Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

I wish the statists would just come out of the closet and get rid of the Constitution. The Commerce Clause is set up to deregulate trade between states, then, it turns out, it gives the federal government the power to regulate commerce, and now it give the federal government the power to coerce commerce onto "free" individuals. Give me a break. Implied powers my ass.

The Constitution is a heavily flawed document written primarily by Hamiltonians (you know, the guys who wanted a king). Are you surprised?

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery

 

[viewerfromnihil]

The Constitution is a heavily flawed document written primarily by Hamiltonians (you know, the guys who wanted a king). Are you surprised?

I've always thought of the Constitution as the great compromise. But what is more flawed than the Constitution itself is the statists who have "upheld" it through the years. Then again, perhaps they have "upheld" it quite well by continuing the series of compromises on state sovereignty that the Constitution initiated. The Hamiltonians were quite the bunch, it's unfortunate that Madison joined their ranks later in his political career.

 

[Cythraul]

How exactly does one provide a convincing argument for something's non-existence?

Sometimes with a bit of logic, I suppose? Do square circles exist?

I think some atheistic arguments are like this. I recall one that claimed something to the effect that the idea of a disembodied thing that acts is nonsensical. So arguments from conceptual impossibility or something like that seem pretty straightforward ways of showing that something doesn't exist and moreover couldn't exist.

Regarding Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris: These guys seem out of their depth much of the time. Dawkins is really not philosophically adept and does not have the academic background to deal with the atheism/theism debate in a rigorous manner. I just would not go to that guy if I wanted an interesting treatment of the issue. Hitchens always struck me as hyperbolic, but I can't point to anything specific off the top of my head. Harris' views on morality, if I'm correct on what they are, strike me as patently ridiculous. It's quite obvious how "science can determine values" if you already assume the truth of something like, say, utilitarianism and want the answer to a question like "how would I go about maximizing utility in situation X?" But if what he means is that science can determine the truth of normative ethical claims like "The right thing to do is to maximize utility," that just strikes me as extremely confused. But I'm not really familiar with what his views actually are, so...

 

[skeptik]

Okay, so since the something that I referred to is an omnipotent being, what would the convincing argument be for its non-existence?

 

[Cythraul]

you talkin shit bro?

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

It's completely illogical to be called upon to prove a negative.

 

[Addo_Of_Nex]

No it isn't. To prove the negation of an existential proposition, you have to resort to simple universal quantification; it's a pretty basic logical move (eg. there does not exist an even prime number>2).

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

If you look a little closer, it actually depends on the nature of the negative statement being made. Clearly, it’s possible to prove a negative statement. The real problem here is clearly the nature of the positive statement being refuted. When a person asserts that God exists, he does not specify the nature of God – that is, is God small, large, blue, red? And where is he? Of course it is not possible to prove that God does not exist, if “God” is a thing that has no definition, no characteristics, and no location. In fact, you can prove just about any kind of negative you can think of – except for ( surprise!) the non-existence of mystical beings. When you get right down to it, the statement “you cannot prove a negative” is really just a different way of saying “You can’t prove me wrong because we don’t even know what were talking about.”

 

[skeptik]

you talkin shit bro?

No, I asked a question. I want to know if there's a legitimately convincing logical argument for the non-existence of an omnipotent god. I obvious misspoke in the statement that you quoted by not qualifying what I was referring to.

 

[Dak]

I interrupt your regularly scheduled program for this insight:

http://mises.org/daily/2831/Why-Dont-People-Get-It

The second part of our educational task — imaging how a market-run world would function — is much more difficult. Murray Rothbard once remarked that if the government were the only producer of shoes, most people would be unable to imagine how the market could possibly produce them. How could the market accommodate all sizes? Wouldn't it be wasteful to produce styles for every taste? What about fraudulent shoes and poor quality producers? And shoes are arguably too important a good to turn over to the vicissitudes of market anarchy.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

I fucking hate those Che shirts and the dipshits that wear them!

 

[Dak]

I fucking hate those Che shirts and the dipshits that wear them!

"Wow, a Che shirt? I love mass murderers too bro!"

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

 

[Dak]

Win.

 

[Dak]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/dark-pool-truth-about-what-really-goes-stock-market

I knew traders like GSachs were using complicated high speed trading techniques to rip off the indexes. This explains one of the ways it happens.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

 

[Einherjar86]

Regarding Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris: These guys seem out of their depth much of the time. Dawkins is really not philosophically adept and does not have the academic background to deal with the atheism/theism debate in a rigorous manner. I just would not go to that guy if I wanted an interesting treatment of the issue.

I am in basic agreement with the final sentence of your comment, but that's because (I think) I'm interested in theistic commentary that derives from a philosophical background, and philosophy is traditionally the arena of thought that has given us the most enlightening arguments for/against a metaphysical god.

I also agree that Dawkins doesn't have the complete academic background necessary for a theological debate. He's very intelligent, and in the arena of the natural/biological sciences he's definitely a powerhouse. I think he finds too much comfort and confidence in speaking about metaphysical matters with a purely empiricist/materialist scientific background. By this, I mean that he finds no evidence for a supreme god in his studies; everything in nature can be explained via natural and biological laws (which still isn't entirely true) and belief in god appears, to Dawkins, as a kind of unnecessary surplus belief, a leftover from pre-Enlightenment centuries. He doesn't really provide a logical argument about god's existence, he merely explains that there's really no place for such a belief in the secular pantheon of the natural and biological sciences.

I think this is a great case of the emerging influence of science in our modern Western culture, and the relationship between this emergence of empiricist/materialist sciences and the older, more originary pursuit of "philosophy". I've recently started a book by a guy named Quentin Meillassoux called After Finitude that deals with the problem of studying the purported world before the emergence of human consciousness (or even life itself). Near the beginning there's a great little section where he says:

"Doubtless, where science is concerned, philosophers have become modest - and even prudent. Thus, a philosopher will generally begin with an assurance to the effect that her theories in no way interfere with the work of the scientist, and that the manner in which the latter understands her own research is perfectly legitimate. But she will immediately add (or say to herself): legitimate, as far as it goes. What she means is that although it is normal, and even natural, for the scientist to adopt a spontaneously realist attitude, which she shares with the 'ordinary person', the philosopher possesses a specific type of knowledge which imposes a correction upon science's ancestral statements..."

By "ancestral statements" Meillassoux means statements about entities/events/things that are external or prior to the availability of human cognition (i.e. the Big Bang, the accretion of the earth, a supernatural god, etc.). I think this is a great explanation of the approach that Dawkins presumes to take (the "realist" attitude), and that which he ignores (the "specific knowledge" of the philosopher).

 

[Manic Ferocity]

No, I asked a question. I want to know if there's a legitimately convincing logical argument for the non-existence of an omnipotent god. I obvious misspoke in the statement that you quoted by not qualifying what I was referring to.

There isn't really a convincing logical argument for the existence or non-existence of an omnipotent god. Is that what you're getting at?

 

[Dak]

Mises Daily: Praxeology