Define God

[bilby]

And the irony is that our so-called reason is precisely what is destroying the world. It ain’t gorillas who are causing global warming and mass extinction.

Yeah, but to be fair, we're far from the first species to radically alter the atmosphere, to the point of making the planet uninhabitable for ourselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

 

[bilby]

The universal conclusion of philosophy is that reason is the ultimate goal of existence, and it is man who possesses the property of reason.

The universal conclusion of philosophers is that philosophy is the most important human activity.

The universal conclusion of doctors is that medicine is the most important human activity.

The universal conclusion of lawyers is that law is the most important human activity.

The universal conclusion of politicians is that politics is the most important human activity.

The universal conclusion of scientists is that science is the most important human activity.

I am beginning to see a pattern...

 

[No Robots]

In rejecting reason, man tries to revert to an animal state. He is not, however, an animal, and in trying to become one, he destroys himself.

In rejecting flight, the ostrich tries to revert to a bird state. It is not, however, a bird, and in trying to become one, it destroys itself.

Reason is a thing some humans do, just as flight is a thing some birds do. It ain't special, and it don't make humans non-animals.

Suddenly, the claim seems more "incoherent and absurd" than the "profound and wise" it seems to have been going for.

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him. Here is Bykhovsky:

The first symptoms of the irrational degeneration of modern idealistic philosophy appeared in the mid-19th century when the revolutionary storm clouds of 1848 were gathering. Ten years after Hegel's death the Government of Prussia, eager to crush the Left-Hegelian sedition, invited the dead man's friend and colleague to Berlin. It was there, in the University of Berlin, that there resounded the voice of the old Schelling who contraposed to Hegel's dialectical rationalism his own "philosophy of revelation". "That theosophical clown" was how Feuerbach dubbed this militant irrationalist, while the young Engels, who had heard Schelling's lectures, launched a furious attack against the new "messiah of philosophy", who had made a laughing-stock of the "mighty dialectics" of reason. Very soon, from Denmark, came the pathetic and overwrought philippic of Kierkegaard, whose bilious irony was directed against the rationalist system of thinking so vividly embodied in Hegel. Disparagement of the achievements of classical idealism went hand in hand with a hatred for revolutionary movements. It was at that time that the gloomy and baleful Schopenhauer, who had called Hegel "an unfeeling and disgusting quack", announced that the world was ruled not by reason but by a motiveless, purposeless and unreasonable will that was inaccessible to cognition.

Reason is the quintessence of the human Gattungswesen (generic essence). The flight from reason is an attempt to return to the life of the animal. Animals are right to exist as they do. For a man to imitate them is to destroy himself.

 

[pood]

Man is an animal.

 

[bilby]

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him.

Well, as long as you have picked a side, I guess you are absolved from further concern as to whether or not your beliefs are true.

It is rather bizarre that you describe that decision as "reason", but that's tribalism for you.

 

[Gospel]

In rejecting reason, man tries to revert to an animal state. He is not, however, an animal, and in trying to become one, he destroys himself.

In rejecting flight, the ostrich tries to revert to a bird state. It is not, however, a bird, and in trying to become one, it destroys itself.

Reason is a thing some humans do, just as flight is a thing some birds do. It ain't special, and it don't make humans non-animals.

Suddenly, the claim seems more "incoherent and absurd" than the "profound and wise" it seems to have been going for.

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him. Here is Bykhovsky:

The first symptoms of the irrational degeneration of modern idealistic philosophy appeared in the mid-19th century when the revolutionary storm clouds of 1848 were gathering. Ten years after Hegel's death the Government of Prussia, eager to crush the Left-Hegelian sedition, invited the dead man's friend and colleague to Berlin. It was there, in the University of Berlin, that there resounded the voice of the old Schelling who contraposed to Hegel's dialectical rationalism his own "philosophy of revelation". "That theosophical clown" was how Feuerbach dubbed this militant irrationalist, while the young Engels, who had heard Schelling's lectures, launched a furious attack against the new "messiah of philosophy", who had made a laughing-stock of the "mighty dialectics" of reason. Very soon, from Denmark, came the pathetic and overwrought philippic of Kierkegaard, whose bilious irony was directed against the rationalist system of thinking so vividly embodied in Hegel. Disparagement of the achievements of classical idealism went hand in hand with a hatred for revolutionary movements. It was at that time that the gloomy and baleful Schopenhauer, who had called Hegel "an unfeeling and disgusting quack", announced that the world was ruled not by reason but by a motiveless, purposeless and unreasonable will that was inaccessible to cognition.

Reason is the quintessence of the human Gattungswesen (generic essence). The flight from reason is an attempt to return to the life of the animal. Animals are right to exist as they do. For a man to imitate them is to destroy himself.

Ahh, this explains a lot, 170 years of philosophical, social, and technological evolution seems to have passed you by.

 

[bilby]

Animals are right to exist as they do. For a man to imitate them is to destroy himself.

I dunno, I had an uncle who did pretty good bird impressions, and it never seemed to threaten to destroy him.

 

[No Robots]

Man is an animal.

Man is a modified animal, as an animal is a modified plant and a plant is a modified mineral.

 

[No Robots]

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him.

Well, as long as you have picked a side, I guess you are absolved from further concern as to whether or not your beliefs are true.

It is rather bizarre that you describe that decision as "reason", but that's tribalism for you.

It is tribalism to take a stand for reason against irrationalist attacks against it?

 

[No Robots]

In rejecting reason, man tries to revert to an animal state. He is not, however, an animal, and in trying to become one, he destroys himself.

In rejecting flight, the ostrich tries to revert to a bird state. It is not, however, a bird, and in trying to become one, it destroys itself.

Reason is a thing some humans do, just as flight is a thing some birds do. It ain't special, and it don't make humans non-animals.

Suddenly, the claim seems more "incoherent and absurd" than the "profound and wise" it seems to have been going for.

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him. Here is Bykhovsky:

The first symptoms of the irrational degeneration of modern idealistic philosophy appeared in the mid-19th century when the revolutionary storm clouds of 1848 were gathering. Ten years after Hegel's death the Government of Prussia, eager to crush the Left-Hegelian sedition, invited the dead man's friend and colleague to Berlin. It was there, in the University of Berlin, that there resounded the voice of the old Schelling who contraposed to Hegel's dialectical rationalism his own "philosophy of revelation". "That theosophical clown" was how Feuerbach dubbed this militant irrationalist, while the young Engels, who had heard Schelling's lectures, launched a furious attack against the new "messiah of philosophy", who had made a laughing-stock of the "mighty dialectics" of reason. Very soon, from Denmark, came the pathetic and overwrought philippic of Kierkegaard, whose bilious irony was directed against the rationalist system of thinking so vividly embodied in Hegel. Disparagement of the achievements of classical idealism went hand in hand with a hatred for revolutionary movements. It was at that time that the gloomy and baleful Schopenhauer, who had called Hegel "an unfeeling and disgusting quack", announced that the world was ruled not by reason but by a motiveless, purposeless and unreasonable will that was inaccessible to cognition.

Reason is the quintessence of the human Gattungswesen (generic essence). The flight from reason is an attempt to return to the life of the animal. Animals are right to exist as they do. For a man to imitate them is to destroy himself.

Ahh, this explains a lot, 170 years of philosophical, social, and technological evolution seems to have passed you by.

The quotation I provide clearly indicates that the past 170 years have seen the growth of irrationalism.

 

[pood]

Man is an animal.

Man is a modified animal, as an animal is a modified plant and a plant is a modified mineral.

This is just Aristotle’s scala naturae. And it’s also very Ayn Randian, who was a big Aristotle fan and who declared that she herself had solved all philosophical problems.

Everything is a modified everything. It doesn’t follow that there is a direction or end point to evolution or anything else. The earth once was not, and once again in the far future it will be not.

 

[pood]

Reason is a faculty by which Netanyahu can destroy Gaza and Putin can destroy Ukraine. It is also a faculty by which Shakespeare wrote his plays and Van Gogh produced his art. It is not univocal and can be used for bad or good.

And even that is not the whole story. Scientific studies suggest that what we call reason is heavily motivated by emotion. In the end emotion and feeling may trump all. In general humans believe what they want to believe, and are not guided by Mr. Spock logic.

 

[No Robots]

Man is an animal.

Man is a modified animal, as an animal is a modified plant and a plant is a modified mineral.

This is just Aristotle’s scala naturae. And it’s also very Ayn Randian, who was a big Aristotle fan and who declared that she herself had solved all philosophical problems.

Everything is a modified everything. It doesn’t follow that there is a direction or end point to evolution or anything else. The earth once was not, and once again in the far future it will be not.

Here is Rand on evolution:

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between man and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man’s consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man’s consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon—a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless “safety” of an animal’s consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.

She’s absolutely correct here.

It is important to emphasize, however, that consciousness is a universal property. Here is Waton:

When considering light and darkness, we saw that darkness is not the absence of light, because light is infinite and eternal; darkness is a light which the human eye cannot apprehend. Hence to the human eye it appears darkness. The same is true of life and consciousness. We must not assume that, besides the life which we perceive in living beings, and besides the consciousness which we perceive in living and conscious beings, there is neither life nor consciousness. This is an illusion. Whatever the attribute of God be, it is infinite and eternal; it is infinite in extent, in degree and in nature. Hence there are forms of life and of consciousness which we cannot perceive; but this does not mean that they do not exist. Life and consciousness are eternal and infinite attributes of God. God is everything. Hence, everything is living and is conscious. God is living, conscious and thinking in and through every reality in existence, be it an electron, a star or the whole infinite and eternal material world.

Consciouness expresses itself in infinite forms. Mankind’s consciousness includes the property of reason. Through reason, mankind achieves unity with the infinite intellect and this is the purpose of existence.

 

[No Robots]

Reason is a faculty by which Netanyahu can destroy Gaza and Putin can destroy Ukraine. It is also a faculty by which Shakespeare wrote his plays and Van Gogh produced his art. It is not univocal and can be used for bad or good.

And even that is not the whole story. Scientific studies suggest that what we call reason is heavily motivated by emotion. In the end emotion and feeling may trump all. In general humans believe what they want to believe, and are not guided by Mr. Spock logic.

Reason is the property of the human mind that perceives the relationships between ideas and ultimately that the whole of existence is a single idea.

 

[pood]

Reason is a faculty by which Netanyahu can destroy Gaza and Putin can destroy Ukraine. It is also a faculty by which Shakespeare wrote his plays and Van Gogh produced his art. It is not univocal and can be used for bad or good.

And even that is not the whole story. Scientific studies suggest that what we call reason is heavily motivated by emotion. In the end emotion and feeling may trump all. In general humans believe what they want to believe, and are not guided by Mr. Spock logic.

Reason is the property of the human mind that perceives the relationships between ideas and ultimately that the whole of existence is a single idea.

Evidence?

 

[pood]

Man is an animal.

Man is a modified animal, as an animal is a modified plant and a plant is a modified mineral.

This is just Aristotle’s scala naturae. And it’s also very Ayn Randian, who was a big Aristotle fan and who declared that she herself had solved all philosophical problems.

Everything is a modified everything. It doesn’t follow that there is a direction or end point to evolution or anything else. The earth once was not, and once again in the far future it will be not.

Here is Rand on evolution:

I am not a student of the theory of evolution and, therefore, I am neither its supporter nor its opponent. But a certain hypothesis has haunted me for years; I want to stress that it is only a hypothesis. There is an enormous breach of continuity between man and all the other living species. The difference lies in the nature of man’s consciousness, in its distinctive characteristic: his conceptual faculty. It is as if, after aeons of physiological development, the evolutionary process altered its course, and the higher stages of development focused primarily on the consciousness of living species, not their bodies. But the development of a man’s consciousness is volitional: no matter what the innate degree of his intelligence, he must develop it, he must learn how to use it, he must become a human being by choice. What if he does not choose to? Then he becomes a transitional phenomenon—a desperate creature that struggles frantically against his own nature, longing for the effortless “safety” of an animal’s consciousness, which he cannot recapture, and rebelling against a human consciousness, which he is afraid to achieve.

She’s absolutely correct here.

She’s absolutely wrong. There is no such enormous breach of continuity. To be fair, when she was writing, scientists had not yet discovered the amazing intellectual abilities of the so-called “lower” animals. One thing I notice no other animals do except humans is destroy the environment on a massive scale and cause an ongoing mass extinction. Some invasive species do cause mass extinction events, but they don’t know they are doing it. We are doing it now and don’t care. There’s reason for you.

It is important to emphasize, however, that consciousness is a universal property. Here is Waton:

When considering light and darkness, we saw that darkness is not the absence of light, because light is infinite and eternal; darkness is a light which the human eye cannot apprehend. Hence to the human eye it appears darkness. The same is true of life and consciousness. We must not assume that, besides the life which we perceive in living beings, and besides the consciousness which we perceive in living and conscious beings, there is neither life nor consciousness. This is an illusion. Whatever the attribute of God be, it is infinite and eternal; it is infinite in extent, in degree and in nature. Hence there are forms of life and of consciousness which we cannot perceive; but this does not mean that they do not exist. Life and consciousness are eternal and infinite attributes of God. God is everything. Hence, everything is living and is conscious. God is living, conscious and thinking in and through every reality in existence, be it an electron, a star or the whole infinite and eternal material world.

Consciouness expresses itself in infinite forms. Mankind’s consciousness includes the property of reason. Through reason, mankind achieves unity with the infinite intellect and this is the purpose of existence.

Evidence for any of these claims?

 

[pood]

Rand appears to have disliked evolution because she disliked the idea that humans, like all animals, were endowed by natural selection with instincts and proclivities beyond their rational control.

Like me, she believed in free will, but her conception of it was aggressively libertarian. Mine is compatibilist.

Rand would have you believe that humans are fully volitional and fully self-making. The evidence shows otherwise.

 

[pood]

In rejecting reason, man tries to revert to an animal state. He is not, however, an animal, and in trying to become one, he destroys himself.

In rejecting flight, the ostrich tries to revert to a bird state. It is not, however, a bird, and in trying to become one, it destroys itself.

Reason is a thing some humans do, just as flight is a thing some birds do. It ain't special, and it don't make humans non-animals.

Suddenly, the claim seems more "incoherent and absurd" than the "profound and wise" it seems to have been going for.

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him. Here is Bykhovsky:

The first symptoms of the irrational degeneration of modern idealistic philosophy appeared in the mid-19th century when the revolutionary storm clouds of 1848 were gathering. Ten years after Hegel's death the Government of Prussia, eager to crush the Left-Hegelian sedition, invited the dead man's friend and colleague to Berlin. It was there, in the University of Berlin, that there resounded the voice of the old Schelling who contraposed to Hegel's dialectical rationalism his own "philosophy of revelation". "That theosophical clown" was how Feuerbach dubbed this militant irrationalist, while the young Engels, who had heard Schelling's lectures, launched a furious attack against the new "messiah of philosophy", who had made a laughing-stock of the "mighty dialectics" of reason. Very soon, from Denmark, came the pathetic and overwrought philippic of Kierkegaard, whose bilious irony was directed against the rationalist system of thinking so vividly embodied in Hegel. Disparagement of the achievements of classical idealism went hand in hand with a hatred for revolutionary movements. It was at that time that the gloomy and baleful Schopenhauer, who had called Hegel "an unfeeling and disgusting quack", announced that the world was ruled not by reason but by a motiveless, purposeless and unreasonable will that was inaccessible to cognition.

Reason is the quintessence of the human Gattungswesen (generic essence). The flight from reason is an attempt to return to the life of the animal. Animals are right to exist as they do. For a man to imitate them is to destroy himself.

Ahh, this explains a lot, 170 years of philosophical, social, and technological evolution seems to have passed you by.

The quotation I provide clearly indicates that the past 170 years have seen the growth of irrationalism.

Except the quotation is an assertion unsupported by evidence.

 

[No Robots]

Reason is the property of the human mind that perceives the relationships between ideas and ultimately that the whole of existence is a single idea.

Evidence?

The evidence for reason lies within itself. Here is Waton:

Hegel tells us that to him who looks upon the world rationally, the world presents itself as a rational process. Whatever the human mind contemplates, be it space, time, matter, motion, force, life, thought, and so on, it perceives that thought and reason pervade the whole of existence; that all realities and processes in existence live, move and have their being in thought and reason. Thought and reason are the substance and essence of existence; and this is so, because God, who manifests himself as existence, is a conscious, thinking and rational being. That most men do not perceive the rationality of existence, this is not surprising. Everything is measured by itself: length is measured by length, weight is measured by weight, color is measured by color, and reason is measured by reason. Most men have not yet attained to reason. That they seem to be rational, this is due to the fact that men that had attained to reason created a wonderful world, and in this world even men who had not yet attained to reason can live more or less rationally; and thus appear more or less rational. But, in fact, they are not rational. This painfully manifests itself when they have to decide on any course of conduct. So long as they follow the methods already crystallized by rational persons, so long even the ordinary men appear to be rational. But, when they have to decide upon a course of conduct that was not already determined for them by science, religion and philosophy, they invariably act irrationally. Is it any wonder that they cannot perceive thought and reason in existence ? And even scientists are limited in their perception of the rationality of existence, just because science itself is limited. It requires the height and universality of philosophy to perceive that all existence lives, moves and has its being in thought and in reason. Every one according to the degree that he attained to reason, to that extent does he perceive the rationality of existence.

She’s absolutely wrong. There is no such enormous breach of continuity. To be fair, when she was writing, scientists had not yet discovered the amazing intellectual abilities of the so-called “lower” animals. One thing I notice no other animals do except humans is destroy the environment on a massive scale and cause an ongoing mass extinction. Some invasive species do cause mass extinction events, but they don’t know they are doing it. We are doing it now and don’t care. There’s reason for you.

The discontinuity is merely with regard to reason. Reason is a property of consciousness and consciousness is a property of the whole of existence.

It is important to emphasize, however, that consciousness is a universal property. Here is Waton:

Evidence for any of these claims?

These claims are self-evident in the light of reason.

 

[No Robots]

In rejecting reason, man tries to revert to an animal state. He is not, however, an animal, and in trying to become one, he destroys himself.

In rejecting flight, the ostrich tries to revert to a bird state. It is not, however, a bird, and in trying to become one, it destroys itself.

Reason is a thing some humans do, just as flight is a thing some birds do. It ain't special, and it don't make humans non-animals.

Suddenly, the claim seems more "incoherent and absurd" than the "profound and wise" it seems to have been going for.

I stand with Hegel and his followers, including Marx, and against the irrationalist response to him. Here is Bykhovsky:

The first symptoms of the irrational degeneration of modern idealistic philosophy appeared in the mid-19th century when the revolutionary storm clouds of 1848 were gathering. Ten years after Hegel's death the Government of Prussia, eager to crush the Left-Hegelian sedition, invited the dead man's friend and colleague to Berlin. It was there, in the University of Berlin, that there resounded the voice of the old Schelling who contraposed to Hegel's dialectical rationalism his own "philosophy of revelation". "That theosophical clown" was how Feuerbach dubbed this militant irrationalist, while the young Engels, who had heard Schelling's lectures, launched a furious attack against the new "messiah of philosophy", who had made a laughing-stock of the "mighty dialectics" of reason. Very soon, from Denmark, came the pathetic and overwrought philippic of Kierkegaard, whose bilious irony was directed against the rationalist system of thinking so vividly embodied in Hegel. Disparagement of the achievements of classical idealism went hand in hand with a hatred for revolutionary movements. It was at that time that the gloomy and baleful Schopenhauer, who had called Hegel "an unfeeling and disgusting quack", announced that the world was ruled not by reason but by a motiveless, purposeless and unreasonable will that was inaccessible to cognition.

Reason is the quintessence of the human Gattungswesen (generic essence). The flight from reason is an attempt to return to the life of the animal. Animals are right to exist as they do. For a man to imitate them is to destroy himself.

Ahh, this explains a lot, 170 years of philosophical, social, and technological evolution seems to have passed you by.

The quotation I provide clearly indicates that the past 170 years have seen the growth of irrationalism.

Except the quotation is an assertion unsupported by evidence.

The evidence is quite plain even just with reference to yourself and your absolutizing of irrationalism, chaos, randomness and entropy.