. . .I suppose that's a far more concise way of saying what I said. On a routine basis you seem to explain what I do, but in hundreds of less words...and it sounds better...and is wiser...and is more correct...

*Grumble* *Grumble* *Grumble*

He has experience in explaining very complex things in a more concise manner; otherwise it just flies over people's heads -- like most of what you say. sh.t, sometimes I have to reread your posts.

edit: Also, take a look at my post in the thread you made -- I'm sure you know more about the brain than I do, and I want some comments on what I said about the conditioning mechanism of our brain. I have this theory I'm thinking of writing up, but I'll have to admit in the very beginning of it that I know nothing about the science of the brain -- it's merely an idea I cooked up through chemical experience.

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I've found that if I explain something with the assumption that the end user has the necessary fundamental knowledge about what I'm talking about, it goes right over their head. This is...mostly my fault. Sometimes I assume 'fundament' means they know way more than the average joe. On this forum, I assume the people I'm responding to are highschool and college kids (like most of us), and a few younger and older ones - not PhD's (hehe, excluding Marked). Over explaining something is better than losing someone in rush to the end of the post. The part that gets me is that Cursed is able to do all that, in way less words. The only concise thing about me are the insults I make.

I don't really mind making long posts either. In reality, I'm sitting in a living room with collegues running through the thousands of flash cards we've made during the course of the week. It's actually very relaxing.

That is my belief on religion and stuff exactly.

There is a logical reason for everything. However, 5,000 years ago, we didnt know as much as we did now, and therefore god was created to explain that.

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The cause and effect relationship has been around for a long time. The cause for a lot of stuff in the natural world was just thought to be god(s). Now, our understanding of the world is...advanced.

The beautiful thing about philosophy is that it trancends time. The greatest philosophers of the ancient world still say things that are as amazing and relavent now, as they were when they were said. The same cannot be said for anything else.

I find myself in the same situation as you; I enjoy making longer posts, and given that the reader pays attention and reads the entire thing, they'll have a better, more developed understanding of a concept I'm trying to express. Since we are in a community populated with our teenage generation, many of them still in high school, and many more of them not used to or motivated to think critically, it's very helpful for guys like you and me to elaborate and explain things. I intend on being a teacher, and teaching is one of my passions -- especially with young minds; on my ride home from MLG Dallas I taught three 15 year olds (Edit When Done being one of them) philosophy for an hour and a half. Edit said I changed his life, which was very satisfying for me to be able to expand and educate a young mind to have a more developed perspective on the world around him. It was also good exercise for myself.

I think the members of this forum, those willing or at least susceptible to learning, are fortunate to have an older, perhaps wiser (even though, epistemelogically, we know nothing) members like MarkedAchilles, yourself and (to step outside my humility) myself. Just the same, Marked, yourself and myself are fortunate to have each other around -- otherwise this place would be very unstimulating.

In response to philosophy being transcendent to time is probably the most true statement said about philosophy. While there have been great philosophic minds spawned at the start of the first century, such as Locke, Kant, Mill, Hume, and the great American philosophers like William James and John Rawls (who recently passed), there have never been greater minds than the three Titans of philosophy -- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates especially, still raises questions and presents reasoning to many things relevant to our society. Socrates would have a field day with America. A f..kin field day.

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And a smarter guy said ( ) :

Saying the universe must be designed because you don't know how it's current state could have arrived by well-known and thoroughly documented physical laws is an Argument from Ignorance and a catastrophic failure in logic when coupled with dogma and a large impressionable population. Anything complex that was designed requires an even more complex designer. If the universe was designed then the creator is necessarily more complex which in turn requires the creator to have an even more complex designer ad nauseum.

This occurs because you just used your reasoning to conclude that something complex you see must have had to be designed, but because a designer must be necessarily more complex, it requires an even more complex designer as well due to the exact reasoning used to conclude the object needed a designer in the first place. i.e. not logical, not parsimonious, gets razed by Occam.

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You can understand how they came up with the watch analogy back in the day, but today when evolution, cosmology and all that good stuff are much more well know, its surprising how often similar analogies pop up. Any one had the misfortune to watch a "Way of the Master" episode before? Man, I've never heard that many versions of the watch analogy used to many times in one half hour before.

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There are several ways to defuse the teleological argument.
"Consider the idea that nature itself is the product of design. How could this be demonstrated? Nature, as we have seen, provides the basis of comparison by which we distinguish between designed objects and natural objects. We are able to infer the presence of design only to the extent that the characteristics of an object differ from natural characteristics. Therefore, to claim that nature as a whole was designed is to destroy the basis by which we differentiate between artifacts and natural objects. Evidences of design are those characteristics not found in nature, so it is impossible to produce evidence of design within the context of nature itself." - George H. Smith

This one is my favorite (no surprise since I'm an English major).

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