. It's like making a bowl to hold your cereal, and then wondering why the bowl so perfectly designed to hold cereal. It seems to me unnecessary self mystification.
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Angel said:
Isn't it more like making a bowl to hold cereal, and then wondering why cereal can be held by a bowl? Does the accommodation tell us something about the nature of cereal?
In your analogy the cereal is the world (cosmos, universe, etc.); the bowl, natural language or math. Have I got this straight?

Question to me: In what sense does the accommodation between natural language or mathematics and the world reveal something about the nature of the world?
Question to me: Does Occam's Razor discourage the above question?
Question to me: In what sense, if any, can the world be said to be mathematical or linguistic in nature?

Still thinking....
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You may well be on the right side of this question, ataraxia. But in the broadest sense utility must, it seems to me, to some extent at least, disclose the nature of that upon which utility works, no? In the case of language and mathematics (language also?), both rational templates as it were, their utility testifies to the rationality of the universe, I think it may be argued.

But of course ultimately we're the blind men around the elephant, yes?

"The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John G. Saxe (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIw

Blind Men and the Elephant – A Poem by John Godfrey Saxe
Here is John Godfrey Saxe’s (1816-1887) version of Blind Men and the Elephant:

It was six men of Indostan,
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approach'd the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, -"Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear,
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"

The Third approach'd the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," -quoth he- "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee:
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," -quoth he,-
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said- "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," -quoth he,- "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

MORAL,

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean;
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

Blind Men and the Elephant
 
Angel,

I am familiar with the story of the blind men and the elephant, and certainly it's useful to think in those terms when people have different points of view and seem to be talking past each other. However, I take it the elephant is sort of the "ultimate ground" of reality which you seem to be talking about. In that situation, I still am not convinced that we can appeal to it. After all, all models and paradigms can be questioned given certain changes in the assumptions and premises on which it's based. For example, one of the blind men can come to and realize that he had just had a little too much to drink the night before, that there was never any elephant or any other blind men, that he was never blind with either, and that he had just fallen asleep on the couch with his shoes still on the night before and dreamt the whole thing. Oh, and that strange woman piddling around in the kitchen? He just got married to her in Vegas last night. He knew he should have laid off that whiskey after the third shot.

As I explained before, I am impressed with the idea of Descartes' Demon and his idea of us just being a brain in a vat. I am impressed with Immanuel Kant telling us that we can never know the world-in-itself. Although I am impressed with the sentiment and aspiration behind Plato thinking there was a way he could step out of his cave of senses and see the world as it really is, as opposed to just how it appears, I think ultimately it is a futile endeavor. In fact, it seems that always, anytime anyone who think they can escape the cave, or think they have in some way or other, are often dangerously deluded and should be viewed with much suspicion. I am impressed with Wittgenstein when he rejects the idea of the correspondence theory of language- that there can ever be a one-to-one correspondence between our language and the ground of reality itself. Language always only makes sense within the particular language game, context, and community in which it is being used. I am impressed, as we spoke earlier, with Gödel's incompleteness theorem of mathematical models and systems- about how all mathematical modeling is ultimately based on other premises that must lie outside the system, which in turn can be questioned- potentially bringing the whole system down in a catastrophic heap. And I am impressed with John Dewey when he tells us that truth is always an interactional, and active process of an organism interacting with its environment. There can be no short-circuiting the process to step outside of it to see the environment outside of those interactions- either through mathematics, or language, or religion, or mysticism, or whatever. But so what? Because, finally, I am impressed with Richard Rorty when he tells us that "My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have … an ambition of transcendence."
 
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ataraxia said:
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As I explained before, I am impressed with the idea of Descartes' Demon and his idea of us just being a brain in a vat. I am impressed with Immanuel Kant telling us that we can never know the world-in-itself. Although I am impressed with the sentiment and aspiration behind Plato thinking there was a way he could step out of his cave of senses and see the world as it really is, as opposed to just how it appears, I think ultimately it is a futile endeavor. In fact, it seems that always, anytime anyone who think they can escape the cave, or think they have in some way or other, are often dangerously deluded and should be viewed with much suspicion. I am impressed with Wittgenstein when he rejects the idea of the correspondence theory of language- that there can ever be a one-to-one correspondence between our language and the ground of reality itself. Language always only makes sense within the particular language game, context, and community in which it is being used. I am impressed, as we spoke earlier, with Gödel's incompleteness theorem of mathematical models and systems- about how all mathematical modeling is ultimately based on other premises that must lie outside the system, which in turn can be questioned- potentially bringing the whole system down in a catastrophic heap. And I am impressed with John Dewey when he tells us that truth is always an interactional, and active process of an organism interacting with its environment. There can be no short-circuiting the process to step outside of it to see the environment outside of those interactions- either through mathematics, or language, or religion, or mysticism, or whatever. But so what? Because, finally, I am impressed with Richard Rorty when he tells us that "My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have … an ambition of transcendence."
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Lovely, and loving post, ataraxia. My pantheon resembles yours very closely. I would add Hume and James just for honest thinking alone.

To be clear, I find your point of view and its argument most congenial. I fancy myself a Kantian and find your arguments highly persuasive. I am, however, struggling to find an argument for the intuition that pragmata are not the end of the story, that pragmata allow for reasonable inferences to the Reality they work on, to the thing-in-itself or the world-in-itself, as you put it.

Today I'm thinking about color. There is no reason to think that our perceptual experience of color, or even the science of color perception, tells us that the world-in-itself is colored or even hosts light-waves bouncing off objects. But the world-in-itself accommodates both our perceptual experience and the science of color we've invented to explain our experience of color. Doesn't that accommodation point to the nature of Reality, the world-in-itself, in some fashion? Isn't Reality or the world-in-itself color hospitable? We just need an adjective that captures that hospitality. Then we may infer that Reality or the world-in-itself is ___________. No?
 
Angel said:
Lovely, and loving post, ataraxia. My pantheon resembles yours very closely. I would add Hume and James just for honest thinking alone.

To be clear, I find your point of view and its argument most congenial. I fancy myself a Kantian and find your arguments highly persuasive. I am, however, struggling to find an argument for the intuition that pragmata are not the end of the story, that pragmata allow for reasonable inferences to the Reality they work on, to the thing-in-itself or the world-in-itself, as you put it.

Today I'm thinking about color. There is no reason to think that our perceptual experience of color, or even the science of color perception, tells us that the world-in-itself is colored or even hosts light-waves bouncing off objects. But the world-in-itself accommodates both our perceptual experience and the science of color we've invented to explain our experience of color. Doesn't that accommodation point to the nature of Reality, the world-in-itself, in some fashion? Isn't Reality or the world-in-itself color hospitable? We just need an adjective that captures that hospitality. Then we may infer that Reality or the world-in-itself is ___________. No?
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Hmmm. I'm going to have to go with: no.

Here's one possible way it could be wrong: The phenomenon you see as "color" could just be a feigned novel stimulus to your brain, just to test out some of its circuitry, being experimented on by some aliens or evil scientists in a lab. The experience of color sensations could just be a result of some particular pattern of firing of neurons in response to some of the stimuli they are giving you. Perhaps they themselves are trying to figure out what it is you are experiencing as "color". Sure you can have a whole science of trying to explain the phenomenon to yourself. But no one else clearly understands what it is you are experiencing, because in the "real world", no such thing exists.

Improbable? Wildly fanciful? Sure. But possible?

As long as that's even a possibility, it shows you cannot escape the pragmata. Everything is contingent. There is no path out of Plato's cave, even conceptually. Or so it seems to me.
 
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ataraxia said:
Hmmm. I'm going to have to go with: no.

Here's one possible way it could be wrong: The phenomenon you see as "color" could just be a feigned novel stimulus to your brain, just to test out some of its circuitry, being experimented on by some aliens or evil scientists in a lab. The experience of color sensations could just be a result of some particular pattern of firing of neurons in response to some of the stimuli they are giving you. Perhaps they themselves are trying to figure out what it is you are experiencing as "color". Sure you can have a whole science of trying to explain the phenomenon to yourself. But no one else clearly understands what it is you are experiencing, because in the "real world", no such thing exists.

Improbable? Wildly fanciful? Sure. But possible?

As long as that's even a possibility, it shows you cannot escape the pragmata. Everything is contingent. There is no path out of Plato's cave, even conceptually. Or so it seems to me.
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I do not see any evidence that woudl be possible.
 
ataraxia said:
...

Here's one possible way it could be wrong: The phenomenon you see as "color" could just be a feigned novel stimulus to your brain, just to test out some of its circuitry, being experimented on by some aliens or evil scientists in a lab. The experience of color sensations could just be a result of some particular pattern of firing of neurons in response to some of the stimuli they are giving you. Perhaps they themselves are trying to figure out what it is you are experiencing as "color". Sure you can have a whole science of trying to explain the phenomenon to yourself. But no one else clearly understands what it is you are experiencing, because in the "real world", no such thing exists.

Improbable? Wildly fanciful? Sure. But possible?

As long as that's even a possibility, it shows you cannot escape the pragmata. Everything is contingent. There is no path out of Plato's cave, even conceptually. Or so it seems to me.
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Possible, yes, in philosophical sense, I suppose. But the possibility of the brain-in-a-vat scenario stems, as I understand it, from the irrefutability of solipsism. And the irrefutability of solipsism follows from the persuasiveness of subjective idealism as an epistemology. But subjective idealism, rather persuasive in the hands of a Bishop Berkley, can lead to an inference to God with as much or more probability as to alien experimenters, it seems to me. Since God is a premise we wish to avoid in a discussion of what may be reasonably inferred about the reality behind our experience of the world -- the inference to the world-in-itself, as we've been calling it -- both alien experimenters and God are better avoided as explanatory hypotheses.

Accepting the contingency of all knowledge of the world, can we not also accept as contingent inferences to the world-in-itself?
 
Angel said:
Possible, yes, in philosophical sense, I suppose. But the possibility of the brain-in-a-vat scenario stems, as I understand it, from the irrefutability of solipsism. And the irrefutability of solipsism follows from the persuasiveness of subjective idealism as an epistemology. But subjective idealism, rather persuasive in the hands of a Bishop Berkley, can lead to an inference to God with as much or more probability as to alien experimenters, it seems to me. Since God is a premise we wish to avoid in a discussion of what may be reasonably inferred about the reality behind our experience of the world -- the inference to the world-in-itself, as we've been calling it -- both alien experimenters and God are better avoided as explanatory hypotheses.

Accepting the contingency of all knowledge of the world, can we not also accept as contingent inferences to the world-in-itself?
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Not really. Just because I can come up with a laundry detergent which cleans the clothes better without taking out the color, doesn't mean I have to make any inferences about Ultimate Truth.
 
ataraxia said:
Not really. Just because I can come up with a laundry detergent which cleans the clothes better without taking out the color, doesn't mean I have to make any inferences about Ultimate Truth.
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Rather than laundry detergent, ataraxia, wouldn't the fairer analogy be to coming up with the theories of special and general relativity or quanta, which we do take contingently as justified inferences to physical reality?
 
Angel said:
Rather than laundry detergent, ataraxia, wouldn't the fairer analogy be to coming up with the theories of special and general relativity or quanta, which we do take contingently as justified inferences to physical reality?
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You mean the best current models we currently have of phenomena as they present themselves to us? Sure.

As Ultimate, Unquestionable, Immutable Truth? No. Not really.
 
ataraxia said:
You mean the best current models we currently have of phenomena as they present themselves to us? Sure.

As Ultimate, Unquestionable, Immutable Truth? No. Not really.
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Yes, that's a fairer analogy, I think.
And yes, as you say, contingent knowledge, pragmata, which a hundred years from now may well be replaced by different models, the best then-current models of phenomena as they present themselves to others.
Empiricism, a stratagem worked out with the sensorium, cannot yield "Ultimate, Unquestionable, Immutable Truth."
 
Is Deism a religion or just a philosophy?

I've never bought into religion. Never. I do feel there are too many coincidences required for life to exist in all it's complexity just here on this planet for there not to be some designer involved. Call it nature or God or whatever. There is no way random chance put together the human body nor the amoeba for that matter. I have no doubt life exists everywhere throughout the universe. Life is so adaptable there would have to be a design. Call it mathematics or fractal sets or God. Their would have to be a designer somewhere way, way, way back before the beginning of what we call time. In the before time before this universe existed. There had to be a designer.

Deism allows me to wrap my head around the existence of life.

My father must've been a deist too. He respected all life even plants. He taught us to have respect for life.
 
Fritz said:
Deism is in a strange place right now for it was VERY popular among intellectuals in the Age of Enlightenment, especially among the Founding Fathers of the US. Today though, it is extremely obscure, and I just know about it be reading some of Voltaire's work and the Internet.

Deism has its own website here: Welcome To The Deism Site!

What is your opinion on Deism? I think its a pretty good philosophical belief and I'd follow it...
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Deism is simply and acknowledgement of a higher power or ethereal being; a higher consciousness. I'm in that boat, though I don't talk about it much. We must remember that religion came after God and is a dogma based on the opinions of the strongest in early societies.
 
Fritz said:
Deism is in a strange place right now for it was VERY popular among intellectuals in the Age of Enlightenment, especially among the Founding Fathers of the US. Today though, it is extremely obscure, and I just know about it be reading some of Voltaire's work and the Internet.

Deism has its own website here: Welcome To The Deism Site!

What is your opinion on Deism? I think its a pretty good philosophical belief and I'd follow it...
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Deists didn't think Jesus was God. If the founding fathers heard the message of Islam, they probably would have preferred it over Christianity.
 
SheWolf said:
Deists didn't think Jesus was God. If the founding fathers heard the message of Islam, they probably would have preferred it over Christianity.
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At that point in history, I'd wager that most/all of the founders knew of Islam.
If I remember right, Jefferson owned a Quran.
Of course one of the first military conflicts the US engaged in, as a new nation was the Barbary wars, with the north African tribute states of the Ottoman empire.
During the American revolution, US merchant fleets were granted protection against the Barbary states, as well.

That doesn't include the near constant conflict between the west and Islamic nations prior to all this (Battle of Vienna was in 1683).
They knew of or had read about Islam, at that point in time.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
At that point in history, I'd wager that most/all of the founders knew of Islam.
If I remember right, Jefferson owned a Quran.
Of course one of the first military conflicts the US engaged in, as a new nation was the Barbary wars, with the north African tribute states of the Ottoman empire.
During the American revolution, US merchant fleets were granted protection against the Barbary states, as well.

That doesn't include the near constant conflict between the west and Islamic nations prior to all this (Battle of Vienna was in 1683).
They knew of or had read about Islam, at that point in time.
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I am sure they knew a little bit about it, but that's not the same as actually talking to an Imam.
 
SheWolf said:
The founders were Muslim! :mrgreen:
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Not a chance.

Dr. M. E. Bradford of the University of Dallas conducted a study of the Founding Founders to look at this question (whether the Founding Fathers were deists or Christians). He discovered the Founders were members of denominations as follows: twenty-eight Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, two Roman Catholics, and three deists. – Reference: M. E. Bradford, A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution (Marlborough, NH: Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982), iv–v.
 
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