Dcleve

Syed -- If you have any coherent question that is different from the Munchausen issue I and Philip Klocking answered, it is not clear in your OP. Rewrite for clarity, or the question should be closed.

Every answer has follow on questions about how or why or when, etc. This is not a unique feature of "God" answers. No, it does not prohibit God answers a priori.

"Accepting God" does not help with anyone who has rejected free will. One can't CHOOSE anything if one has no free will! And free will is incompatible with both classical theism and an omni-deity.

Model testing is how one escapes from bad theology You cite the abuses of the Inquisitions. The way one shuts down inquisitions, genocides, or religicides is to MORALLY TEST any claimed directives from a God. If they lead to mass murder, torture, of thought police -- they are evil, and should be rejected. If the religion does not allow for reinterpretation to avoid evil practice, then the religion is evil, and wrong.

Whether that is Dennett's or Spinoza's theory, they both argue for determinism based on theory, not experience.

@Vladimir_U Every action I undertake every day proves I have free will. It is only abstract theory that leads anyone to think otherwise.

The Omni-God outside of time of classical theism also cannot be a personal/caring God, as a being outside of time cannot have thoughts or actions. God is inside time.

Meanwhile, the Problem of Evil, and Problem of Unclear Communications show that if there is an omnibenevolent God, it cannot have significant power, or be omniscient. I accept from mystic communication that there is an omnibenevolent God, but this God I embrace has limited power and knowledge.

The way to justify free will is using empirical phenomenal conservatism -- we experience it, and the rationalists either/or argument depends on classical logic being true -- but we know there are an infinity of logics, not One True Logic, and a logic of Agency providing a 3rd causal alternative, if it is true of our world, would support free willing.

@Vladimir_U -- Many modern secular rationalist philosophers reject free will -- basically by assuming causation is a universal principle, there is an either-or between "caused" and "random" and free willing does not fit with either. But historically, religious thinkers have rejected free will at well. In particular, if the Omni-God of classical theism exists out of time, then time is an illusion, as are all our choices. Religion does not help against this rationalist critique.

@Vladimir_U Perspectives about God and vales are of critical importance. that is why "wish it were so" is such a terrible attitude to live by. If your God model is wrong and fails test cases, then it will mislead you in life choices. Reject it and find a better one.

Anyone who argues against the possibility of testing and then rejecting a view if it fails the test, is almost certainty defending a false view based on having been mentally captured by an invalid ideology. As an aside, I am a spiritual dualist and a theist, and find his hostility to falsification testing among advocates of materialism as well.

@Vladimir_U -- Our world is contingent -- there is a massive range of things which could be true about it. Empiricists then look for tests to perform on these possible views, so we can reject the bad ones, and adopt the better ones. This process has nothing to do with "people who simply do not want god to exist", it is how we sort bad ideas from better ones in all subjects. It is the ideologically captured ADVOCATES of a view who try to find ways to avoid accepting falsifying test cases.

@Vladimir_U On the contrary, I take bad reasoning very seriously, and seek to correct it when the subject is one that matters a great deal. Your explanation was reasonably clear, and falls into one of several approaches to evade accepting failed tests of a theological claim.

The evasion "we cannot evaluate God's morality" is to deny that God is moral. Morality is definable, and God does not match it. This is a possible answer to the Problem of Evil -- God is not omnibenevolent. However, few theists are willing to accept this accurate summary of the evasion. Further, if God's "morality" is both not understandable and God cannot explain to us the special circumstances that make the need for living things to destroy each other to survive to be "good", then God is apparently not omniscient either. What characteristics of God do you worship then? Just power?

Note I asked you to identify countries that actually fight wars than have a better ROE record than the US. EU countries who have not fought wars since the 1950s, and committed atrocities when they did so, do not qualify. That is why I cited Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Eritra, etc. Places that have fought wars in the last 50 years.

Russia entered Ukraine with the plan to kill every member of Ukraine's military, and all politicians who would not adopt Russia as their home country. Mass war crimes, and genocide of an ethnicity, were the goal. The Us enters wars with a slightly weaker ROE than EU countries do. Your false equivalence of these is not credible.

"However in that regard the U.S. is as bad or worse than Russia, given how they effectively try to avoid having that mutual control"? Really? Russia fought the 2nd war in Chechnya with the tactic of killing everyone who fought against them, and all civilians within 100s of meters. Grozny was deliberately turned into a smoking ruin.

Your Wikipedia article on US war crimes was -- underwhelming. Of course there will be war crimes done when one puts the power of life or death in the hands of a bunch of immature young men. Every army in every war committed war crimes. Realizing that is a strong reason to avoid war whenever it is possible. Of the US war crimes, the last 100 years all show a record of investigations, negative press, suspensions, and often prison. Is there a better national record out there?

If a society will not exist with a defeat, then a concern over long term questions, like how many of its own citizens will be killed by mines over the next several decades, are secondary if there will BE no citizens ... That is why Ukraine uses mines, and now the frontline NATO states do too.

@haxor789 Discussing through a language barrier can make communication more difficult. The work I used was "existential", where the survival of the nation, culture, or form of government is at risk with the outcome of the war.

I agree that soldiers are traumatized, and societies can be too. That is why nations need to be far more judicious in their resort to violence. Wars of conquest are NEVER morally justifiable, and discretionary wars rarely are. However, the examples I was citing were NON-discretionary wars, which were existential, such as Ukraine's self defense. For existential wars, the long term consequences are less important than survival of the society.

Of these, the only "punishment" was of the Syrian government. I consider all aspects of your claim refuted by my examples. The US standards dramatically exceed that of any of the warfare participants on any side of these other conflicts. the Us is not "punished" because the US follows better standards than any other warfighting country.

None of these other conflicts have participants who are "too big to be punished". Every one of them involved attacks on civilians. Eritrea and Ethiopia were known for killing prisoners, and rape. Iraq used poison gas. Somalia, one side is terrorists. Syrian civil war involved lots of civilian massacres, torture sites were found when Libyan national Army withdrew, and both sides in Sri Lanka massacred civilians and POWs.

I would like to challenge this: "the U.S. and the USSR/Russia in some sort of a weird position where they are too big to be punished, so they are notorious for their human right violations". Let us take several recent wars, and compare the US to the combatants. Somalia civil war, Syrian Civil war, Eritrean war, Iran/Iraq war, and Sri Lanka Tamil rebellion, will make for a sample.

The Russian approach involves a lot more violations of basic human rights. the Russian approach is LESS awful, though than warfare has been for most of human history.

I compared the US and Russian approaches to applying violence, as the US is the most moral I have seen applied anywhere where combat is actually being done. The anti-warfare critics of the US do not have any examples to point to of successful better sets of standards. And this is despite the US breaking its own standards repeatedly, under the temptation (and sometimes delusion) of even greater effectiveness.

@haxor789 Yes, soldiers are tasked to do things that would be criminal in an environment where rule of law applies. What anti-combat thinkers fail to understand is that WHERE rule of law doesn't apply, the things that soldiers do is essential.

But I am not aware of any military that has ever implemented the very high standards of the HR advocates (basically no civilian casualties).

Basically, there seen to be two tactics that work - the controlled violence, plus hearts/minds approach the US adopted in Iraq, and the brutality/intimidation tactic adopted by Russia in Grozny. However, even the US approach, which is more restrained than any other military I know of in active combat, drew multiple accusations of systematic war crimes relative to the very high standards of Human rights advocates.

Per your question to me, there ARE limits to the benefits of brutality/violence in warfare. The US when it invaded Iraq had adopted an "our job is to break things and kill people" approach to the military mission. But then Iraq disintegrated into civil disorder, because one needs to do a lot more than that to win a post-war peace. The US leaders there dusted off Vietnam anti-insurgency doctrine, which called for winning hearts and minds, and succeeded in putting down that insurgency.

Back to Russia/soviets -- when a Soviet diplomatic aid was kidnapped in Lebanon back during the civil war, Russia tracked down several family members of the leader of the group that did the kidnapping, and captured them, then sent severed body parts to the Lebanese leader. Their aid was released, and there were no more Soviet diplomats kidnapped. Intimidating violence is often quite effective.

The UK was accused of war crimes for their penning the Boer civilian population in concentration camps during the Boer war. The Austrians were likewise accused of the same for imprisoning the Serb civilian population during WW1. However, concentrating the civilians of a hostile population IS effective in limiting rear area raids in occupied territory.

The UK also accused Germany of a war crime with the U-boat blockade of the UK.

Arial bombing was also asserted to be a war crime, particularly when it was first implemented in the Spanish Civil War. Britain accused Germany of war criminality during both WW1 and 2 when the Germans were bombing UK cities. This accusation was buried when the Brits bombed German cities, but the argument was made, and does not lack credibility. There is no way to distinguish civilian from military targets in most bombing.

4) I apply Popperian empiricism and testing to religion. Just as I do to philosophy. The core scientific methodology is also a core religious and philosophic methodology.

3) If philosophy is on the religion side of this divide, AND all sciences have spawned out form philosophy as specialty studies (they have) then EVERYTHING is on the religion side of the Magisterium divide.

2) Morality, values, and life purposes are not solely the province of religions. They are core philosophic questions, AND the social sciences of psychology, anthropology, and sociology have significant bearing on "how to live" and "what are human" questions that are deep on the religious side of the Magisteria proposal.

@keshlam -- I cannot take it at face value as it is in conflict with the nature of religion, science, and philosophy. 1) Religions have highly variable scope. The more thorough religions are complete lifestyle and reasoning constraining systems, and very explicitly compete with science. Some minimalist religions are non-competing, but those are rare.

@keshlam The goal of NOM was a political and sociological one, to protect science from attack by religious fundamentalists, while offering a truce and role to religions whose worldviews had been under attack by science or several hundred years, offering "we will go this far, and no further". It was a sociologically and politically useful lie. If one adopts NOM, then all values, morality, and life goals become the exclusive purview of religion, an philosophy is on the religion side of NOM (including the philosophical assumption and claims of physicalism).

@keshlam Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisterium claim is easily tested and refuted. You say it is scientists who widely accept it? What kinds of scientists are these?

@keshlam Do you listen to actual physicalists, rather than refencing abstract possibilities? Sure there are atheist non-physicalists, and they are among the leading philosophic critics of physicalism. there even are some theists who have found ways to recast theism in ways they say are compatible with physicalism. But among physicalists themselves, the overlap with denial of spirits, ghosts, and Gods is overwhelming. I am reporting on the sociology of belief.

@keshlam There are multiple non-physicalist conceptions of ontology. It is impossible to defend them collectively, other than to point out that physicalism fails to meet its burden of justification. If things seem to be pluralist, then any claim that apparent difference is not REAL difference, has a strong burden of justification. One catchphrase for this is "preserving the appearances". Another is an epistemic principle of phenomenal conservatism. If you think I have not defended a specific non-physicalist ontology though, I urge you to reread this answer more carefully.

It is particularly strong against epiphenomenalism, and is readily extended to identity theories. For identity theories to address harmony, they need a highly specific additional set of principles setting WHAT PARTICULAR consciousness matches to what particular neurology or algorithm. Emerson seems to think that panpsychism avoids this problem, but no -- it has the identical problem, as his type of pan-psychism has physics driving the boat, so the associated consciousness is arbitrary.

@causative -- Emerson's pages include an additional set of discussions on psycho-physical harmony. He considers psycho-physical harmony to be a strong bit of evidence against physicalism. I agree with that. The argument is what James and Popper's evolutionary test case is getting at. The CONTENT of consciousness would be irrelevant for any Phil of mind theory that does not have independently causal consciousness.

Pretty much everyone else's intuition is that a higher human consciousness, PLUS an edge detection visual processing algorithm, would be a very similar consciousness to just the higher order human consciousness by itself. After all you have only added one small algorithm and a few added bits of neural net. Yet IF it were like our consciousness, your theory is falsified. Rather than accept falsification, you have made it untestable.

I have been offering falsifications, and you have seized upon our not actually having any data on anything other than higher level human consciousness to offer untestable speculations about other consciousnesses. You have taken full advantage of the infinity of speculative space that Duhem-Quine offers, to postulate models that fit our very limited observaiton set. But no, they do not match "intuition".

Have you checked out Emerson's channel? I thinkI have found it informative. Despite Emerson's pan-psychsim advocacy, his verious discussions ahve further convinced me of the flaws in pan-psychism. the combination problem is the main issue I have been challenging you on here -- Panpsychism needs a set of combinatorial laws, which are in additon to physics, and are in principle testable and falsifiable.

@causative Incoherent relative to the decryption key? That key is not "physics" though, it is something you need to postulate in addition to physics.