Comments by hurrican

Comment #146027 by hurrican on March 18, 2008 at 1:47 pm

what was the quote?

better an unhappy Socrates then a happy pig.

2. Life-Forming Chemicals Found in Distant Galaxy

Comment #114603 by hurrican on January 22, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Only thing was that the Bajorans gods were actually wormhole aliens.

3. It is possible to be moral without God

Comment #107101 by hurrican on January 4, 2008 at 4:25 am

Hihino:

Not speaking for anyone but myself i would like to answer a few of your comments.

The first thing is that as an atheist I do not really hate religious people. Sure i dislike their message, but why kill the messenger. I only have problems with the people of faith when they start harming themselves and other people in things like health, education, and science. Examples, people basically committing suicide for not taking blood transfusion, wanting to teach religion in a science class, and interfering with scientific research that could help millions of people.

I myself have lived a kind of sheltered life as my parents did not force any kind of religion on me, and my community and friends were also not very big on that topic and hardly ever spoke of it. So, I do have christian, muslim, and buddhist friends which i get along with just fine. I wasn't even aware of all the issues till I hit college where I was kind of forced to take on the label of atheism .

Another comment:

or atheism, there are some part i am disagree with you but of course at the end i cant put the evidence of my believeness. but i truly understand atheism starting last week. and the only reason when i will "hate" them is when the time they will die, and they sees God as the whole answers of questions and it would be enough evidence to explain all being and at the same time they still claim they are atheism, that is the time i will hate those believers. but as long as we are in this world, i dont seems have enough explanations to hate or disagree with them and as the same time it is goes to all religion in the world.

If there really is an afterlife and the heaven/hell of the christian religion is true, it would not be the believers i would hate or envy. It would be actually god that i would hate. I live my life as morally as I can and it only so happens that many of my moral beliefs coincide with the good moralities in the bible. But, I do not get them from the bible, rather as I grew up I have gained them through experiences I had with dealing with other people. And if the christian god does exist and he damns me to hell for not following the bad morals in the bible and for not believing in him in this life then he is not a good god, and at that point i would rather be in hell then in heaven. I like to use this example to hammer this point home:

Let us say we have two men one is extremely moral with family and is active in the community, pta, etc. Basically a well respected man inside and outside his home.

We have a second man who has just committed a string of gruesome murders.

The first man is an atheist and it just so happened that today he was killed while saving a bus full of children from a Christian (insert religiuos group name if you want) school.

The second man has just converted to christianity days before today and is put to death today for his crimes.

Which one goes to heaven and which goes to hell? and is it fair?

I can usually tell who is a fundie and who is a moderate from this question as the moderate usually takes time to comtemplate on this question while the fundie quickly says the atheist goes to hell and the serial killer goes to heaven.

4. It is possible to be moral without God

Comment #107046 by hurrican on January 4, 2008 at 2:19 am

I have only just finished a few undergrad course on Neitzsche so i may be incorrect, but if i may submit my understanding of it to what you have written.

NormanDoering wrote:

Nietzsche seems to miss the whole point of morality. The plural, "supermen," never appears in Nietzsche's writings and morality is about the group, and more, it's about society and even the whole of humanity, not the individual. It's about how we treat others, how we live together and work together, and there is no one who is not weak when alone and faced by a group. To isolate yourself the way this Superman does will just weaken you. To be a member of any group you have to play by the traditional rules of the group, at least in public.

Why wouldn't Nietzsche's Superman decide to be a murderous criminal? Just to avoid punishment? Why should I trust Nietzsche's Superman in a business deal if he sees me only as member of a herd he doesn't belong to? A moral person has to see the bigger picture and his self interest has to be enlightened by an awareness of the fact that he is part of a society that he depends on. He has to know that the trust of others has value.

Nietzsche's focus may be on the individual, but there are two things i would like to say about his morality on the pluralistic nature of moralaity. First we must understand his overman or superman as a person which one of his many goals is the better himself through challenges be it physical or otherwise. He then can have a relationship with other people with the goal of bettering that person through challenges. In this sense he is not alone and he can act within a group, but it would go against the traditional sense of group ethics and morality.

Secondly the overman has to deal with what Nietzsche refers to as the eternal recurrence. This means that he must be able to affirm not only all the actions he has done but all the people around him, before him, and how they have effected him. Also, he must affirm this thought into eternity as all our actions will be repeated infinitely, which gives all our actions meaning.

As to why he would not want to be a murderous criminal or why he would care for anyone in the herd at all? It could be that this overman whose driving goal which is to better himself through challenges may see that he maybe able to raise others to a level that they can challenge him and
better him or beat him and have him strive even harder to beat that person. Murdering would mean that one can not better that person in hope of that person challenging them.

Well those are a few things I've extracted from the readings I've done on Nietzsche, though things like eternal recurrence still give me a hard time. I understand the meaning but cant fully grasp it.

5. It is possible to be moral without God

Comment #105551 by hurrican on January 1, 2008 at 12:32 am

"Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov said: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.' Sartre agreed."

Anyone who has ever read Sartre would know that he agreed but only partially. He totally ignores the ideas of absurdity, problem of the other, and the wrenched freedom that we have.

6. How can the Earth be so perfectly suited for life by coincidence?

Comment #98433 by hurrican on December 13, 2007 at 3:27 pm

Goldy

Did they not a while back from some sort of stone that came from mars and it had some kind of evidence that there once was life on mars?

7. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #95934 by hurrican on December 9, 2007 at 1:49 pm

Just thought i would point out that the first cause was stolen from Aristotle's prime mover. The difference is however, the prime mover and the universe both existed without having been created or having a cause. The prime mover just basically pushed the universe into motion.

8. If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold

Comment #95931 by hurrican on December 9, 2007 at 1:40 pm

People who ask the question of
"If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold"
really need to read books by people like Sartre and Beauvoir.