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Title: Godel, Escher, Bach Author: Douglas Hofstadter Genre: Hard to classify. It mixes ideas from neuroscience, philosophy, logic, art, computing, music, physics, linguistics... and so on. The writing alternates between chapters about general concepts and dialogues (generally between Achilles...

I love how they use the word 'terrorist' and then they show a truck blowing up with the caption 'Demonstration' - amusing.

Keep in mind that I believe in those things in a practical sense without having a committed philosophical view that there are other minds and that there is an external world. If we take discussion in a formal direction then yes, I retract my belief in other minds and realism.

Naturally I would advocate applying the above to most propositions which are undecidable (in practice or in principle). Edit: just to qualify my reply a little more... I realise that the above sentence actually confirms rather than denies your claim of double-think. The two main examples...

I agree. I think you put the case quite clearly. Of course, there are still disputes regarding what we should accept as evidence... yada, yada, but yeah, well put. Once again, I think Gumby had the right idea in bringing the notion of 'burden of proof' into this debate. Think of things on...

Heh - prove it and I'll endorse your push for a locked thread.

This is quite debatable. Making an argument for your claim you could take your previous statement that 'God's existence cannot be verified by empirical means'. If you join this with the claim that 'the only knowledge humans can have is empirically derived' then you reach the conclusion that this...

I wrote this in the other religion/politics thread but it got shafted to non-school, so I'll post it here: The problem I have with questions like "Does christianity affect society in a positive way?" is that they invite people to beg the question in their answers. Basically you either agree...

I've come across this argument a couple times before. It's a pretty neat way of excluding certain conceptions of god (provided you accept scientific consensus regarding the big bang).

Where are you getting this stuff from? There are plenty of counter-examples to your claims. Also, what do you mean when you say that people like myself make "every single possible logic a mess"?

Also: Jesus was white?

Not really but, as you indicated, your aim is to state the way you see it more than why you see it as you do. Personally I find it hard to work out how you could infer the amount of complexity that is present in yoru view of the heirarchy of heaven. Once again, I understand people trying to make...

Where did all of this stuff come from? Once you start introducing that degree of complexity it all starts to look absurd. It's one thing to say that there is an omnipotent creator, but quite another to say that their is a heirarchy of gods and heavens and that we can make statements about the...

Nor will anyone ever completely agree with a given moral code. I don't think that you can discount a person's moral code because it is derived from religion. However, I would suggest that having moral rules written in stone (e.g. in the form of a religious text) can be a negative because it...

Moral fallacy...: - It ought be the case that if some action, A, should be performed then it will be performed - However, you can't maintain that the fact that the action should be performed entails that it will be performed

Just to improve your life that much more: I got over 99 and I was below both the average and median UAI for entry into UNSW med (If memory serves I think that they are both around 99.5 or so?). The key to getting in is scoring the trifecta - perform solidly in terms of UAI, UMAT and interview...

I suspect that may be because doctors are often paid better overseas --> so money driven individuals with talent end up being headhunted (this is just my geuss). In this sense it makes sense to have concentrated areas of medical talent to attract and train advanced specialists. However, I don't...

Those postgrad macquarie medicine programs are quite curious. I'm not quite sure what their use is: It looks a lot like a way to score large amounts of cash from people who want a few more letters after their name. I'm suprised that they couldn't just learn advanced surgical skills on the...

Food for thought: if there isn't an objective foundation for morality then we can't acquire our sense of morality from personal reflection on truths (since there wouldn't be any) --> it's going to come from somewhere else (most likely parents/society). In this sense some form of indoctrination...

Personally I would argue that even god is not immune to logic - for example, I would advance the 'an omnipotent being could not create a rock that they could not lift' argument to argue for a weaker form of omnipotence. However, I have seen people advance the 'god is beyond logic' argument in...