Rick Reuben wrote:

big_dave wrote:To suggest that personality traits are dependent on "bloodlines" and family "genetics" is to use sophistry and pseudo-science

Idiot troll.

Hah. Another couple of debatable, sourceless gobs of text.

Even if they were absolutes, and not merely case studies, the fact that you equate political/criminal activities which you (arbitrarily) despise with "psychopathy" and that with "genetics" puts you close to KKK territory. I'm serious. You obviously do not understand what you are implying here.

If you aren't smart enough to see how "bloodlines" puts you in racist territory, how can we expect you to understand the idea of psychopathy as it compares to socially unacceptable behaviour? Do you really think that the "elites" are selectively breeding so that their child have personality disorders? Do you really?

Either way, you are telling us that one specific race has corrupt genetics compared to humanity as a whole.

Shame you didn't answer the questions about the elite, or the fallen angels. Feel free to.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:As I read it, Gramsci's argument against agnosticism is that, look, you're not agnostic about bigfoot, you're not agnostic about Thor, so why give special treatment to God? This agnostic agrees. I'm agnostic about God; I'm agnostic about Thor; I'm agnostic about bigfoot; to paraphrase Dawkins, I'm agnostic about God to the same extent that I'm agnostic with respect to fairies at the bottom of the garden. I don't believe in any of these things, but I leave open the possibility for all of them.

But there's another response, which goes to the very nature of the thing in question. I think you could argue that inherent in the concept of God is the notion of a transcendent being.

In the case of a being who is or may be literally completely undetectable, we can't consider absence of evidence as evidence at all.

I wouldn't describe the concept of god I am referring to as either 'a being' or as something 'literally completely undetectable'.
I would describe it as a 'consciousness' or an 'intelligence' which might be considered inherent in every part of the universe. My conception of it would include us in it.
And I wouldn't say completely undetectable but, perhaps, inexpressible. Detectable by individual consciousness which cannot be investigated by scientific means (hence my repeated requests for someone to prove to me, scientifically, that people have dreams).

The thing with dreams is that we all presume other people have them because most of us do (presumably) and we know it ourselves. That makes the study of them - their causes and significance - a fascinating thing that can teach us a lot about what it is to be alive - even in the absence of hard evidence for these things.

If you are to follow your logic through - regarding the absence of evidence - then you must be atheistic about the existence of other people's dreams.

are you?

My point is - if enough people experience something it makes the experience significant even in the absence of hard evidence.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:This doesn't make me any less of an atheist. I don't need evidence to disbelieve; I need it to believe. In the absence of evidence, I can't claim to know, but I can refuse to believe.

A lot of people can refuse to believe in the face of evidence too.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:Earwicker mentioned scientific theories about a universal consciousness or something like that. That's very interesting. To the extent that (1) such an entity can be observed, (2) testable predictions can be made about such an entity, (3) such an entity can be seen to conform to natural laws, (4) etc., this belongs within the realm of science. But as I said above, I think that inherent in the concept of God is transcendence.

This more stringent description would better apply to what I am referring to (though I would still be loathe to describe it as an it - an entity).
It could perhaps be observed (or experienced) in a subjective way. I doubt a testable prediction could be made about such an experience. Scientists (as people) have postulated it as an explanation - a deduction - but the epistemology of science would have to change to accommodate study of consciousness.
And in terms of it conforming to natural law it might better be described as being natural law itself. In all its facets

Linus Van Pelt wrote: I think the more interesting conversation in the thread was between Earwicker and Gramsci. Unfortunately that broke down into name calling.

I admit i started in the name calling but was lead to frustration in the face of bare faced hypocrisy and arrogance.
Gramsci condemned me for putting constraints on the significance of terms while doing the exact same thing (I in fact didn't do that. I accepted his terminology and said that according to it I am an atheist. He however is so small minded that he cannot see that other humans might think in a different way to him.)
His insistence that he knows best and I'm just not arguing is so closely reminiscent of arguing with born again Christians it's sad that he can't see it.
Science is obviously malleable (or should be) but some people who consider it are still stuck in the ways of thinking like the field's originators. That includes Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon who explicitly described that their intention was to discover the fundamental laws of God's Universe.
Notice the word 'God' there - I presume referring to the one Gramsci can't see beyond.
Science's original aim (and one not abandoned once the enlightenment had swept through Europe) was to discover absolute truth. Which was a direct - if unconscious - influence of Christianity.
New discoveries in science in the last hundred years have shown that there is no absolute truth or absolute reality that we can know without taking into consideration our selves and our consciousness.

Gramsci and the scientists he always name drops are still stuck in that Christian influenced scientific way of thinking - it seems to me.
But, of course, they're terrified of admitting it.


Oddly, I seem to recall discussing (arguing) with Gramsci a while ago about the nature of consciousness where I was pointing out that some say it doesn't exist at all.
It is illusory.
I'm not going to look but if I remember rightly Gramsci was insisting that it does exist - but i've still to see any evidence for it.
Certainly beyond my own.

I'm open to that possibility but find it as unusual as anything else I've suggested so far in this thread.

Earwicker wrote:I wouldn't describe the concept of god I am referring to as either 'a being' or as something 'literally completely undetectable'.
I would describe it as a 'consciousness' or an 'intelligence' which might be considered inherent in every part of the universe. My conception of it would include us in it.

Call it what you want - my boiled-down point is this: If it (being/entity/consciousness/intelligence/whatever) transcends physical laws/natural laws/scientific observation/etc., then it's not within science. If it doesn't, then I don't think it makes sense to name it "God."

And I wouldn't say completely undetectable but, perhaps, inexpressible. Detectable by individual consciousness which cannot be investigated by scientific means (hence my repeated requests for someone to prove to me, scientifically, that people have dreams).

No one can truly prove that people have dreams. I don't really think anyone can truly prove anything. The question is, is there enough evidence where it makes sense to believe it? With dreams, for me, yes. With God, for me, no.

The thing with dreams is that we all presume other people have them because most of us do (presumably) and we know it ourselves. That makes the study of them - their causes and significance - a fascinating thing that can teach us a lot about what it is to be alive - even in the absence of hard evidence for these things.

If you are to follow your logic through - regarding the absence of evidence - then you must be atheistic about the existence of other people's dreams.

are you?

Of course not. This is not an extension of my logic. I think the key difference is this: when people have experiences they call dreams, those are dreams. It's a definitional thing: when shit goes on in your head while you sleep, that's a dream. When people have experiences they attribute to God, they're making a leap. Or, that sounds judgmental. Let's say, they're taking a step. Whatever. The point is, the experiences are not God. The experiences are the experiences. God is the explanation they assign to it. Dreams, in contrast, are not really the explanation for the experience, they are the experience. So while I may be "atheistic"/agnostic w.r.t. the mechanism or cause or meaning of dreams, I am not "atheistic"/agnostic w.r.t. the existence of dreams. Well, I am the tiniest bit agnostic, like I am w.r.t. practically everything. But the evidence in favor of dreams is great enought to make serious agnosticism/"atheism" with respect thereto a bad choice, in my opinion.

My point is - if enough people experience something it makes the experience significant even in the absence of hard evidence.

I don't know what you mean by "hard." People's reports of their dream-experiences are evidence of the existence of dreams. The obvious response is that people's reports of their god-experiences are evidence for the existence of god. This doesn't work, because god is not the experience; god is the purported cause of the experience.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:This doesn't make me any less of an atheist. I don't need evidence to disbelieve; I need it to believe. In the absence of evidence, I can't claim to know, but I can refuse to believe.

A lot of people can refuse to believe in the face of evidence too.

Absolutely, yes. There are things out there for which no evidence exists, but I think most things have some evidence. So, you have to look at the evidence and see if it's enough. In most cases, there is evidence on both sides of the scale, so whatever you choose to believe, it's "in the face of evidence" on the other side. This is not the case with god.

This more stringent description would better apply to what I am referring to (though I would still be loathe to describe it as an it - an entity).
It could perhaps be observed (or experienced) in a subjective way. I doubt a testable prediction could be made about such an experience. Scientists (as people) have postulated it as an explanation - a deduction - but the epistemology of science would have to change to accommodate study of consciousness.

If I need a car to fit in my front door, could I just rename my garage door "my front door," and say job well done? Maybe the word "science" will refer in the future to a fundamentally different process than the one to which it refers now. And maybe what you describe will fall within something called "science" at that time. That's fine - the process that is now named "science" does not include gods - even if that process loses the name "science" in the future to some other process, it still won't encompass gods, even if the process newly called "science" does.

And in terms of it conforming to natural law it might better be described as being natural law itself. In all its facets

I'm sorry; I'm not sure what this means. If it is natural law, does it not also conform to natural laws? Or... I'm not sure.

Science is obviously malleable (or should be) but some people who consider it are still stuck in the ways of thinking like the field's originators. That includes Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon who explicitly described that their intention was to discover the fundamental laws of God's Universe.
Notice the word 'God' there - I presume referring to the one Gramsci can't see beyond.

There's nothing fundamentally different between these men as scientists and your modern (stereo?)typical atheist scientists as scientists. The source of the fundamental law is not the issue. Newton and Bacon (so far as I'm aware, and I don't claim to be an expert) were not working to prove the existence of God or the influence of God on the world - they were taking that for granted, and trying to work out what the laws were.

Science's original aim (and one not abandoned once the enlightenment had swept through Europe) was to discover absolute truth. Which was a direct - if unconscious - influence of Christianity.
New discoveries in science in the last hundred years have shown that there is no absolute truth or absolute reality that we can know without taking into consideration our selves and our consciousness.

I don't know what you mean by "absolute" here. I don't think you can do science without believing that some things are real - that there exists such a thing as reality. I think it was Dick who defined reality as "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Is there such a thing as reality? I think we have to act as though there is in order to get through our lives. I'm sure we have to act as though there is in order to do science. Does the observer affect the observation? Sure, and I think you're right to point that out as one of the important scientific developments of the last hundred years. Does that mean there's no absolute reality? I don't think so.

Gramsci and the scientists he always name drops are still stuck in that Christian influenced scientific way of thinking - it seems to me.
But, of course, they're terrified of admitting it.

"Terrified" is the kind of hyperbole that I don't think gets us anywhere. Whether western scientists are let us say reluctant to admit to a Christian influence is an empirical question, and I don't think either you or I have the data. The atheist scientist Dawkins, and the atheist non-scientist me have no problem copping to being "cultural Christians," and it appears the atheist non-scientist (?) you is well aware of the influence as well. But that's just three people and only one scientist - hardly conclusive.

Rick Reuben wrote:A copy-paste he probably didn't even read first, because he items he bolded were in context of sentences that disagreed with his original point

OK, Rick if you're keen on the idea that those things you loathe in specific families and "bloodlines" of people are genetic would you say that such genetics should be grounds in court for conviction?

If you were to outlaw secret societies, greed, and the like, are you implying that genetics should be grounds for legal action?

Rick, I don't think that you could comfortably give a definition for either "psychopathy" or "gene". all you are doing is embarrassing yourself, or at least posting a bunch of quotes to gloss over your former racist statements. The quotes you are posting are fundamentally at-odds with your thesis and you don't realise, or care. Which is just pathetic and sad, considering that you are putting infinitely more time into these threads than any of the people you are attacking. Your flames are disturbing, because I look at them and I think "why did the guy spend so much time?", and then I am horrified to see that you have spent the same amount of time in five or six different threads, all in the same day. Get a cat, read a book.

If crime is genetic, should it be legally recognised as such?

You seem too timid to mention any of this shit in real life, but I hope if you ever work up the courage to discuss another man's "bloodline" in public, there is semite or gypsy on hand to punch you in the cock.

Rick Reuben wrote:Dude, if you accept the existence of a consciousness and you try and explore it or treat it therapeutically, you have acknowledged the supernatural/intangible. Just like the dreams that Earwicker writes about, God cannot currently be measured or defined by man, and neither can consciousness.

Explain why. You're setting the boundaries here, with typical strawman bullshit. I suggest you read Sam Harris on meditation and neuroscience.

Meditation, in the sense that I use the term, is nothing more than a method of paying extraordinarily close attention to one’s moment-to-moment experience of the world. There is nothing irrational about doing this. In fact, such a practice constitutes the only rational basis for making detailed (first-person) claims about the nature of human subjectivity. Difficulties arise for secularists, however, once we begin speaking about the kinds of experiences that diligent practitioners of meditation are apt to have. It is an empirical fact that sustained meditation can result in a variety of insights that intelligent people regularly find intellectually credible and personally transformative.

Sam Harris

More Sam Harris

I'm sure you'll read something wacky into that... Demon-Hybrid-Elite-man

By the way Bob... are you a fan of

Dave Icke

Rick Reuben wrote:

big_dave wrote: "gene".

Psychopathic personality traits: heritability and genetic overlap with internalizing and externalizing psychopathology

DANIEL M. BLONIGEN,* BRIAN M. HICKS, ROBERT F. KRUEGER, CHRISTOPHER J. PATRICK, and WILLIAM G. IACONO
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Results
Twin analyses revealed significant genetic influence on distinct psychopathic traits (Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality). Moreover, Fearless Dominance was associated with reduced genetic risk for internalizing psychopathology, and Impulsive Antisociality was associated with increased genetic risk for externalizing psychopathology.

Conclusions
These results indicate that different psychopathic traits as measured by the MPQ show distinct genetically based relations with broad dimensions of DSM psychopathology.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... id=2242349

Again, that is nothing to do with what you originally said.

Are you frantically googling, or do you have a favorites folder full of articles that you have misunderstood to mean something more exciting than they actually do?

How embarrassing for you.

Stopped being funny a while ago, now it's just pathetic.

Haha. Fuck me. You're amazingly stupid, grampa.