ShtLp

You can be next! Here comes the trash can Muppet, ebuc!!

Could be, but you'll never know

a+a lol

Ah got ya. How.woukd you feel if I called it algebraization of the rules....like the first rule set is

1+1=2

1+2=3

2+3=5

Then we update it to

a=2

b=3

c=5

Then we update it to

a+b=c

Oh! And...b=c-a

And so on (my best off the top example lol). Eventually you end up with calculus but for social/economic systems. No one would argue that calculus is bad, but just that it definitely complicates things and requires more learning to use properly.

I’m not sure if saying “you still make a choice” under determinism really gets at the core issue. Don’t you think the key question is whether you could have made a different choice under the exact same conditions? If the answer is no, then calling that process “free will” seems more like relabeling a process as a category than making a meaningful distinction.

When I say it might just be relabeling, I mean that under determinism a “free will choice” is what the process of prior causes resulting in an action feels like when experienced. Inputs go in, and an output follows. Calling that free will doesn’t seem to add anything unless it implies a different outcome was actually possible under identical conditions.

To.what you said about meaning, I don’t see determinism as making things meaningless. Systems still seek stability even as they are required to change at their most fundamental levels. People take in new information, update, and behave differently/change in order to stabilize (the more complicated the system, the more complicated the definition of "stabilize").Conversations like this are part of that process, shaping what happens next.

And on your last point, I’m not sure I see a strong difference either. If the process is the same under both views and only the perspective changes, then what is free will adding? Isn’t the disagreement really about what counts as acting “on your own”?

Do you think free will requires that you could have done otherwise under the same conditions, or is it enough that the decision comes from your internal processes, even if those are fully determined?

True enough, but help me connect the dots as to how that relates to what I said...forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.

I think you’re right about one thing up front. People do want a shared framework and a coherent way to understand the world.

Where I think this post goess off is the idea that religion actually solves that problem, and atheism uniquely fails at it.

Religion doesn’t really give a single “common operating system.” It gives a claimed divine source that still has to be interpreted bg humans. That’s why Christianity alone breaks into hundreds of major traditions and thousands of denominations (World Christian Encyclopedia framework), all drawing from the same text but arriving at different conclusions. Zoom out to global religion and you’re dealing with about 10,000 distinct traditions and untold denominations of those traditions, not one unified system. So disagreement clearly isn’t something atheism introduces.

On the “frankenstein worldview” point, I don’t think that’s a weakness of atheism. I think that’s just an artifact of being human. Even within a religion, you still have to choose a denomination, a hermeneutic, and how to apply it in real life. That’s moral construction, just less visible/recognizable as such.

The claim that atheism leads to nihilism or “no epistemic basis for truth” doesn’t really hold. You can ground truth in evidence, coherence, and predictive success, which is how science operates (Hume; standard philosophy of science). And you can ground values in human well being, harm reduction, reciprocity, and long term stability. Those track with how humans actually function socially. You might claim that those shift overtime and my claim is that the humanist moral perspective allows for that. Whereas the dogmatic religious one does not. Anything that works against the natural flow of a system is cancerous to that system. Religious dogmatism is cancerous to human reason, and humanism is cancerous to religious dogmatism (so I partially accept your title, though you didn say atheism)

That shift gets formalized in the Enlightenment. Think Locke on natural rights and Kant on autonomy. It moves justification away from unjustified domain specific authority and toward reason, evidence, and justification. If anything creates tension with traditional religious frameworks, it’s that shift.

On the social side, the idea that atheism produces apathy or breakdown doesn’t match reality. Many of the least religious countries still show high levels of social trust and stability (Pew Research Center; World Values Survey). That doesn’t prove atheism is superior, but it does undercut the claim that it leads to collapse or is cancerous in the negative way you seem to mean it.

So what you’re pointing at isn’t a flaw unique to atheism. It’s a general human condition. Everyone is interpreting, selecting, and building a framework under constraints. Religion doesn’t remove that, it just externalizes it.

To the point, I’m actively building a moral/ethical framework myself. I track personal ideas, ideas from debates, lectures, and primary sources, analyze them for patterns and contradictions, and refine them into a more coherent system over time. The goal isn’t to invent values arbitrarily, it’s to anchor them in what consistently promotes human well being, stability, and long term viability. That’s something I can actually explain, test, and pass on to my kids as a starting point they can improve on, not just inherit without question.

So I think the real question comes back to you. If religion actually provides a single, coherent system that avoids these problems, how do you account for the scale of internal disagreement within it, the violence and harm born put of it, and what method do you use to decide which interpretation is the correct one without ultimately appealing to the same kinds of reasoning you’re criticizing?

Something I’ve noticed...

Accusing others of “always projecting” might be one of the easiest ways to accidentally prove the point.

I’ve seen it in politics, religion, and everyday disagreements.

It seems like we’re really good at spotting patterns in others, but much worse at catching them in ourselves.

Is that just a limitation of being human, or is there a way around it?

Are our choices fully determined by prior causes/environment/biology, and if so, how should we define morility/moral responsibility?

If determinism is true, then every choice you make comes from causes you did not choose. Your biology, your environment, and your past experiences shape every decision.

If all of those factors were exactly the same, you would make the same choice every time. That means you could not have done otherwise in any real sense.

If that is the case, then moral responsibility has to be redefined. Instead of saying people deserve blame or praise, we should focus on outcomes. Punishment should be about preventing harm and shaping behavior, not retribution. The goal becomes managing causes, not judging people as if they created themselves.

Bet thanks yall.

This explains why you are always so vague and low effort; your debate philosophy is based on a misunderstanding. “Be without position” is an epistemic idea about not being dogmatic so you can update your beliefs when evidence changes. It is not a debate strategy. What you’ve described here turns that into something else entirely...letting the other side commit, delaying response, and then attacking definitions or assumptions without ever staking your own position.

That is not neutrality, it is strategic non-commitment. In any structured debate, both sides have a burden to present a claim, define terms, and defend them. Your method removes your BOP while keeping your opponent’s intact, which creates an asymmetry where you can criticize indefinitely without being accountable to a standard yourself.

Pointing out circular reasoning, bad definitions, or hidden assumptions is valid, but only as part of advancing your own case. If that is all you do, you are not debating, you are avoiding evaluation. A debate requires two positions that can be compared, not one position and one moving target.

A strong debater can hold a position and still remain open to revision. Clarity and commitment are what make arguments testable. If your goal is truth seeking, you need that structure. If your goal is simply to avoid being wrong, then this method works, but that is not debate its identitarian self protection.

I just figured** im not absolutely disfigured lol

I can imagine that would be frustrating. I think one of the issues you run into on these sites is you run into a lot of bad actors. And so voting seems like a waste, eventually. I'm absolutely disfigured, I would say something, and it would populate in people's minds.If we talked about it....you up for a debate? Or know anyone who has some spirit in them?

Ive noticed voting doesnt seem to be popular, anyone up to change that with me?