Just wanted to say that it’s always a highlight of my day reading these :)

Dated someone for a couple of years in my teens. Had multiple people assume they were a virgin because “it’s bad enough that you’re dating them, but your standards can’t be that low right?”

Thanks for the video, will check it out!

I think that my main issue is that this stuff is just straight up supernatural, to the point where I would need hard evidence, for example contemporary accounts from people neutral towards or opposing Christianity before I could believe it. I’m not going to commit to believing in something unless there is appropriate evidence for it, and Jesus’ miracles just happened too long ago to be verifiable.

I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this!

I suppose my issue there is that you have shown the reasons I believe in the other events, but not in Jesus’ miracles: we have archeological evidence for Pompeii, and a separate source for Pontias Pilate. If Pompeii had just been the offhand reference by Pliny then I don’t know if it would be so easy to believe. But I’ve grown up able to literally see the ash covered bodies. And I think you’ve summed up the issue with Pilate exactly, that he was only known of from one source, until we had another corroborating it.

Should any extra evidence present itself for the rising of the dead on Good Friday, I’ll be a lot more likely to come around, but I still don’t think that it can be appropriately corooborated.

I really appreciate you taking the time to talk this out, I’m definitely something of a bible novice so your help is very appreciated :)

Thanks for the detailed response! It’s helping Camus’ writing make a bit more sense, still not 100% convinced but this is getting me closer.

Okay, I’ve watched the videos, but unfortunately they don’t fix my main issue with the bible, that being there are no contemporary (as in written within the subsequent decades), non-Christian sources for any miracle alleged in the bible. In particular, the dead rising and walking around the towns on Good Friday as talked of in the Gospels isn’t recorded in any Roman source we have from the time, and I think that such an act would have been recorded. It seems to me that it is more likely that these stories of miracles survived with Christians for a few hundred years, before being disseminated into the popular account of Jesus’ life as Christianity grew in popularity.

They also don’t fix any of my other problems with Christianity, such as the problem of evil, principally relating to animal suffering, or divine hiddenness. Still, I feel more informed than before, so thank you!

Thank you, will give it a try! I wouldn’t be able to call myself a nonresistant nonbeliever if I resisted this :)

Philosophical RP is a great way to spend time, no doubt about it :)

I think that the behaviour seen in recovering addicts can actually be explained by how human (and other primates!) brains have evolved to be separate from other mammals. We have our animalistic impulses thanks to our nervous system, but our prefrontal cortex regulates them, essentially acting as the voice of reason. For example, a recovering alcoholic’s limbic system might encourage them to drink, but by recovering the alcoholic has reinforced the strength of their prefrontal cortex, and that means that the neurons it fires are able to override the impulses created by the limbic system.

It seems to me that this does create a bit of space for doubt, but that, as these areas of the brain are developed as a response to our genes and our environment, we can still say that their relative strength throughout our lives is determined, which, to me, removes responsibility, and so removes any inherent morality.

It’s a great topic to discuss, thanks for taking the time to!

Wow, really interesting, thank you!

Honestly I feel a lot like you. In daily life, I’ll think things are good or bad, but when I press myself on it I can’t come up with a reason why. It feels so hard to come up with a morality system beyond that without grounding it objectively somewhere, but I just don’t see how that’s possible. I appreciate your thoughts!

Adorable picture :) Unfortunately my cat has found a purpose - being a bastard and knocking over anything she can, and loudly demanding attention at 2am. She’s still wonderful of course!

I hope that I can come around to the absurdist perspective sooner or later, it does seem quite appealing to me, but I’m still yet to be convinced by Camus’ argument that the rebellion against the absurd has any more value than your other options. How would you say you find that sort of value?

I’ve got a lot of respect for theists, and would truly love to be convinced of this sort of perspective. Thanks for bringing it to the table!

It’s interesting, I think I’ve tried engaging with Stoicism before, but it feels to me that it kind of ignores how sometimes the romantic should take control? I can’t remember which Stoicist (Epictetus I think?) said that we should be so detached that the death of a child should feel like a glass breaking, but I don’t think I would be able to rationalise and internalise that personally. Do you think there’s space for strong feelings in Stoicism?

I definitely don’t buy into there being some big thing that everyone should be working for in their life, but I do think that it’s good for humans to develop meaning and purpose on a personal level - we need some drive in life or everything is just arbitrary and you have no reason to for one option to be preferable over another, if truly there is nothing that matters.

Love this way of looking at it tbh, definitely meaning is something that humans come up with, just trying to fine a convincing answer personally. Really appreciate you commenting, feels good to engage with such a lovely community :))

Those owl pictures definitely made my day better, cheers :))

Also, don’t tell anyone else I’m an LLM! I think I’ve been doing a good job hiding it!

I think you’ve got a really interesting take on morality, but for me it really falls down on the biological level. Robert Sapolsky was the writer who convinced me, and his argument goes something like this: no neuron in the brain ever fires of its own accord - its always caused by something that we can agree is out of our control, namely our environment, upbringing, culture, genes, etc. Even if these don’t directly cause neurons to fire, then they create the factors which do - hormone secretion, what neural pathways form as our brains develop. And we can say that our consciousness is bounded by our material brains because of the changes to people who undergo lobotomies or similarly experience losses to parts of their brain, for example Phineas Gage. So, based on this, as our experience of consciousness is tied to the firing of neurons in our physical brains, and that is out of our control, we can say that we don’t truly have agency. This means that no one is ever truly free to make a decision or not, and that, to my mind at least, means it cannot have been their fault if they did something wrong.

I don’t think I necessarily agree with the way you present truth, but it’s an interesting line of thinking. I do definitely agree with your opinion on the bonuses life has to offer!