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Messages - Barulheira

678
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Roughly speaking, agnosticism is the lack of faith, that is, the lack of something... = nothing. There's actually nothing to support. Hence, this is the simplest "religious" position.
679
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Quote from: ersi on
If you were an investigative skeptic, you'd keep inquiring until a proper solid answer is found, instead of staying at mere belief.

I was an investigative believer, and no proper solid answer was found. Enough for me.
Quote from: ersi on
In any scientific or skeptical enquiry, if you mean to find out the true answer, you consider your hypothesis as a fact and investigate it as such, seriously and conscientiously.

I think it's the other way around: you consider your "fact" as a hypothesis and investigate it to see if it works out as a fact (I'm not speaking too strictly here, just to show the idea).
Happy new year!
680
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Back to topic: The problem with Atheism.

Some nice insights have been given here. I'd like to address them.

But remember:

Quote from: Macallan on
Pick any group of living humans that is non-trivial in size, you're guaranteed to find your share of idiots, psychos, assholes and so on. Why would atheists be any different in that regard?


1.
Quote from: SmileyFaze on
The Problem with Atheism is that they can never disprove the existence of God, so they attack everyone of faith with hate.

I don't see why this is a problem. Atheists don't have to disprove anything - unless required by some nutty theist. The inability to disprove the undisprovable isn't a bug - it's a feature.

2.
Quote from: SmileyFaze on
The Problem with Atheism is that hate is the only answer they have to the existence of God.

Hate? This can be applied to some nutty atheists, of course, but Atheism (if it exists at all) isn't about hate, and the existence of God isn't even a question that should be answered.

3.
Quote from: ersi on
The concept of immaterial is worth taking seriously.

This one has taken a lot of posts. In my point of view, the concept of immaterial isn't necessarily denied by atheists; they just don't see a reason to take it seriously, or even to take it at all. When someone comes up with arguments that the "immaterial" should be taking seriously, some problem arises.

Personally, I don't deny that something immaterial - or God, or gods - COULD exist, and I obviously can't disprove such things; but I have reasons to personally believe that they don't exist at all. This doesn't apply to all atheists, or agnostics, or whatever.
681
DnD Central / Grammatical Mutterings
Quote from: Frenzie on
It's simply a neuter indeterminate pronoun. A construction like "The girl went shopping. It came home with a new hat."*  is quite ordinary. "She came home…" would be ungrammatical in this context.
You are most probably right, and I must be fairly outdated in German grammar. I didn't know about such usages of "es". For me, "Es regnet" was the most representative usage of it. Thanks, anyway.
682
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Quote from: Frenzie on

Quote from: Barulheira on
According to my grammar classes, the subject can be "nobody" quite well.

And just who's doing the raining in "it's raining"? ;)

A little bit off topic:
I'm not sure. In English, it seems that the subject is "it", while "it" is just a placeholder for an implicit inexistent subject. If I recall correctly, in German there's even a word for an inexistent subject: "es", so that the sentence would be like "'es' is raining", where "es" is a placeholder for an explicit inexistent subject. In Portuguese the sentence is constructed like "is raining": it just doesn't have a subject at all.
Finally, whether the subject can be inexistent, either implicitly or explicitly, or it can be "nobody", such a discussion about an object requiring a subject is pointless.
684
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Quote from: ersi on

Quote from: Barulheira on

Quote from: Josh on
My definition of matter.
Frans was talking about the "normal" definition of matter. ::)
There is no normal definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter
Quote
Matter is a poorly defined term in science (see definitions below).
You may accuse me of shifting meanings, but if the alternative is to accept something poorly defined and elusive as the basis from which to derive everything else, then sorry, I prefer to stick with meanings - with relevant distinctions.

I was just kidding with Josh about the definition of matter. What you quoted above - about the definition of Matter - isn't in any way related to what I had said about shifting meanings, before. Please, read that again.
687
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Quote from: ersi on
To presuppose philosophical materialism in physics is "successful" because physics studies matter and this is all it does. ("If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.") Study anything else and materialism becomes highly problematic. For example psychology and sociology clearly call for a different presupposition. To assume primacy of physics is, for most purposes in our lives, out of place. Shouldn't this make one honestly question materialism/physicalism for a moment?
Wait a minute. Are you saying that psychology and sociology resort to "abstract entities" or "the immaterial" to make sense? I hope you are confusing them with philosophy and theology (and metaphysics and whatever). Social or human sciences (or whatever they are called in English) don't have anything in common with "the transcendent" - and, in fact, don't need it. Physicalism has been used here to refer to the physical reality (that is, how the Universe works and how it can be detected, measured, tested, etc.) and now it refers to what is material - concrete - against abstract things like mental concepts!? This shift of meanings leads to meaningless discussions, as we have already seen before.
689
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Agnosticism
I have thought on making up a false account for rjhowie... but it would not be funny. Besides, I don't communicate well in Scottish.
I miss your good old Jaybro account.
694
DnD Central / Re: The Problem with Atheism
Atheists aren't all equal.
The problem I see here is not that atheists demand proofs of whatever religions dare to claim. Rather the debate starts when some religious person (Bantay, for instance) claims having proofs of whatever he/she believes, presenting inconsistent arguments. Then, some atheist doesn't argue what is believed, rather the validity of the arguments.
It may work both ways, too.
695
Forum Administration / Re: Questions to the Administrator
Oh! I had forgotten that I'm using Opera without a titlebar. I enjoyed the extra space I got for the pages... until now.
Your change is good for me... but the whole website theme's base font has almost doubled... Should I switch something here?
698
Forum Administration / Re: Questions to the Administrator
This may be a matter of preference:
At the forum pages (for instance: "Forum Administration & Future"), the window tab displays the page title correctly, although quite narrow. But the page title doesn't appear clearly anywhere else in the page itself. Sometimes I find myself struggling to find out at what forum I am currently. At the top of the page is displayed simply "DnD Sanctuary", and the forum name is in small characters in the hierarchy line.
Is there a way to display the forum name more clearly?
Thread names are quite OK, I think; they have a special highlighted space for them.
700
DnD Central / Re: Forum clock
Sometimes it happens, and today it happened again: without me changing anything in my account profile, time display is offset by 1 hour - forwards or backwards, randomly. Can anyone else confirm that? Frenzie, do you know what happened?
FYI, there are no summer timezone changes taking place around here these days.