Island Squirrels IV - Last Call: Is God Real?

[Obi_Kwiet]

After 25 years of bickering, now is your chance to get in the final word!

Bonus topic: Moral Relativism: Stupid or Fact?

[Reid]

Most debates over whether 'God exists' are framed stupidly. It's a thing only evangelicals and new atheists, because both have equally stupid notions of God.

Moral relativism is correct in my view from an absolute perspective, but I don't think morals being relative means morals are arbitrary. Any social animal is going to have to develop rules, and those rules have to be structured in a way that isn't self-contradictory. Like you can't have a society where it's moral to kill all your children, as the society will wipe itself out. What's considered moral across most cultures are things that are good for perpetuating a society, like no murder, some form of monogamous pairings for childbirth, etc

So basically, if one person kills another person, the universe doesn't care, there's nothing 'objectively' wrong about it, but it's totally okay and logical for society to punish that person for it.

[Obi_Kwiet]

Tired of trying to imagine the most perfect argument for the existence of God? Imagine no longer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDrHIo8Ntvk

[Obi_Kwiet]

Moral relativism is correct in my view from an absolute perspective, but I don't think morals being relative means morals are arbitrary. Any social animal is going to have to develop rules, and those rules have to be structured in a way that isn't self-contradictory. Like you can't have a society where it's moral to kill all your children, as the society will wipe itself out. What's considered moral across most cultures are things that are good for perpetuating a society, like no murder, some form of monogamous pairings for childbirth, etc

Pointing out values that tend to be universal across cultures is a bad example of moral relativism. Usually you'd use such examples to argue against moral relativism. Moral relativism arises from observations about the non-universality of moral convictions. The main problem is that most people who claim to hold to moral relativism subscribe to some level of moral universalism when put to it.

[Eversor]

He's real, guys

[Eversor]

btw, notice I didn't say "She".

[Tenshu]

So Obi, what's your current take on evolution?

[Eversor]

personally, i’m against it

[Tenshu]

personally, i’m against it

Evolution is cool, and I like it, but they can miss me with the modern stuff

[Obi_Kwiet]

So Obi, what's your current take on evolution?

I'm trying to evolve a light up butt, like a firefly. So far, no progress, but if it were easy, everyone would have one, right?

[Jon`C]

After 25 years of bickering, now is your chance to get in the final word!

Squirrels evolved separately many times. It's like carcination, but for squirrels on islands.

[Tenshu]

I'm trying to evolve a light up butt, like a firefly. So far, no progress, but if it were easy, everyone would have one, right?

Seriously though, there were lengthy debates on this thread's predecessors. The ID/creationism saga in US news seems to have passed to a large extent. But have you changed your views on it? I recall you and Dogsrool being skeptical.

[Obi_Kwiet]

Natural history isn't a huge area of interest for me, but the young earth perspective doesn't really seem square with a ton of readily observable aspects of the natural world. Frankly, it feels like a dispute that's more a product of a specific cultural moment than it does an enduring theological issue. People used to get really wound up about the arrangement of the solar system, but the most died in the wool creationist doesn't give that one a second thought.

What's more interesting is that my epistemology has developed quite a bit. I went through a period where I figured that science wasn't always right, but it made sense to assume that the people who study a thing will generally have the best take on it. Now I'm quite a bit more cynical toward academic consensus, and I don't think there's often a straightforward heuristic for judging the reliability of a claim, other than knowing more about the subject, and the cultural context of the claim. My overall level of certainty is much lower on a wide range of topics.

[Tenshu]

Natural history isn't a huge area of interest for me, but the young earth perspective doesn't really seem square with a ton of readily observable aspects of the natural world. Frankly, it feels like a dispute that's more a product of a specific cultural moment than it does an enduring theological issue. People used to get really wound up about the arrangement of the solar system, but the most died in the wool creationist doesn't give that one a second thought.

What's more interesting is that my epistemology has developed quite a bit. I went through a period where I figured that science wasn't always right, but it made sense to assume that the people who study a thing will generally have the best take on it. Now I'm quite a bit more cynical toward academic consensus, and I don't think there's often a straightforward heuristic for judging the reliability of a claim, other than knowing more about the subject, and the cultural context of the claim. My overall level of certainty is much lower on a wide range of topics.

I get that perspective. Apparently the James Webb telescope shook up a motor our understanding of the maturity of galaxies in the early universe, just a few months ago. I guess the thing to remember is that science isn’t an authoritative body of knowledge, but a process that’s ready to throw away the status quo of supposed knowledge, if the right observation arises.

But coming back to squirrels, the scientific process has provided so much evidence, all converging on such a blunt fact, that it may as well be completely authoritative and insubvertible. The evidence from the explosion of molecular biology and genetics, especially, has been so persuasive that questioning the basic fact of evolution are attempts completely dead in the water. New evidence maybe just shuffles around some phyla, or revises dating estimates, AFAIK, but doesn’t question common ancestry.

I kind of miss those threads on here from the early 2000s though.

[Eversor]

Natural history isn't a huge area of interest for me, but the young earth perspective doesn't really seem square with a ton of readily observable aspects of the natural world. Frankly, it feels like a dispute that's more a product of a specific cultural moment than it does an enduring theological issue. People used to get really wound up about the arrangement of the solar system, but the most died in the wool creationist doesn't give that one a second thought.

What's more interesting is that my epistemology has developed quite a bit. I went through a period where I figured that science wasn't always right, but it made sense to assume that the people who study a thing will generally have the best take on it. Now I'm quite a bit more cynical toward academic consensus, and I don't think there's often a straightforward heuristic for judging the reliability of a claim, other than knowing more about the subject, and the cultural context of the claim. My overall level of certainty is much lower on a wide range of topics.

in the past few years i've drifted towards thinking academic consensus is always right. ESPECIALLY Anthony Fauci

[Koobie]

It seems to me that the world follows a set of rules (physics, chemistry, mathematics, whatnot), and that, since it's not complete chaos all the time, there is something behind these rules, a rule-maker, if you will. I am convinced it is some form of a supercomputer the scope of which is hard to grasp; call the supercomputer "God" if you will. It stores, collects, processes, and, ultimately, controls everything that goes on within it. Moreover, I believe ours is only one of many such supercomputers -- once a civilization reaches a certain stage of development, they create simulated worlds, supercomputers of their own, one of which we might be in right now. Read: Simulation Hypothesis by Nick Bostrom.

The real mystery is then, how did the original, first universe come to be? You might as well ask "Who made God?" I believe it is a paradox -- "Nothing lasts forever." First, there was nothing. But since nothing lasts forever, forever can not last forever. And, if we accept that the universe before the Big Bang was / is limitless, and the Big Bang is but one in a series of infinite creation "booms" across the vastness of infinite time and space, then nothing is impossible. In fact, if we accept that infinity is possible, then EVERYTHING is possible, some time.

Something like that.

[SF_GoldG_01]

*...has entered the chat*

[Couchman]

Pointing out values that tend to be universal across cultures is a bad example of moral relativism. Usually you'd use such examples to argue against moral relativism. Moral relativism arises from observations about the non-universality of moral convictions. The main problem is that most people who claim to hold to moral relativism subscribe to some level of moral universalism when put to it.

This. He argued against your original statement. There is universal morality, universal beauty and universal truth and the further one strays from it the closer they become the creatures we evolved from.