| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Discourser" |
| Date: |
12 Aug 2004 02:53:09 AM |
| Object: |
10-COMMANDMENT BELIEVERS IN SLAVERY |
10-COMMANDMENTS' BELIEVERS IN SLAVERY
"nor his manservant, nor his maidservant . . ."
READ THIS:
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor
his *****, nor anything that is thy neighbor's."
-- 10th Commandment of the 10 Commandments of Moses in the Bible
___________________________
Atheists and Humanist oppose mental and physical slavery in all of its
forms.
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| User: "Liberator Veritatis" |
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| Title: Re: What the Heck is "Materialism"? |
29 Aug 2004 01:12:52 PM |
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On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:43:30 GMT, "Marvin Edwards"
<mbe2uu@earthlink.net> wrote:
"Liberator Veritatis" <LiberatorVeritatis@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:g624j0lfoiiuch8m7o9nj2ualh2jmu818q@4ax.com...
... Nominalism is the view that all so called "universals" refer ultimately
to classes of particulars. So, for instance, when one speaks of "love" or
"truth", they are just talking about a characteristic that all such
particular instances of it share. For instance, you are talking about the
complex physical phenomena that all people experience when they are "in
love" or you are talking about a certain quality of statements that various
particular statements all have. <
That makes sense to me...not the word "nominalism" necessarily, but the
situation that a word may not refer to a specific object, but may instead
refer to a characteristic of certain instances.
The word nominalism comes from the fact that universals are just names
for classes of particulars. So, "yellow", for instance, is thought to
be just a name for the collection of all yellow things. This view is
often contrasted to the view that "yellow" actually exists just like
those things that exhibit this characteristic.
My position is that "yellow" is just as *real* as those things that
exist that exhibit this characteristic, but it does not, itself,
*exist*. Or more generally, ideas can be part of reality without
existing (which, again, isn't the same as saying that they actually do
exist in some ethereal spirit world).
This sort of a claim is actually a key additional assertion to the purely
ontological assertion that only matter (and/or energy) can exist. <
Frankly, I'm not so sure that "energy" actually exists, but rather may be a
relationship of one or more forms or situations of matter. Kinetic energy,
for example, is mass in motion. When E=MC2, by what device is E measured?
What about light? Is that matter or energy? I think one way to
characterize the modern view in physics is that matter really is
energy (and so what exists is really just energy -- electromagnetic
energy, perhaps).
--
Liberator Veritatis
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| User: "Marvin Edwards" |
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| Title: Re: What the Heck is "Materialism"? |
29 Aug 2004 04:51:41 PM |
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"Liberator Veritatis" <LiberatorVeritatis@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:pm64j05cvgt89ifjsahghq4nv3f4jfcarv@4ax.com...
... My position is that "yellow" is just as *real* as those things that
exist that exhibit this characteristic, but it does not, itself, *exist*.
Or more generally, ideas can be part of reality without existing (which,
again, isn't the same as saying that they actually do exist in some ethereal
spirit world). <
I'm with you.
What about light? Is that matter or energy? I think one way to
characterize the modern view in physics is that matter really is energy (and
so what exists is really just energy -- electromagnetic energy, perhaps). <
Light is photons, and photons are particles. Energy is meaningless without
matter. What is motion without something moving? Particles must be assumed,
and we do assume them down to the quarks and things that we imagine spin in
different directions. But this may be something which our minds must impose
upon reality to deal with it. On the other hand, since we cannot deal with
it except through our minds, it is as real as it gets.
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| User: "Liberator Veritatis" |
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| Title: Re: What the Heck is "Materialism"? |
30 Aug 2004 07:10:03 PM |
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On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 21:51:41 GMT, "Marvin Edwards"
<mbe2uu@earthlink.net> wrote:
"Liberator Veritatis" <LiberatorVeritatis@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:pm64j05cvgt89ifjsahghq4nv3f4jfcarv@4ax.com...
... My position is that "yellow" is just as *real* as those things that
exist that exhibit this characteristic, but it does not, itself, *exist*.
Or more generally, ideas can be part of reality without existing (which,
again, isn't the same as saying that they actually do exist in some ethereal
spirit world). <
I'm with you.
What about light? Is that matter or energy? I think one way to
characterize the modern view in physics is that matter really is energy (and
so what exists is really just energy -- electromagnetic energy, perhaps). <
Light is photons, and photons are particles.
But they have no mass. How can it be matter without mass?
Energy is meaningless without
matter. What is motion without something moving?
I'll agree with that for many types of energy and certainly kinetic
energy.
Particles must be assumed,
and we do assume them down to the quarks and things that we imagine spin in
different directions. But this may be something which our minds must impose
upon reality to deal with it. On the other hand, since we cannot deal with
it except through our minds, it is as real as it gets.
Photons are packets of quantized energy, but they are fundamentally
different than, say, a proton. In particular, if they truly had mass,
then they would have to contain an infinite amount of energy in order
to travel at the speed of light in a vacuum.
--
Liberator Veritatis
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| User: "Marvin Edwards" |
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| Title: Re: What the Heck is "Materialism"? |
31 Aug 2004 05:23:51 AM |
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"Liberator Veritatis" <LiberatorVeritatis@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:i8g7j0556ghn93gl32figjg678svomna4e@4ax.com...
Photons are packets of quantized energy, but they are fundamentally
different than, say, a proton. In particular, if they truly had mass, then
they would have to contain an infinite amount of energy in order to travel
at the speed of light in a vacuum. <
Sometimes matter is very very tiny and moves very very fast... :-)
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| User: "homehelp" |
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| Title: Re: What the Heck is "Materialism"? |
30 Aug 2004 11:15:15 AM |
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Wilson and many others seem to think that any non-scientific (itself a
debatable term) view is not materialist. This is not true. Marx was a
materialist. That means that he did not believe that notions like
"spirit" or a platonic "world of ideas" with a degree of autonomy from
the material world is really worth talking about. Similarly,
postmodernism is materialist. Within this movement you get confusing
statements like "language is material." This seems like so much
nonsense to an E. O. Wilson. But think about it. Language has
predictable effects on other parts of the material world: certain
statements heard from someone speaking to you change your internal
biochemistry, or may even affect your behaviour. Is this different
from gravity (except that, of course, gravity's effects are much more
straightforward and easier to schematize)? The point is that language,
social relations, political power are all part of the material world
although they are not, perhaps, blocks of matter. Postmodernists and
Marxists make no reference to platonic "forms" that preexist, or to
souls, or God. They think that there is only the material, but that
includes things like social relations, literary forms, culture,
language.
Hope this helps,
Not-always-Right.
www.freewebs.com/travel-deals
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| User: "Ron Peterson" |
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| Title: Re: What the Heck is "Materialism"? |
30 Aug 2004 03:30:15 PM |
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In talk.philosophy.humanism homehelp <helpinout@hotmail.com> wrote:
... They think that there is only the material, but that
includes things like social relations, literary forms, culture,
language.
Some people term those things as emergent properties. It keeps
materialism from degenerating into a mechanistic view of nature.
--
Ron
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