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Name:  Shibl Mourad    E-Mail:   
City:  Montreal, Quebec Canada
Comment:
15admin deleteadmin edit  Tuesday April 29, 2008 - 00:15am  
Hi Paul,
In "Against the Idea that Religious Belief is Needed to Have Ethics" you deconstruct the question "how atheists can have ethics" to show that it includes many fallacies.
I propose a framing of ethics that can resist your deconstruction :)
One of the big problems of society is demonstrated by the Prisoner's Dilemma. In some cases rational actions of individuals leads to inferior results than irrational actions.
In other words it is in the interest of all of us if we acted irrationally in certain specific ways.
These irrational-but-useful codes of behavior are what we call ethics. Note that the content of the code depends of the conditions of the environment and the objectives of individuals.
So if individuals value the taste of Caviar then an ethical code would be not to fish for young Sturgeon.
How can a society achieve this irrational behaviour?
Either by creating punishment for it, but this require a level of organization and has a high cost. Or by creating irrational beliefs that are transmitted across generations that make a rational evaluation of the situation when combined with irrational beliefs lead to the desired conduct. (I do not want to stricken by thunder hence I do not fish for young Sturgeon)
So now I can ask the question again: How can a society without irrational beliefs and the resources for law enforcement escape the Tragedy of the Commons?
 
Name:  Shibl Mourad    E-Mail:   
City:  montreal, quebec canada
Via:  search engine
Comment:
14admin deleteadmin edit  Monday April 28, 2008 - 07:09pm  
In your article "Can God Exist Outside Space-Time?" you suggest that since causality exists in time we can not say that God caused the Universe to exist if he is outside Space-Time.
One scenario where this would be possible is if God exists in another universe that has its own space-time. In that universe he could have created our Universe including our Space-Time.
 
Name:  Vladimir  
Comment:
13admin deleteadmin edit  Thursday June 14, 2007 - 01:04am  
"The claims simultaneously give God huge powers that transcend logic while removing him to the realm of fiction, or at best the realm of unsupported hypothesis"
What if God is so powerful that His power would not be diminished by existing only as a hypothesis and not in reality?
 
Name:  Alex Przybyl    E-Mail:   
City:  hamburg, NY united states
Via:  search engine
Comment:
12admin deleteadmin edit  Thursday October 26, 2006 - 05:06pm  
well. . . why must god be above logic? A claim like that truely is ilogical... god didnt "creat" logic. . logic exists because god exists. Logic is an eternal truth that can't be given a start and end point. (just like god (eternal)) to say that god is above logic is like saying that a human has full control over their DNA. DNA is an unchangable part of a human...if the dna is changed then a different human is created. Just as if god were to change logic he would no longer be god. he would be something else that we as humans could not relate to due to our dependance on one god with one standard for logic. therefor god is not above logic. But instead his existance is prooved by logic.
 
Name:  Nat Napoletano    E-Mail:   
Company:  Lockheed Martin
City:  Akron, OH USA
Comment:
11admin deleteadmin edit  Friday October 13, 2006 - 05:11pm  
Hi Paul,
Nice summary of the state of epistemology. Thank you for all of your hard work and generosity.
-Nat
 
Name:  Name*  
Comment:
10admin deleteadmin edit  Thursday May 11, 2006 - 01:21pm  
Hi there, interesting site.
Is this what you are suggestion with your evolution thingie?
Let A be an alphabet of instructions.
Let E be a set of fitness functions.
Let B be an alphabet of machine instructions for a virtual machine.
Let a be an element in A, and b an element in B.
Let F be a bijective map from A to B.
b = F(A) = xi*a (mod /A/), where xi is random number. 1. To generate a compiler machine, generate a set X of random numbers xi...xn where n equals the cardinality of A. Do this any times.
2. For each compiler machine, change a random xi to a random number.
3.1. Select a random e from E.
3.2. Generate a set S of random strings from the alphabet A.
3.3. For each string in S, copy x times and change a random element in each string. This create a new set Z.
3.4. do for each string z in Z, for each element c in z. F(c)i. This generates a set of output strings with the alphabet B of the same length as the input strings. Run output string on the virtual machine, and run result through the fitness function e.
etc...
 
Name:  zak³ady bukmacherskie    E-Mail:   
Comment:
09admin deleteadmin edit  Wednesday September 7, 2005 - 11:55am  
Very interesting site :)
 
Name:  mike (aintbelieving)    E-Mail:   
Company:  Free Thinkers Association
Club:  Free Thinkers
Via:  hari told me
Comment:
08admin deleteadmin edit  Thursday June 30, 2005 - 03:15am  
good reading paul! i hope you will consider writting for Free Thinkers Association. we are not ready to launch as you will see. i am still 'collecting' content. i hope you will give me your honest opinion(s).
thanks
 
 
Name:  Flug Düsseldorf    E-Mail:   
City:  Düsseldorf  
Comment:
07admin deleteadmin edit  Friday June 10, 2005 - 04:44pm  
Thanks
 
Name:  Steam Engine  
Comment:
06admin deleteadmin edit  Sunday May 15, 2005 - 07:02am  
Super Site:-)
 
Name:  Letras de Musicas  
Comment:
05admin deleteadmin edit  Sunday May 8, 2005 - 05:23am  
Esse site é demais, parabéns a todos vocês!
 
Name:  Phylos Qin    E-Mail:   
Comment:
04admin deleteadmin edit  Friday March 18, 2005 - 03:01pm  
Wow, what a fantastic site!!!
 
Name:  Artillo    E-Mail:   
City:   DE USA
Via:  Second Life Forums
Comment:
03admin deleteadmin edit  Friday March 18, 2005 - 03:42am  
Wow glad I dropped by this site! Many useful resources! Thanks!
Artillo
 
Name:  Wednesday  
Via:  why, you of course.
Comment:
02admin deleteadmin edit  Thursday March 10, 2005 - 00:28am  
You never cease to astound me by your intelligence. And you're a swell cat, too. Miss talking to you.
Love,
Wednesday
 
Name:  Tim Mousel  
Comment:
01admin deleteadmin edit  Monday March 7, 2005 - 05:33am  
Great website!

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