I'm now voting for Obama

Obama is much more organized in his speech, but he's also speaking in generalities.

Invil,

how are your kids?

Yeah but Nolio is responsible for Bush, that means he's still responsible for the other 5%.

They are all actors carrying out Nolio's will of mischief. Btw the credit crunch is Nolio's fault too, he staged that.

> avogadro wrote:

> > Justinian I wrote:

> Well here's the thing about the first cause argument. If you want to call it God, then you also have to apply various properties such as that dude who is watching the world, issues moral laws, and communicates his will through prophets etc.

No. God by definition doesnt have to be watching over us, or issue moral laws to us or communicate his will through prophets...>>

Well I don't think people will identify with the definition of God as being just a prime mover.

Acolyte,

Yes, we know very little according to my standard of knowledge, which is actually the traditional conception. It's not that I am apathetic or anything, but I pursue a very different project than knowledge. And yes, I highly value science and dismiss anything that is not non-scientific, I wanted to make that clear. The empirical method is both reliable and powerful. Think of David Hume who was a skeptic, but was also an empiricist.

Btw, solipism is the idea that only you exist. I think you really meant skepticism, which is the idea that we do not know if we know anything.

Thebes,

Well here's the thing about the first cause argument. If you want to call it God, then you also have to apply various properties such as that dude who is watching the world, issues moral laws, and communicates his will through prophets etc. For all we know, this prime mover is a mad scientist from another realm with laws we can't even conceive of, who created our universe as a 5th grade science project and he doesn't even care about us anymore. As such, I don't think it's fair to automatically equivocate this prime mover with God.

As for Descartes' argument, I was referring to his five meditations. I forget where the circle is, but I remember there was one in one of my philosophy classes. There is also another critique from Bertrand Russell who said that he only proved there is thinking, not that he exists. Without the conclusion he exists, his entire argument terminates.

Right on about Anselm .

> Little Paul wrote:

> pretend to be christian.>

Lol you have no idea how often I have to do this in public.

They'll both run the economy in to the ground.

LP,

That or he should at least get laid.

> Acolyte wrote:

> @Justinian I

You seem to have ignored the whole point about certainty. It is possible to know something without absolute certainty. If we say we cannot know anything without absolute certainty, then we cannot know anything at all. I cannot say with /absolute certainty/ that there is no God, but I can nevertheless say that I know there's no God, with the same certainty with which I know there is no flying pink unicorn.

Do you qualify a statement like "there is no such thing as a flying pink unicorn" by saying that you're not actually sure about that?>>

In that case you lowered the bar for what constitutes as knowledge. I keep to the traditional conception that I can only know something if it is truth-correlative, and that means having very limited knowledge.

Yes, I would admit I'm not sure and therefore would suspend judgment about the flying pink unicorn. I'm a philosophical skeptic. I don't actually know if I have a hand with five fingers, only that I experience a hand with five fingers.

.