In recent times we get more detailed explanations. But take the example of food. In the past, I'm sure people figured our body did something to food that made us use it and provided us with life. We know we need to eat food. In this day and age, we can go deeper and deeper into the explanation of how our body converts food to energy, makes use of nutrients, the digestive system, etc... But once upon a time, people didn't know much other than our body needs food and converts it.

It's not necessary to have detailed knowledge of something as opposed to a simplified form of knowledge for it to be either a good explanation or useful explanation.

(March 9, 2014 at 12:36 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: It's not necessary to have detailed knowledge of something as opposed to a simplified form of knowledge for it to be either a good explanation or useful explanation.

As I've already explained in great detail, yes it is. Since you have no way of showing that your explanation is likely true, it's just an assertion. That which can be asserted without evidence or explanation, can be dismissed without evidence or explanation. People can see what happens when they do or don't eat food. We can't see what it would mean to have a spirit and for that spirit to have the property of meaning. Therefore your analogy fails. Our determining the use of food is totally unlike your determination of the properties of the spirit. It's just making up untestable shit. It's a "god of the gaps" explanation. You're just hiding all the work of explaining in a mysterious MacGuffin that is neither detectable nor testable.

(March 9, 2014 at 12:44 pm)rasetsu Wrote:

(March 9, 2014 at 12:36 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: It's not necessary to have detailed knowledge of something as opposed to a simplified form of knowledge for it to be either a good explanation or useful explanation.

As I've already explained in great detail, yes it is. Since you have no way of showing that your explanation is likely true, it's just an assertion. That which can be asserted without evidence or explanation, can be dismissed without evidence or explanation. People can see what happens when they do or don't eat food. We can't see what it would mean to have a spirit and for that spirit to have the property of meaning. Therefore your analogy fails. Our determining the use of food is totally unlike your determination of the properties of the spirit. It's just making up untestable shit. It's a "god of the gaps" explanation. You're just hiding all the work of explaining in a mysterious MacGuffin that is neither detectable nor testable.

Who says we can't see we have a spirit let alone what it means to have a spirit? Even this is true, it doesn't refute what I said because your argument was we need detailed explanations. I simply stated we can have simplified explanations without the details, and they can explain something and be useful.

---

If I do the math right, I think you moved goal posts about three times now.

(March 9, 2014 at 12:51 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:

(March 9, 2014 at 12:44 pm)rasetsu Wrote: As I've already explained in great detail, yes it is.

Even this is true, it doesn't refute what I said because your argument was we need detailed explanations. I simply stated we can have simplified explanations without the details, and they can explain something and be useful.

No, I most assuredly did not argue that explanations need to be detailed. I explained that a good explanation needs to have explanatory scope, explanatory power, and predictive potential. Then I explained how your explanation fails on those criteria. In addition, one likes an explanation to be parsimonious, though it's not a requirement. You still haven't successfully justified why we should ignore those criteria when it comes to your explanation; until you do, your explanation fails.

(March 9, 2014 at 12:51 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: If I do the math right, I think you moved goal posts about three times now.

Your explanation fails so many ways it's a smorgasbord of error. My pointing out additional flaws is in response to you making up new ways to justify accepting your explanation. All my points stand as originally made. It's you who's changing to different justifications as each one is refuted.

(March 9, 2014 at 12:51 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Who says we can't see we have a spirit let alone what it means to have a spirit?

What can we "see" which would unequivocally show that we have spirit? Anyone can see if they have or haven't eaten. Show me what I do or do not have which self-evidently shows that I have spirit. This has to be the most ridiculous thing you've said yet.

What I first stated is why I believe value to the self would be a fabrication of the mind without a spiritual world (ie. from the Atheistic outlook). When asked for clarification, I talked about how value of the self would be just conceptual with no reality backing it up as opposed to a spiritual realm and world backing up the value property of the self with substance and essence.

Here the topic of the thread is about nihilism so this was the original topic.

We already got off topic by discussing whether a soul/spiritual world can be a good explanation.

I don't see any reason why it can't be. Two things I see proposed as to why it can't be and people can look at back of the post, one is predictive power in the scientific sense. I already responded that there can be other reasons as to why we want to know something as opposed to it's predictive power.

Then you talked about reasoning with details and when I stated in conclusion we don't need detailed knowledge for an explanation to be good or useful, you denied that and stated it does. I already provided an example to show we don't always need detailed knowledge.

I am going to ask, what do you have to back up the assertions other than them being Atheistic cliches when it comes to supernatural explanation.

You are simply asserting the explanation is of no value because it's not of a certain type but you haven't proven you have to be of that type to be a good explanation.

How can you see the spirit, well, I think it's by looking at the spirit with the spiritual eyes and recognizing your vision within yourself. I think everyone is capable of doing that.

The next thing is we can know value of the self, goodness, etc, requires a metaphysical spiritual reality to it. If this is true and we acknowledge objectively the existence of those things, we can conclude to a spiritual reality.

The predictive power or physical evidence of such thing not being there would not diminish the proof of this nor it as a good explanation or even as a necessary explanation.

You misunderstand predictive power. It isn't about whether the predictions can be shown to be true in the empirical sense, it's about how many predictions your explanation can lead to, numerically. We have evolutionary explanations about altruism. We also have spiritual explanations of altruism. We can form multiple predictions based on the evolutionary explanations. The spiritual explanations lead to almost no predictions. Thus, on the basis of its capacity to give rise to predictions, the spiritual explanation is inferior.

Spiritual eyes? Wut?

Now you've just gone off the rails. I do not consider self and goodness to be objective, so no, you haven't provided anything we can see that shows I have a spirit.

There are biological based explanations for all these things; explanations that have equal scope, greater explanatory power, and are more predictively fruitful.

Independent of knowing which set of explanations is true, they are superior explanations as explanations.

Let me give you an alternative that has similar qualities to your explanation. "I say we desire fairness because of glorp." Is this a good explanation just on the qualities that make explanations good? Why or why not?

Just thought I would repost this for MysticKnight's benefit.

I think it addresses the issue of value from a biological perspective.

I highlighted the relevant part in bold for you.

No soul required.

(March 8, 2014 at 12:07 pm)max-greece Wrote:

(March 8, 2014 at 11:34 am)ChadWooters Wrote: Eat, drink, man, woman...get what you can while you can? Sure, why not?
So you say the value chain terminates at the conditioned reflexes people have because of a change outcome within an indifferent universe.

I wish I could say yes or no to that but I'm not sure I understood it.

In essence what I am saying is that once life formed (however that happened) then it developed a sense of value instantly - in that it instantly strove to survive and therefore valued existence higher than non-existence or death.

As life got more complex so did the understanding, and need, for value.

I'm not sure indifference is the right word for the inanimate universe as indifference implies that it could care. The universe can no more "care" than can a door.

(March 8, 2014 at 10:05 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Well if it's just a concept created in the brain, it has no essence, it's purely conceptual.

This seems like something we do all the time, as a way of motivating ourselves to accomplish goals. Call it visualization or affirmation or self-hypnosis, it works the same way. We conceptualize the things we want and then we go out and try to make them real. Unfortunately, the human brain isn't so easy to de-program, and much of who we are is defined by people and environments that we have little control over. So we wind up not only trying to accomplish things we want, but we waste a lot of time trying to accomplish things we don't reasonably want.

If creating the concept of a spiritual and metaphysical "reality" gets you through the day, then there's at least some good to it. But there are lots of things you could replace it with, if you were so inclined, and still find meaning and purpose in life.

Atheism does make you look sane.

(March 9, 2014 at 4:47 pm)heathendegenerate Wrote: Atheism does make you look sane.

...to other atheists