(September 6, 2014 at 11:21 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:(September 6, 2014 at 11:08 am)Chas Wrote: I'm not, and no I don't. The use of the word 'being' refers to an intentional entity. If you are using it in some other sense, you have not made that explicit.I use the word "being" to simply mean, "to be," in contrast to "non-being." You'll have to clarify your definition of "intentional entity" but that's not necessarily what I had in mind.
A conscious being such as the gods of nearly all religions, or some such.
Quote:Quote:Sorry, but it's not clear to me what modern cosmology deals a fatal blow to.Near fatal. An eternal, spacetime, material Universe.
Well, except that that is not what modern cosmology says. Modern cosmology posits various hypotheses, that's just one set of them.
Quote:Quote:There is nothing valuable in any religion that is not available from a non-religious source. So, there's that.There is a non-religious source for ideas such as the soul, free will, and hope in the continuation of life after death? I don't think so. You might not find these ideas valuable, but I would tend to agree with the vast majority of human beings presently and throughout history who do.
No, free will is not a purely religious idea. However, soul (dualism) and afterlife (also dualism) are damaging concepts. They cause people to do things that damage their one chance at life for a fairy tale.
Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.
Science is not a subject, but a method.