These questions aren't ones a computer spits out at you and does a few number crunches to tell you what you might be. These are questions that all philosophies (theist AND non-theist) ask. Answer them for yourself, do with them what you will, share your answers if you like.

1. Ontological (Greek ontos, to be) Who am I? What is basic human nature?

2. Epistemological (Greek episteme, to know) What are the valid sources of knowledge? What makes something "real"?

3. Cosmological (Greek kosmos, order) Who or what is the source of ultimate order in the universe?

4. Soteriological (Greek soterion, deliverance) What is my purpose in life?

5. Eschatological (Greek eschata, first or farthest) What does it mean for me to die?

And, of course, the mother of all questions: Do your answers to these motivate you to set rules for your daily life, and if so, what are they?

Our answers to these should be statements, and not construed as recommendations. Philosophers and religious figures alike have been murdered for pressing people to ask these questions. Honesty to some is a dangerous thing.

Originally Posted by serandfae

Who am I?

I am the son of my father. If you need to know more specifically, I'm also the husband to my wife, and the inhabitant of the left side of the bed at an address I won't post.

I'm such a jerk. Actually I have a meeting in 10 mins and don't have time to give a meaningful answer, so I'll have to come back later for that. But I read this article over lunch today that was really great, about philosophy and artificial intelligence. For video games to get better, police and military support systems, air traffic control, the computer in your car, and all that to get better, it needs AI. Artificial intelligence means learning from past experiences, among other things, and you can't write code telling a computer how to do things like learn, without a very solid grasp of what knowledge is, how it gets acquired and assimilated, and all that. Nothing in philosophy is comprehensive (or even correct) enough to be the foundation of a working computer program, but apparently the Greek masters are closer to what the programmers need than anything until around the 1920s or 1930s.

This article about trying to figure out what knowledge is and how it can be learned said one of the major hurdles is teaching a computer what is and isn't an appropriate response. They used the example what's your phone number, it's a string of digits that can be dialed to reach me. That's a truthful response, but not a helpful one.

To know how to construct an artificial intelligence, one must first know what real intelligence is.....

Originally Posted by serandfae

1. Ontological (Greek ontos, to be) Who am I? What is basic human nature?

Human nature in the psychological sense, or what is nature of being human?

Originally Posted by serandfae

2. Epistemological (Greek episteme, to know) What are the valid sources of knowledge? What makes something "real"?

"Quelle sais je? Rein." Knowing is a spectrum, a range of different levels of certainty. There's a line in a Tool song that says "I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive, even if my senses tell me otherwise." Fair logic. People sometimes assume that because the sun rose today, yesterday, and the day before, that it'll rise tomorrow. Depending on what 'rise' means, that might not be a fair assumption here in Seattle.

What about skill? I know I'm a damned good photographer. I just found this place in the wilderness with mountain goats that haven't learned to fear people. I don't know I'll come back with good photos on my next trip. I "know" the English language, but I encounter words I'm not familiar with.

Some 'thing' is real whether we believe or understand it or not. The CMOS chip in my camera wouldn't work if Max Plank had been fundamentally wrong about quantum mechanics, especially the protons my pixels 'count.' I have no doubt he got some of the details wrong, that we still have them wrong today. But quantum physics was as real a million years ago as it is today and will be centuries from now.

Originally Posted by serandfae

3. Cosmological (Greek kosmos, order) Who or what is the source of ultimate order in the universe?

My 'belief' is that we don't know a tenth of a percent about this one. We know about things like entropy, and evolution - which is mainly the economics of sexual attraction pitted against all other pressures - and many other types of systems giving rise to a greater sense of order.

When I had my first exposure to software development, it was on an IBM PC with Basic as it's O/S. You could shell out to programs on a floppy disc, or you could write and store your own programs ... using line numbers, partly for flow control and partly to cement the idea that this happens and then this and then this, in a very sequential manner. Today, a common metaphor for software dev is a roulette machine; the computer is in a constant state of flux, threads are pre-empted at unpredictable times ( explaining the need for critical sections ) and the concept of determinism in computer software is weakened. Code doesn't get new, unpredictable meaning, but it might behave differently when the host system runs out of RAM, or experience a deadlock.

Another song, by an Oakland resident called The Grouch, has the best answer I've heard to this question: "there's a formula; I don't know it though."

Originally Posted by serandfae

4. Soteriological (Greek soterion, deliverance) What is my purpose in life?

If you asked a person five thousand years ago why there's thunder and lightening, that person might say "because god is angry." Today you'd get an answer more along the lines of a warm and cold front colliding... That tells you how the storm came to be, but not why.

I'm not convinced that our innate desire to know why means there really is an answer to that question.

Originally Posted by serandfae

5. Eschatological (Greek eschata, first or farthest) What does it mean for me to die?

The physical or medical answer isn't pretty. If I'm on a roll with song lyrics ... there's the one about I Dreamt I Saw Joe Hill: "Takes more than guns to kill a man."

Originally Posted by serandfae

And, of course, the mother of all questions: Do your answers to these motivate you to set rules for your daily life, and if so, what are they?

It makes me more likely to give people the benefit of the doubt when it's not stupid to. It keeps me humble, as much as that's possible.

I just quoted this in a different thread, but realized it would be more appropriate here. I'm not a Shakurian, though.

Dear momma don't cry, your baby boy's doin good
Tell the homies I'm in heaven and they ain't got hoods
Seen a show with Marvin Gaye last night, it had me shook
Drippin peppermint Schnapps, with Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke
Then some lady named Billie Holiday sang
Sittin there kickin it with Malcolm, 'til the day came
Little LaTasha sho' grown
Tell the lady in the liquor store that she's forgiven - so come home

Maybe in time you'll understand only God can save us
When Miles Davis cuttin lose with the band
Just think of all the people that you knew in the past
that passed on, they in heaven, found peace at last
Picture a place that they exist, together
There has to be a place better than this, in heaven
So right before I sleep, dear God, what I'm askin
Remember this face, save me a place, in thug's mansion

Originally Posted by serandfae

1. Ontological (Greek ontos, to be) Who am I? What is basic human nature?

2. Epistemological (Greek episteme, to know) What are the valid sources of knowledge? What makes something "real"?

3. Cosmological (Greek kosmos, order) Who or what is the source of ultimate order in the universe?

4. Soteriological (Greek soterion, deliverance) What is my purpose in life?

5. Eschatological (Greek eschata, first or farthest) What does it mean for me to die?

And, of course, the mother of all questions: Do your answers to these motivate you to set rules for your daily life, and if so, what are they?

1. "I" am the product of a collection of interdependent cells reacting to external stimuli. Human nature is simply a collection of basic stimuli responses.

2. Empiricism and Rationalism combined are the only way to gain any "knowledge" about the "external" world, nothing can be truly known to be true or real but a belief in the reality or truthfulness can be made stronger my adding more empirical observations and using logic to come to rational conclusions.

3. There is no order in the universe,and at the same time it is ordered. There is no central process controlling the universe, but rather trillions and trillions of decentralised sub atomic processes keep the universe dynamic.

4. Life is what you make of it.

5. Death is simply the the degradation of the cells that make up me, the atoms that make them up with break off and form other things/beings and so I become part of the universe again, completing the cycle.

- While these thoughts are in my mind always they do not have a huge effect on my day to day life, since life is what you make of it I aim to do my best, have some fun, and not waste it.

Jamie

Now that I think about it, it's little wonder that the Belief-O-Matic thing found matches across the spectrum. While I grew up reading from most of the world's religions and philosophies, I was not raised within one, so to speak. My first real exposure to "churchgoin' folks" was in homeroom in high school--a student standing on a desk pointing down telling me I was going to hell. I naturally rolled my eyes back like the Undertaker, and in my best Freddy Krueger voice told her she was right and I was going to take her with me. Of course, they left me alone. I told them I felt it was morally repugnant to do "good" out of hope for reward or fear of punishment. I did find out later that there are Baptists and then there are Baptists... So, with my diverse background why would I become a Southern Baptist? I found some that were more about service than sin. My answers to these questions will still not be what they consider to be "mainstream" though.

1. Ontological (Greek ontos, to be) Who am I? What is basic human nature?
Basic human nature is to follow biological impulses. But Dr. Jeff Schwartz at UCLA has actually measured his patients rewiring their own brains to overcome OCD through directed therapy (measured by fMRI). His interpretation is that there is a Will outside of the wiring driving it. Personally I think that means that we are greater than our biological components. I am a force of Will, that seeks to coexist with like Wills.

2. Epistemological (Greek episteme, to know) What are the valid sources of knowledge? What makes something "real"?
Scientific, emotional and metaphysical. Even science has a form of "faith": If people did not believe in that for which no proof existed no hypotheses would ever be formulated. And we now know that to observe affects what is observed. Ask Heisenberg. For most things, trust science. But for the emotions I feel, and for the things I can sense beyond the traditional six senses, I need faith.

3. Cosmological (Greek kosmos, order) Who or what is the source of ultimate order in the universe?
There are the laws of nature, then there is a force we call God, which I consider to be both the ultimate Will and the convergence of separate Wills of sentient beings. It is part of nature just like matter, energy, space and time. That ultimate Will can be tapped into, be a force of guidance, if we shut ourselves up and can listen.

4. Soteriological (Greek soterion, deliverance) What is my purpose in life?
Our purpose is what we make it to be. No one's "meant" to do anything. We do what we can with the gifts we have and our measure is in the connections we make.

5. Eschatological (Greek eschata, first or farthest) What does it mean for me to die?
If our Wills have been one with each others in this world they will be one when we leave it. Nature really doesn't have too many islands.

And, of course, the mother of all questions: Do your answers to these motivate you to set rules for your daily life, and if so, what are they?
They all pretty much derive from "Do unto others....", helping others when I can, and realizing I ain't special--see Kant's categorical imperative, and throw in humility.

This was difficult to put into words. But I will say that Jamie put it best and expressed what I think only much better than I.

Originally Posted by serandfae

1. Ontological (Greek ontos, to be) Who am I? What is basic human nature?

I am a member of one of many species inhabiting a planet that revolves around a typical O class star which is one of a hundred billion stars that revolves around the Milky Way galaxy which is one of at least a hundred billion galaxies in the only known (so far) universe.

My nature is the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution of life and 100,000 years of my species.

Originally Posted by serandfae

2. Epistemological (Greek episteme, to know) What are the valid sources of knowledge? What makes something "real"?

What makes something real is if it is physical or produced by something physical. What is physical can be tested through the means of science and validated.

Originally Posted by serandfae

3. Cosmological (Greek kosmos, order) Who or what is the source of ultimate order in the universe?

The source of order for our universe was determined by the laws that happened to develop at the time of the big bang. It was by pure chance.

Originally Posted by serandfae

4. Soteriological (Greek soterion, deliverance) What is my purpose in life?

Ultimately, there is no purpose in life. The question itself is meaningless. I create my own meaning with family, friends and work. But this meaning is only an illusion.

Originally Posted by serandfae

5. Eschatological (Greek eschata, first or farthest) What does it mean for me to die?

To cease to exist. When I die the water that makes up most of my body becomes part of the ground and the rest will probably lie in a coffin. There is nothing more.

Originally Posted by serandfae

And, of course, the mother of all questions: Do your answers to these motivate you to set rules for your daily life, and if so, what are they?

I think there are several sources that I have used to set "rules" for my daily life. The sources are through genetics, influences of those around me, and reason.
.

Great thread Tim. Belief without questions about organized religion. Given that a descent answer to any of these questions would be lengthy and require a large amount of time to consider(Some people spend a lifetime in consideration of these very questions). Given that I have to be in a meeting in 15 minutes, I'll give you my 10 minutes of consideration answers while reserving my right to re-consider.

Originally Posted by serandfae

These questions aren't ones a computer spits out at you and does a few number crunches to tell you what you might be. These are questions that all philosophies (theist AND non-theist) ask. Answer them for yourself, do with them what you will, share your answers if you like.

1. Ontological (Greek ontos, to be) Who am I? What is basic human nature?

2. Epistemological (Greek episteme, to know) What are the valid sources of knowledge? What makes something "real"?

3. Cosmological (Greek kosmos, order) Who or what is the source of ultimate order in the universe?

4. Soteriological (Greek soterion, deliverance) What is my purpose in life?

5. Eschatological (Greek eschata, first or farthest) What does it mean for me to die?

And, of course, the mother of all questions: Do your answers to these motivate you to set rules for your daily life, and if so, what are they?

Our answers to these should be statements, and not construed as recommendations. Philosophers and religious figures alike have been murdered for pressing people to ask these questions. Honesty to some is a dangerous thing.

1) I am Homo Sapien, of the Order of Primates. I am similar to every other animal on the planet, and unlike any other, even amongst Homo Sapiens. Even if I were a genetic match (identical twin), my experiences in life would make me unique, thereby changing my values and decision making process. Being animal, my nature is to reproduce and propagate the species. Nearly every other decision I make is based on this very basic instinctual drive.

2) Every sensory input is a valid source of knowledge. In a less myopic sense, even those who lie to us teach us something. What makes something real depends on whether you are saying real to us or real. Real to us is just a matter of providing the right sensory input in the right sequence to have our brains accept it as real, given our genetic makeup and experiences. Real in a general sense is a completely different thing. There could be parallel universes, a god, gods, life on other planets. We simply have no knowledge or experience with such things, and thus no scientific way to explore them. The ants which live in a child's ant farm likely have no knowledge of the existence of the child, but that doesn't make the child any less real. Every so often, the child takes out a magnifying glass and fries one of them, inflicting his realty on theirs. Even then, the ants child will remain unreal to the remaining ants.

3) Impossible to know. Clearly there is order. It could all be a giant accident, there could be a guiding hand. Since it is impossible to know, and since there is order, I'd say it is more likely that there is a god than there is not.

4) Simple. Reproduce. Propagate my species, and I'm not talking about Homo Sapien. I'm talking about my specific gene pool. Sure there are many loftier causes. In my opinion, they all circle back to reproduction(i.e. We try to make the world a better place so our offspring have a better place to live). I have no explanation for evolutionary non-starters such as homosexuality, and perhaps this is where I need to revise this belief some.

5) Impossible to know as anyone who has returned from death(in a Flatliners sense) has no witnesses to confirm their stories, and most never return from death. I choose to believe that death is the end of consciousness. Like the end of Sopranos, the screen goes black. I hope there is some kind of altered continuation of consciousness, but I seriously doubt it. The best I can muster is perhaps some shared consciousness, lacking any concept of self as I previously knew it, perhaps a small part of someone's personality in birth (Being John Malkovich reference).

Set rules for day to day life? In my opinion, every decision we make is guided by our beliefs, whether we set specific rules based on those beliefs or not. I personally have never set specific rules but I could provide countless examples, in business and social situations, where those beliefs directly guided my decision and actions.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

I've enjoyed seeing these answers. Anyone else? Any discussion?

Originally Posted by serandfae

I've enjoyed seeing these answers. Anyone else? Any discussion?

Yes. I'm right, everyone else is wrong, everyone has to believe as I do or be rounded up and put into re-education camps.

Re-education Camp Director: What's better than a big juicy steak? Camp Detainees: Nothing is better than a big juicy steak!
Re-education Camp Director: And what's better than nothing?
Camp Detainees: A stale piece of bread is better than nothing!
Re-education Camp Director: Therefore a stale piece of bread is better than a big juicy steak.



Just kidding.. of course.

(click-whirr-pop!)

Would you like some Kool-Aid?

Did Tyler Dirden give you permission to post that?
What's the first rule about Fight Club, soldier?

(Moved from The World According to America thread)

Originally Posted by joder

Tim, as regards Numbers 31, you are still ducking the question. Tell me what the symbolism is for that chapter or why it shouldn't be taken literally. Your response to that chapter was about parables and not taking things literally so you must be saying it has some meaning as a parable. I don't think anyone can figure it out. The parable of mass extinction.

Ah, the chapter about God telling the Isrealites to kill every last person in Midian except the virgins, who got divvied up like cattle. Since you've asked me about this chapter several times, OK, here's my answer for you. I could count on one hand the number of peoples who don't think God is on their side. This chapter should be disturbing, more so if you consider the Bible to be the all-or-nothing, infallible, literal, word-for-word Word of God(TM). Because if you do, it would mean that God endorses genocide, then and now.

But the Bible was written by men. I believe that God inspires men, but I also know that men like to create God in their own image, too. And this chapter is an example thereof. How do I know that? By empirical standards, I don't. Can I prove it? No. Can I even prove that God exists? No, I can't, nor would I or anyone else be able to in ten lifetimes. The Bible has many more bloody chapters like this, as does the human race. But just as I would not write off my faith in humanity for its atrocities, I will not write off the Bible, because there's a lot that's good in there, too. You are free to dismiss it, and I'm not pushing it or my beliefs on anyone. But for me it's not all-or-nothing, either to accept or reject the book.

****! Who moved Tim's post over here. This was the "Non-religious" thread.
You can hardly call that Numbers 31 being about genocide. They let the virgins live, didn't they?

Originally Posted by serandfae

Did Tyler Dirden give you permission to post that?
What's the first rule about Fight Club, soldier?

Now that movie was gospel. I hate to hijack... ahh what the hell. A few fine quotes:

Richard Chesler: [Reading a piece of paper] The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club?
Narrator: [Voice-over] I'm half asleep again; I must've left the original in the copy machine.
Richard Chesler: The second rule of Fight Club - is this yours?
Narrator: Huh?
Richard Chesler: Pretend you're me, make a managerial decision: you find this, what would you do?
Narrator: [pauses] Well, I gotta tell you: I'd be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that... is dangerous.
[Gets up from the chair]
Narrator: [Talking slowly] And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
Narrator: [Voice-over] Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
[Snatches the piece of paper from boss' hands]
Narrator: [Voice-over] And I used to be such a nice guy.
Narrator: Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every little piece of trash you happen to pick up.
[Phone rings]
Narrator: [Into phone] Compliance and Liability...?
Marla Singer: My tit's gonna rot off.
Narrator: [to boss] Would you excuse me? I need to take this.
-------------------------------------
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
-------------------------------------
Tyler Durden: We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: **** Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man. So **** off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.
------------------------------------------


Truly gospel, with Office Space to keep it company. Funnier still for anyone who has worked in Corporate America.

LOL...I keep saying that if you don't think you're susceptible to lapsing into whack-job-dom (hey, a new word!) you're that much closer to it. All you need is another Depression, a Tyler Dirden/Durden/whatever, and you'll have the Brown Shirts. Fight Club was brilliant: it's not just a whacko movie, it's a cautionary tale with seriously dark undertones. Anyone who's studied cults, prison society, gangs, militias, the Manson family, and the list goes on, will instantly recognize the initiations this movie depicts.

Originally Posted by serandfae

Even science has a form of "faith": If people did not believe in that for which no proof existed no hypotheses would ever be formulated. And we now know that to observe affects what is observed. Ask Heisenberg. For most things, trust science. But for the emotions I feel, and for the things I can sense beyond the traditional six senses, I need faith.

I guess I'd have to disagree with your meaning of faith. I believe a heart beats in my chest, but I have no real 'proof' for this. What I do have are a lot of good reasons to believe that, from a pretty diverse set of backgrounds. Every autopsy I've ever heard of has shown the person to have a heart, it seems pretty essential, and I'm of the same species. I have a pulse. ... It's a pretty safe assumption, even if it's not proven. Like gravity.

Science isn't able to prove anything true. You can disprove an idea, like that heavy things fall more quickly, and a hypothesis can avoid being proven wrong over and over until it feels a safe bet. People make predictions to help the process along all the time ... if I drop a bowling ball and a feather in a vacuum, they'll reach the ground at the same time. That maybe buys credence, but not proof.

Emotions falls under the realm of science ... look at Pfizer's bottom line! Or the Stanford Prison Experiment A lot of our more complex ones are at least partly human made, but they all have firm roots in nature. Think of the ape beating his chest and screaming to express his anger at a male being too friendly with his females. It's not just a display of emotion, it's a warning to that male. Emotion is an internal feedback loop ... giving our brain the information it needs to control the body and our behavior. If the end game is to pass on our genes, with the help of a worthy, healthy mate, it's easy to see where love comes from.

The thing is they've taken on a life of their own. Things like religion, friendship, good books, even foreign chemicals are useful to different people to make sense of their emotions. My views is that because we don't fully understand them, we look beyond the folks in lab coats who don't have the answers we need; that doesn't actually put the question outside the realm of natural study to answer.

/beats his chest and screams angrily at Forrest

Don't tread on my religion!


Just kidding Forrest. We both know I have no religion, except perhaps the religion of me. As I mentioned earlier, I don't want to get into a science discussion with you, so I'll try and safely skirt the edges. It seems safe to say we know more about science and scientific study than we ever have in the course of human existence. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is quiet likely that our (humans) knowledge of science could be compared to a thimble of water as opposed to all the oceans on the planet. Even that is likely an understated comparison, as the universe may very well be infinitely large and infinitely small.

This leaves the answer to many questions : Currently impossible to know.

In my opinion, I don't think we even have a good guess at the answer to many questions.At the risk of sounding like a complete crackpot, I think the existence of ghosts, god, the human soul, evil spirits, good spirits, heaven, hell, telekinesis, teleportation, parallel universes are all possible.

So many times, science has come up wrong, whether it be to use the earth as the center of the solar system, or to use bloodletting as a medical treatment. Emotion and behavior may fall under scientific study, but that doesn't mean science has all the answers.

To tap into the God in Science Class discussion, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said that "intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment. To me that would rule out any of the other whack job concepts I listed from being science either. Perhaps that was just the USNAS admitting they don't know everything, though many would take the words "It isn't science" to mean it doesn't exist. Fallacious logic in my opinion.


Socrates said, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing".

Socrates was right. A Frenchman repeated 'What do I know? Nothing." What we know today is the tip of the iceberg ... but every question we find a reasonable answer to brings up ten more unanswered questions. We probably won't be around long enough as a species to learn 1 % of what there is to be known. Even things we're pretty sure of - like how to count photons inside a digital camera - are subject to change.

To me - and this is maybe getting a bit metaphorical - science isn't a box of facts ... it's a way of studying the world, trying to come to a more precise understanding. That sounds like "it's the journey not the destination" but if we can't know anything with 100 % certainty ...

Merry Christmas.

In an article by Carl Sagan I read years ago, he said he thought that science and religion are trying to answer many of the same questions by different means. For the what and how, science is perfectly equipped, but not for the why of things.

And it wasn't religious peope who said powered flight was impossible, the sound barrier could not be broken, the adult human brain could not rewire itself, it was the scientific community. Yes, indeed, fundamentalists in science. Flat-earthers in lab coats.

The guy that started that Ghost Hunters show started out as a skeptic trying to disprove the existence of ghosts by scientific means. He now believes that they exist, because those means pointed in the other direction. Many may argue not conclusively, but how many have dared to research the subject scientifically? To do so is suicide in the scientific community (you know, the same ones who said the human brain couldn't rewire itself in adulthood). Your credibility with them will just be shot. Research into psychic phenomena is regarded with the same disdain.

So, for someone like me who has experienced both, who do I have to turn to? I sure don't trust the New Agers and Scientologists, conservative Christians consider such things of the Devil, moderate religions barely touch upon it, and the scientific community regards it as anathema. I am left with only what I know from what science has touched upon and my faith to guide me to the next thing.