Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

If you were the only person in existence then you'd probably feel much more special. Some people seek a hermetic existence in order to connect more with spiritual and mystical forces.

The last living human would pay far more heed to their relationship with other species instead of treating them like either nuisances or resources. Still, some personalities would probably prefer death to settling for friendships with "mere animals".

[Michael McMahon]

So you're a vegetarian, yes?

The first question to ask about the ethics of eating animals is their level of sentience. This is a big topic. However a further question is whether a God could imbue an element of Himself in animals the same way that religions claim that humans share a sacred soul. A potential excuse is that praying to God before a meal as a form of gratitude could also be seen as a kind of atonement from a pantheistic point of view. We tend not to see the animal being slaughtered and so there might be less of a temptation to express spiritual thanks before a carnivorous meal.

[Sy Borg]

So you're a vegetarian, yes?

The first question to ask about the ethics of eating animals is their level of sentience. This is a big topic. However a further question is whether a God could imbue an element of Himself in animals the same way that religions claim that humans share a sacred soul. A potential excuse is that praying to God before a meal as a form of gratitude could also be seen as a kind of atonement from a pantheistic point of view. We tend not to see the animal being slaughtered and so there might be less of a temptation to express spiritual thanks before a carnivorous meal.

Descartes famously believed that only humans were imbued with a soul, leading him to perform public atrocities on dogs, believing that their cries were just blind reflexes rather than actual pain. Yes, I think grace probably started with gratitude towards the slaughtered animal, but then the church adapted it to their needs. It's like marriage, which was not religious at all for most of human history but these days many believe that marriage is a religious institution. Ultimately, it's a realisation that we must kill or exploit to live.

The common view is that only brained animals are sentient. Certainly, they are the only ones to feel emotions, so I'm not big on pantheism, though I am open to panvitalism because I'm not convinced that only biology is alive, as such, rather it's a type of life.

[Belindi]

So you're a vegetarian, yes?

The first question to ask about the ethics of eating animals is their level of sentience. This is a big topic. However a further question is whether a God could imbue an element of Himself in animals the same way that religions claim that humans share a sacred soul. A potential excuse is that praying to God before a meal as a form of gratitude could also be seen as a kind of atonement from a pantheistic point of view. We tend not to see the animal being slaughtered and so there might be less of a temptation to express spiritual thanks before a carnivorous meal.

People who say grace before a meal are mostly the same people who believe animals don't have immortal souls and are to that extent, autonoma.

[Sy Borg]

So you're a vegetarian, yes?

The first question to ask about the ethics of eating animals is their level of sentience. This is a big topic. However a further question is whether a God could imbue an element of Himself in animals the same way that religions claim that humans share a sacred soul. A potential excuse is that praying to God before a meal as a form of gratitude could also be seen as a kind of atonement from a pantheistic point of view. We tend not to see the animal being slaughtered and so there might be less of a temptation to express spiritual thanks before a carnivorous meal.

People who say grace before a meal are mostly the same people who believe animals don't have immortal souls and are to that extent, autonoma.

Darkly ironic.

[Michael McMahon]

Jesus didn't directly liberate Israel from Roman rule. Yet it's possible to interpret the Christian conversion of the Roman Empire as an indirect form of liberation. The followers of Jesus helped to break up Ancient Rome even though there were also other factors at play like the barbarians. You could also make the argument that the Romans didn't fight as hard against the barbarians because they eventually realised that an evil empire wasn't worth fighting for. Thus it's possible that these factors were connected.

"Although the Scripture spoke both of the sufferings and of the victories of the messiah, the victorious aspect had become uppermost in the minds of the common people because of Roman domination. This "lopsided" view of the Messiah has stuck with many Jewish people, and the politicization of the messianic hope has continued to this day. This is not to say that all Jewish people rejected the claims of Jesus. On the contrary, all the first followers of Jesus were Jews."
https://jewsforjesus.org/learn/what-pro ... e-messiah/

[Michael McMahon]

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(Night view from Limerick train station)

To say God is finite can still mean that such a being is gargantuan. For example in maths infinities can sometimes be ignored because of how incomprehensible they are. So claiming God is literally infinite might not always produce awe in those who are less imaginative. For example when we go to a city we can be inspired by its immense size while being limited enough for us to conceptualise the vibe of the city. If New York City had hundreds of thousands more skyscrapers much like "Gotham City" in "Batman" then we might fail to fully appreciate the uniqueness of each borough.

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"The infinite nature of God simply means that God exists outside of and is not limited by time or space. Infinite simply means “without limits.” When we refer to God as "infinite," we generally refer to Him with terms like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence."
https://www.gotquestions.org/infinite-God.html

[Belindi]

Jesus didn't directly liberate Israel from Roman rule. Yet it's possible to interpret the Christian conversion of the Roman Empire as an indirect form of liberation. The followers of Jesus helped to break up Ancient Rome even though there were also other factors at play like the barbarians. You could also make the argument that the Romans didn't fight as hard against the barbarians because they eventually realised that an evil empire wasn't worth fighting for. Thus it's possible that these factors were connected.

"Although the Scripture spoke both of the sufferings and of the victories of the messiah, the victorious aspect had become uppermost in the minds of the common people because of Roman domination. This "lopsided" view of the Messiah has stuck with many Jewish people, and the politicization of the messianic hope has continued to this day. This is not to say that all Jewish people rejected the claims of Jesus. On the contrary, all the first followers of Jesus were Jews."
https://jewsforjesus.org/learn/what-pro ... e-messiah/

"The Christian conversion of the Roman Empire" was a political strategy initiated by Constantine. It was less expensive for Rome to control far-flung colonies when everyone believed in a single ruling Deity instead of the variety of pagan or mystical deities.

[Cathal]

(OP Michael McMahon here)
A compatibilist way to view an afterlife would be that if your brain or body couldn’t be resurrected then perhaps your face could be attached to your spirit like a puppet! An eternal afterlife might imply repeated reincarnations back into your religion rather than just a long afterlife.

[Cathal]

A humorous limit of reincarnation is that some countries aren’t relevant to other countries. I’d have to be reincarnated as a grizzly bear if I were ever sent to Canada or an elephant if I were sent to India or a even a tiger were I re-incarnating into Africa!

[Cathal]

One version of karma is that a belief in mid or long term oblivion after death can be an ironic defence against not only religious bias but also political bias. So anyone advocating an immoral public policy could be defeated if they’d to care more about a bleak policy than a belief in oblivion knowing that oblivion could not be more bleak. For example the gun rights debate can be divisive with pros and cons on either side in America. Yet when we come to the more atheistic leaning China the pros and cons of guns might be inverted. So a tiny Christian minority in China might be better off not promoting guns to atheists that outnumber them knowing that atheism can be more amoral than theism. In other words equating religion with guns in America might not be do straightforward if people were puritanical on spiritual if not economic equality within a religion.

[Cathal]

A facetious way to view amoral or potentially evil violent porn sites might be that much like capitalism and evolution citizens can adapt but the negative consequences decades later might be that the constant frustration and tantalisation year after year of not actually committing sex crimes individually might be very underestimated by lustful youths. In other words in future generations violent porn were it still legal might never sound as adrenalinised were so many people openly perverted. A limitation of using violent porn to defend against sex criminals might be like the temptation of a crystal ball knowing that evil is inevitable whether it be banned or legal.

https:// youtu. be/TBMiyEzOJmI?si=5dVcy40SOtMdNvni
[yid=TBMiyEzOJmI&pp=ygW-AXdvcnJpZWQgZ2FuZGFsZiByaWRlcyB0byBpc2VuZ2FyZCB0byBzZWVrIGNvdW5zZWwgZnJvbSBoaXMgb2xkIGZyaWVuZCBhbmQgbGVhZGVyIG9mIHRoZWlyIG9yZGVyIG9mIHdpemFyZHMsIHNhcnVtYW4gdGhlIHdoaXRlLCB3aG8gdGVsbHMgZ2FuZGFsZiB3aGF0IGhlIGhhcyBzZWVuIGluIHRoZSBwYWxhbnTDrXIgb2Ygb3J0aGFuYy4%3D][/yid]
LOTR Fellowship of the Ring - Saruman the White
“A worried Gandalf rides to Isengard to seek counsel from his old friend and leader of their order of wizards, Saruman the White, who tells Gandalf what he has seen in the Palantír of Orthanc.”

[Cathal]

A further limitation of violent porn is that viewers of natural disaster programs aren’t necessarily much nicer or way more vigilant as a form of machismo or threat simulation.

50391B09-CA27-4DF2-92AC-0A80F27FDCA0.jpeg (285.21 KiB) Viewed 625 times

Tonga Volcanic Eruption

[Pattern-chaser]

A facetious way to view amoral or potentially evil violent porn sites might be that much like capitalism and evolution citizens can adapt but the negative consequences decades later might be that the constant frustration and tantalisation year after year of not actually committing sex crimes individually might be very underestimated by lustful youths. In other words in future generations violent porn were it still legal might never sound as adrenalinised were so many people openly perverted. A limitation of using violent porn to defend against sex criminals might be like the temptation of a crystal ball knowing that evil is inevitable whether it be banned or legal.

https:// youtu. be/TBMiyEzOJmI?si=5dVcy40SOtMdNvni
[yid=TBMiyEzOJmI&pp=ygW-AXdvcnJpZWQgZ2FuZGFsZiByaWRlcyB0byBpc2VuZ2FyZCB0byBzZWVrIGNvdW5zZWwgZnJvbSBoaXMgb2xkIGZyaWVuZCBhbmQgbGVhZGVyIG9mIHRoZWlyIG9yZGVyIG9mIHdpemFyZHMsIHNhcnVtYW4gdGhlIHdoaXRlLCB3aG8gdGVsbHMgZ2FuZGFsZiB3aGF0IGhlIGhhcyBzZWVuIGluIHRoZSBwYWxhbnTDrXIgb2Ygb3J0aGFuYy4%3D][/yid]
LOTR Fellowship of the Ring - Saruman the White
“A worried Gandalf rides to Isengard to seek counsel from his old friend and leader of their order of wizards, Saruman the White, who tells Gandalf what he has seen in the Palantír of Orthanc.”

FYI, if you delete all of the red text, and just extract the YouTube Id, it will work better for you, I hope.

[Cathal]

[yid]
The Bad Guys / Trailer 2 - shark/fox (Thanks for link advice PatternChaser; hopefully anyway)

I’d a dream last night that parodied some of my religious beliefs. A shark was giving the first reading by reminding us of the need to forgive in encrypted undertones knowing just how much evil there already is in the world. Several lay people then went up to the alter during the gospel to push the human priest where I eventually had to assist a few of the protesters being dragged out of the church. The dream might relate to the perplexing nature of animal forgiveness and Christian deism where some peaceful animals aren’t self-aware if they accidentally commit crimes as a mitigating factor. Other violent animals like sharks can be more mysterious and subjective where the idea of a creature representing pure evil can feel ironically slightly reassuring in a circular way that they’re not trying to represent a lesser evil in a way that actually tries to ethically justify threatening or attacking you! I watched a Barack Obama “Our Oceans” documentary yesterday with my parents which might have been source material for the dream where a depiction of killer whales chasing a seal for 4 hours seemed to present the creatures as more self-aware than usual. I remember making sleep theories about whales in a different thread months ago where the Obama program last night reminded me how the fish can’t say to themselves “I’m tired” or complain “it’s hard to sleep” as if they simply zoom ahead in time thoughtlessly during sleep.

F944249F-6375-48F6-9D55-DFF0425E417E.png (1.67 MiB) Viewed 549 times

D0A52317-7E7F-4CDF-B32A-B3467D2C1888.png (1.39 MiB) Viewed 549 times

[yid]
Killer Whale Showdown | Behind The Scenes | Netflix