Yes, science helps us be less bewildered, and perplexed about reality, and yes, it makes objective reality less obscure and mysterious. On the one hand we have ignorance and superstition, and on the other objective knowledge. That’s the choice we face, and after that we can make choices about how to treat others, and how to treat other sentient species, far better to make an informed choice obviously, yet like you have claimed here, some still make the spurious claim that gaining knowledge is itself somehow responsible for how that knowledge is used, baffling.
The population of Germany in 1933 was around 60 million. Almost all Germans were Christian, belonging either to the Roman Catholic (ca. 20 million members) or the Protestant (ca. 40 million members) churches. The Jewish community in Germany in 1933 was less than 1% of the total population of the country.
How did Christians and their churches in Germany respond to the Nazi regime and its laws, particularly to the persecution of the Jews? The racialized anti-Jewish Nazi ideology converged with antisemitism that was historically widespread throughout Europe at the time and had deep roots in Christian history. For all too many Christians, traditional interpretations of religious scriptures seemed to support these prejudices.
Christians don’t see the Jesus character as Jewish, it’s all part of the mental gymnastics that the religion requires. For centuries though, the Jewish people were directly blamed as “christ killers”, that’s where christian antisemitism comes from.
How many centuries have elapsed, during which Christian iconography depicted Jesus as a blond, blue eyed Aryan? As opposed to being a fairly typical Middle Eastern individual who moreover spoke Aramaic? Not to mention all those Madonna and Child paintings commissioned by the Catholic Church, depicting Mary as a pale European instead of being a fairly typical first-century Judean girl?
Even though education is finally exerting an influence in this vein in Europe, and recognition of the actual ethnicity of the “Jesus character” is becoming more widespread, the reverse appears to be the case in the American Bible Belt, where fundamentalist lunacy is mixing with American exceptionalism in a manner going beyond even the Mormon brand of idiocy.
Though if you want to see some serious insanity, track down the warped scribblings of Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, whose reworking of the New Testament as an Aryan race myth really enters the realm of the drug fuelled. The title of his master work alone tells you what you’re looking forward to - Theozoology, or the Account of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron. That should make for some fun bedtime reading after you’ve tripped on a dodgy batch of LSD.
Humanity has fallen into collective madness before, and sadly, this is probably not the last time. This particular episode was greatly motivated by a misinterpretation of Nietzsche, who said “God is dead.” Another terrible episode comes from communism, which was vehemently against religion.
However, I believe our true merit lies not in recognizing the mistakes of the past, but in identifying the mistakes of the present.
What fuels these episodes is mutual hatred, antagonism, and resentment over the past. These are the triggers for new disasters. This is why I always try to be polite and engage with even those who insult me, because the root of everything is people hating each other, insulting one another, or thinking they are superior.
This is why it’s so important to forgive, because otherwise, there is no end to resentment.
Oh well, it depends… quantum mechanics becomes more mysterious the more we study it.
Well, we could also say that Mother Teresa probably did more for others than you, for example.
No, he is speaking about the qualia that accompany these physical phenomena. Qualia pose one of the hardest problems for the current materialist conception of reality, as we have already discussed. Your description only defines the “philosophical zombie”; we are talking about the real thing that makes us different from a philosophical zombie.
Another sweeping unevidenced assertion, you’re consistent I’ll give you that.
What a novel but predictably facile retake on the historical facts, neatly ignoring the fact that 96% of Germans identified as Christians in a 1939 census that is still available for anyone to read online. Or that German antisemitism was a centuries old product of European Christianity, or that one of the few demographics forbidden from joining the SS, were atheists, on the express wishes of both Himmler and Hitler, both of whom were theists, and Hitler professed to be a lifelong catholic.
Communism is an economic ideology, again your misrepresentation is almost comically facile. Stalinism was a particular regime, and a totalitarian one at that, totalitarian regimes always trample the rights of the individuals under its power, it’s in the nature of such regimes, be they secular or theocracies.
Meaningless unevidenced deepity. You do realise this is a debate forum, and not a pulpit?
What utter nonsense, faux civility, while lying to pretend the Nazism and the Holocaust are somehow the fault of atheism or secularism isn’t engaging with people, it’s thinly veiled trolling on here, and of course it is facile nonsense to blame the terrible crimes of Hitler or Stalin on atheism or secularism "hatred, antagonism, and resentment are the result not the cause, and they have throughout modern history been linked to sectarian religious divisions, as they were in these examples of course.
I couldn’t disagree more, there is no forgiveness for people who commit crimes like the Holocaust, or those of Stalin, the people responsible should have been pursued relentlessly, and justice should be done no matter how long they had evaded it. Again this just seems like a wooly facile deepity, from a religion that is riddled with such vapid nonsense. I have nothing against forgiveness when it is appropriate, but this kind of sweeping wooly sentimentality is facile nonsense.
Your ability to constantly misrepresent what is said, with endless straw men is almost impressive. Does anyone imagine that quantum mechanics would be better understood without the methods of science, or that those methods have finished with the subject, of course not, so your non-sequitur misses the point again.
Whose we? You certainly could, as unevidenced rhetoric seems to be your raison d’être, but again you have spectacularly and almost comically missed the point, you are becoming the king of non-sequiturs and straw men.
Yes.
That doesn’t remotely evidence panpsychism, or change the fact it is unfalsifiable, or remotely evidence any deity.
I don’t need you to tell me what I am describing thanks, especially as you are relentlessly dishonest in misrepresenting everything I post. Your heart plays no part in creating emotions, the evidence indicates they emerge from brain functions.
I think at this point @JESUS_IS_WITH_YOU would be better served going back to his claims and threads, and honestly addressing the many questions and objections to his sweeping unevidenced claims, than coming to other threads to preach at people with the same unevidenced superstitious woo woo. No need to stink up every thread with it after all.
Is that like forgiving Jesus for all the shit he did as God in the Old Testament and pretending as if he is kind and loving in the New Testament? You know, the “New Testament,” the book of God’s word that invented "Original Sin, Eternal Suffering, and Hell-fire, and damnation for all non-believers. The new kind god, who butchered himself on a cross, to save us from laws he made, because only the blood sacrifice of a fully human being would be enough, And now because of his holy grace we can join the cannibalistic blood lust cult known as Christianity and save ourselves from our own sinful nature, A nature, by the way, that could never equal the horrors of the God the Christians worship.
List of countries that care most about human rights:
Denmark
Finland
Netherlands
New Zealand
Australia
Estonia
…
All of these countries have a Christian heritage.
This also applies to the USA, which fought against the Nazis.
And it forbids religion…
Obviously, it is more important to prevent current human rights violations than to be a Captain Hindsight. The past should, of course, be remembered and analyzed, but the focus should be on the present.
Aren’t you doing the same? Weren’t they Christian nations fighting against Nazism? Are you applying double standards here?
I’m only responding to your assertion that science brings better understanding. I simply pointed out an exception in the case of quantum mechanics, where the more we know, the less we seem to understand.
It would be great if you didn’t cut the posts in a way that creates confusion. It could be interpreted as dishonest on your part.
He is not talking about the physical phenomena you are referring to, but about the subjective quality that, as you know very well, is far from being explained—remember the Hard Problem of Consciousness?
Here you are diverting the topic. In this specific response, we are discussing qualia. Qualia is not the same as panpsychism.
Again, we are talking about qualia, not physical processes. The metaphor of the philosophical zombie, proposed by David Chalmers and widely recognized as a real challenge to our understanding, is a perfectly valid opposition to your purely materialist approach.
As you can see, this time I addressed all your points, clearly demonstrating that they are your personal interpretations, far from the only possible ones. On the other hand, I have the right not to respond every time you post a list of nonsensical objections (in my opinion). I only did so to show that your points can be easily addressed. The problem is that you flood the conversation with questions that, in my view, are sometimes trivial, and then you expect others to divert all their effort into answering these trivial questions instead of focusing on the crucial aspects. In my opinion, this is dishonest.
Hm… strange that now all the nations that care most about human rights have a Christian heritage, right? Maybe you’re distorting something.
I have things to do now, but I will definitely address this point later. I believe you are distorting the facts and presenting an extremely biased view. This is not the result of an objective analysis.
Maybe to you, but not to actual physicists. Oh wait, have you actually READ any peer reviewed scientific papers from the physics literature? Something tells me that the answer is a resounding ‘no’.
Ahem, reports of her abusive conduct are not only widespread, but corroborated. But I’m used to seeing mythology fanboys ignore inconvenient facts.
Oh look, the mythology fanboy has learned a special new word thst he thinks constitutes an apologetic “get out of jail free” card whenever he’s asked inconvenient questions. How cute.
Let’s take vision, for example. If you think we don’t have detailed explanations for colour vision, then you really need to re-start your education. For example, one of the more interesting aspects thereof that I learned about some time ago, was the business of how the brain accomplishes what is known as “white balancing”, namely, ensuring colour constancy under diverse lighting conditions. Edwin Land solved this particular problem using his retinex theory, which underpins the white balancing system used in television cameras for decades, and which (with some added sophistication) is now standard in digital cameras worldwide.
We didn’t need to bother with “qualia” to understand this, and indeed, “qualia” are an irrelevance in scientific research. What matters is observable and, measurable data.
Bullshit. They’re an irrelevance as far as our rigorous understanding of the observable universe is concerned.
No, you’re talking about made up shit, in order to sell the fantasy that a cartoon magic man from a Bronze Age mythology is purportedly “necessary” to “explain” vast classes of entities and interactions that science has already explained, while treating said cartoon magic man as an irrelevance.
Qualia is not irrelevant to science; rather, qualia is currently untreatable by science, which is a different matter. However, qualia is the most important aspect of life because, without it, we wouldn’t be experiencing anything—we would be philosophical zombies.
Impotance of qualia:
Levine, J., 1983. Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap. Pacific philosophical quarterly , 64 (4), pp.354-361. - 3000 citations
Jackson, F., 1998. Epiphenomenal qualia. In Consciousness and emotion in cognitive science (pp. 197-206). Routledge. - 4800 citations
Nagel, T., 1980. What is it like to be a bat?. In The language and thought series (pp. 159-168). Harvard University Press. - 14000 citations
Chalmers, D.J., 1995. Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of consciousness studies , 2 (3), pp.200-219. - 5800 citations
In short, qualia is an important topic of debate in science.
Cool, but another straw man see, unless you actually don’t understand what your core claim was?
Did you have a point? Hopefully one that address the original point that your attempt to assign the crimes of Nazism to a secular philosophy / philosopher was facile nonsense? Or is this to be another parade of straw men non-sequiturs?
No it doesn’t, though Marx distrusted organised religions, and with good reason, nothing in communist economics forbids religion. Indeed Stalinism as many have pointed out was itself a quasi religious state, based on the cult of personality, much as christianity is.
So not what you originally asserted at all:
So now there is merit in recognising the past, hmm. this is also a bizarre view for someone peddling archaic superstition?
No, obviously, as anyone can see I was very specific, and FYI two of the five allies were secular nations, and a third ws demonstrably not a christian nation.
With a straw man used to create a poisoning of the well fallacy. You are a) mispresenting my claim by citing one example where we currently don’t have a full understanding, and b) ignoring the fact this may well change as the methods of science rigorously investigate the phenomenon on question.
Thanks, that’s the best belly laugh I’ve had for ages, you owe me an irony meter. FYI it was your response that dishonestly took a tangent into your agenda, after interjecting in an exchange between me and another poster, and if you think the heart rather than the brain experiences emotions then produce something approaching or comparable to the objective evidence that currently disputes that notion. When researchers subject people to stimuli that produce specific emotions, it is different areas of the brain that are observed reacting on an MRI scan, not the heart.
he never mentioned qualia in the post I was responding to, this is your pet agenda you’re trying to force into another thread.
No we are not actually, you were not involved in the post you have responded to, and you introduced qualia, but now talk of dishonesty when I mention panpsychism, despite you peddling the two together relentlessly, I think not.
Again we are not, read my post and read the post I was responding to.
Nonsense, panpsychism has nothing like widespread support, and no it is not a challenge to any beliefs I may hold, and I have never claimed to hold a purely materialist approach, that’s a straw man again. You are again attempting to misrepresent disbelief as itself a belief or claim. this is no doubt why you have repeatedly predicated your arguments on an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. It is an objective fact that the material physical world exists, if you want to add something to that without violating Occam’s razor, you’ll need more than unevidenced assumptions, and irrational argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies.
No, you responded, and you demonstrated nothing of the sort. Since you have repeatedly failed to demonstrate anything like objective evidence that either panpsychism or a deity or anything supernatural is possible.
No it’s not a right, though participation in debate is not mandatory of course, but if you make claims then not addressing objections honestly and with objective evidence or sound arguments is obviously going ot lead people to an unavoidable inference.
Luckily you don’t get to dictate what others post, or what is a relevant question or objections to your superstitious spiel. A hellish prospect I am sure that I am not alone in being grateful isn’t the case. What’s dishonest is your evasion, your relentless preaching rather than honest debate, and your almost comical attempt to tell others how they should react to your unevidenced and unfalsifiable claims.
Given how pervasive that religion was, no it’s not really surprising, how many of those nations allowed slavery, or refused women the vote? Are we then to imagine those are contributory factors in their desire for human rights now. So much for eschewing the past in favour of the current anyway, when you constantly assign the present to archaic superstitious beliefs. There are also plenty of largely secular democracies in the west that also have human rights, go figure, maybe this desire in simply innate in humans, and religious dogma constantly hampers the continuous progress through adherence to pernicious dogma derive from archaic patriarchal Bedouin societies. How have the human rights of gay people, or women faired under predominantly Christian countries for example, and why. How are they fairing right now come to that.
I know, though how apologists love to cite quantum mechanics to create this kind of poisoning of the well fallacies aimed at science.
Okay, look, I will address just ONE of your points because I don’t have time for more:
The term Übermensch was frequently used by Hitler and the Nazi regime to describe their idea of a biologically superior Aryan or Germanic master race. A racial interpretation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch became a philosophical foundation for Nazi ideology. The Nazi notion of the master race also led to the idea of “inferior humans” (Untermenschen), who were deemed fit only for domination and enslavement. However, this term does not originate with Nietzsche, who was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism.
The misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch led the Nazis down the destructive and morally corrupt path they followed. This concept is not racial but spiritual.
It’s a philosophical idea, not a scientific one. Is it included in any way in any currently accepted scientific theories? If not then @Calilasseia is correct.
Cherry pick more like, and your response is irrelevant to the facts, that Germany was traditionally a Christian country, or that 96% of Germans identified as christians in a 1939 census that is still available for anyone to access today, or that the SS we exclusively theists and therefore christians, as atheists were not permitted to join, or that Hitler claimed himself to be a lifelong catholic, and all of which belies your claim the Nazis crimes were down one philosophers secular views, even if they did filch a word of the racist ideology from it, or some of Nietzsche’s ideas contributed to their own, none of which was ever denied.
The Nazis Holocaust also stemmed from centuries of historic and virulent Christian antisemitism. No one is suggesting all such bigotry came exclusively from Christianity either, only offering these facts as refutation to your original claim blaming secularism for the crimes of the Nazis, which was and is facile nonsense.
