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That's exactly what they are. Loss of freedom, stress, boredom, humiliation, physical violence... schools can be just as brutal and traumatic as prisons. And what do they teach you? Conformity. Obedience. To be a good little cog in society's insane machine. Schools groom us for a life of oppression and wage slavery.

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I love the implication that you cross some magical threshold into adulthood and suddenly you can overcome the causality of criminality through sheer force of causa sui willpower

Uhh, how else would you deal with 16/17 yo murderers? How big of a difference do you think there is between 17 and 18? Schools are absolutely NOT equipped for that. They are not children.

I personally refer to schools as prisons as well

I think it will be helpful to try and clarify a few things; perhaps I was misunderstanding you or was otherwise not clear. I am saying naturalism entails a number of conclusions that are infinitely bad if the worldview is in fact true. Someone who believes naturalism will thus be tethered to a worldview that should appropriately cause someone existential dread and dissatisfaction. This should motivate them to try and disprove naturalism. I don't think naturalism is infinitely psychologically harmful, to be clear.

"I wonder how you define well-being"

Just in the ordinary sense of "happy, content, healthy, etc."

"what you think an infinite amount of well-being would be like, if not well-being with finite positive magnitude and infinite duration (hence the notion of an afterlife)"

While I do think a theistic worldview is most appropriate, there are other non-theistic worldviews that could conceivably allow for infinite well-being e.g. some forms of spiritualism or reincarnation.

"At best your argument (rephrased accordingly) would be persuasive to those with serious existential worries, which could be treated with therapy or consulting the vast philosophical literature written by naturalists about said worries."

Right, I suppose you could say I am trying to inspire serious existential worries for the naturalist, since their worldview appears to entail serious consequences when taken to its conclusions.

Sidenote: thanks for interacting with the content of the post and being pleasant.

shit in the US we just throw 10 year olds in with adult murderers and rapists

"based on your choice of words I'd guess you're generally indifferent to (or in denial of) most modern problems, "burying your head in the sand in the face of a massive tsunami" as it were."

You assume wrong. I am neither indifferent to nor in denial of such things.

"The point is your claim that "people typically want to make positive political changes in the world before they die, leave the world a better place for their children, invent something that will make a mark on history, etc." doesn't account for the willfull ignorance people have for the impersonal and distant."

I agree that naturalists are often ignorant of the implications of their worldview. Again, that's why I'm making this argument- I think naturalists should follow their worldview to its conclusions and take a long hard look at whether that's something they want to sit on or perhaps instead endeavor to disprove.

"And your claim that "positive utility gained now must be measured against the looming reality of infinite meaninglessness and nothingness that the future promises" isn't an argument to abandon Naturalism, it's just a statement of fact"

I agree it's a statement of fact, on naturalism (i.e. if that worldview is held to be true). And this conclusion should compel people to be dissatisfied with naturalism, not cling to it proudly.

You seem to be repeatedly misunderstanding logical and metaphysical possibility, even at one point saying,

"also, the way you used "metaphysical possibility" is just meaningless word-babble in the context of this discussion. If anything you've just shown that you don't understand metaphysics or what it means for something to be metaphysically possible"

Your own words apply to you far more than they do to me. Let's review the meaning of these terms, since it seems like you need it:

X is strictly logically possible if, and only if, X is consistent with the laws of logic.

X is broadly logically possible (i.e. metaphysically possible) if, and only if, X is true in at least one possible world.

Now let's look at the statements you made below:

"Someone stating, a personal creator God exists and has given us an objective purpose. Is there anything contradictory in that statement which could cause it not to be true? If not (and I personally think there's not) then it's possibly true. If it's possibly true then theism allows for objective meaning."

The statement is strictly logically possible, because it doesn't appear to contradict itself. But it is not shown to be metaphysically possible, since there is no reason given here to think it's actually possible in a given world and compatible with reality. That would take some development to show (which theists would have no problem doing) and is not just a given. Now lets look at the other statement:

"Someone stating: The main activity of lions is hunting so it seems like their objective purpose is to hunt, and maybe nature has imbued them with this purpose to balance itself or the ecosystem. Anything contradictory there? Nope, so it could be true."

I agree they are similar, which is why I would say the exact same thing: while not self-contradictory on its face, you yourself have not developed any reason to think this is true in any possible world. You seem to take it that it's a foregone conclusion and compatible with reality, while I've expressed there seems to be good reasons to think that's not clear. To show that, you would need to do that which you earlier said you are a self-declared agnostic about and say you don't care to do, which is to go about proving the claim.

"(and I already pointed to naturalistic or close to naturalistic philosophies which do)"

Yes, this is why I said you've pointed to others who endeavor to show this, but you yourself have not shown this, nor do you say you care to.

"just as "you haven't shown me how God could give people objective meaning" would fail as an argument for theism being antithetical toward objective meaning."

While it wouldn't be an argument proper, it would be a completely reasonable request to ask the theist to defend the metaphysical possibility of his statement. Can the statement "God is a the foundation for objective purpose and meaning" be a true description of reality in at least one possible world? Let the theist develop and defend that! It's certainly not a given and neither is your statement.

"But yet you fail to understand, which means you're either extremely obtuse or not very honest with yourself."

Option C: you don't understand fully what you're talking about.

"Your claim was there's no foundation, even though there's objective physical stuff to point to while all you have to bring to the table is philosophical speculations like Kalam which has been debunked a million times apparently."

The existence of trees, bees, and rocks does little to develop or prove your point. Meanwhile your New Atheist vibes here about the Kalam being "debunked a million times!" just serves to display your ignorance of matters in philosophy of religion. Feel free to think what you want about the Kalam (irrelevant to the post), but at least the theist is developing an argument.

"Your claim was that it was (metaphysically) impossible for the prime minister to be a prime number. But yet the Pythagoreans as well as the Neo-Platonists, Kabbalists and other philosophies or mystical strands derived from or related to monism prove you wrong. They could be correct and the basic foundation of reality and everything which exists could be numbers."

If you want to say, as monism implies, that cats and hats, good and evil, or prime ministers and prime numbers are indistinguishable, then by all means feel free to take up a defense for it. It will especially be interesting, since your last statement is completely incompatible with naturalism, as naturalism doesn't allow for the actual independent existence of non-physical abstract objects like numbers. I see no reason to think "they could be correct."

"That just makes your whole boat hypothetical meaningless then, because the only ones who are not going for the life jacket are the depressed nihilists who see no meaning or the delusional theists who think some supernatural force is going to save them. Everyone else will be going for the life jacket and the result will be the same, regardless of the existence of or their belief in objective meaning or not."

This just misunderstands the boat analogy on multiple levels. For one, theists are analogical to the ones looking for a life jacket (i.e. survival past death), not sitting stagnant like the naturalist. Second, I said evaluating the outcomes of people's actions in light of the objectivity of purpose is trivial to whether purpose is actually objective or not. That is, what people do has no bearing on whether purpose is objective or not. I didn't the say the outcomes are the same, that naturalism is actually the case, or that the results of people's actions overall are trivial. The problem is that you're conflating the boat discussion with the objective purpose discussion- they are distinct.

"But I agree. Pascal's boat did sound like trivial drivel, at least the way you put it."

That's because it's clear that you misunderstand a lot in this conversation, despite all your condescension.

"There's nothing there which indicates I have a beef with your God."

Except that you are insistent on attacking the veracity of theism (which isn't on the table, as I have said a number of times) and your comments ooze contempt for theism. You should stick to the topic and focus on making a defense for your own claims.

Wee ragamuffins or incorrigible scamps are two of my favorites.

I'm sorry it appears that way, since I've been trying to respond with intention to each of the points in the conversation. I would invite you to reassess the thread as the post winds down to see the development of these points.

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Sorry if I worded that poorly. I meant that I feel you were rewording your own responses. The whole chain essentially boiled down to "yeah but without an eternal afterlife what's the point in doing anything," which you just repeated using different vocabulary.

Not that that isn't a valid philosophical stance, of course. Just makes for a very exhausting conversation

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There’s some very smart people in history who have said that taking care of children should be our first priority. If we can make the first 10-20 years of life easier, happier, more informed, we’ll end up with better adults. We spend zilch on people though.

Socially dangerous?

look up the kids for cash children’s prison case shits fucked

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One of the beautiful things about philosophy is that we can determine whether an argument is a good argument if we can argue against it, but still find out the original argument is stronger than its antithesis.

We have vilified intelligence in the past when we find a correlation between genius and madness in the likes of Van Gogh, Lord Byron, or even autistic savants who likes to focus on certain aspects of life at the expense of having little to no social relationships; like a PhD candidate who writes a lengthy dissertation on Kant.

But as an antithesis, there are lots of high functioning people who have led a full life and still commit to these ‘thought sinks’ that make them who they are; I have in mind here Psychopathic CEO’s who are addicted to control but own a sex dungeon because they just want to be submissive, or a modern day Sherlock Holmes that is more like a Benedict Cumberbatch than a Jeremy Brett; or more recently, a Wednesday Addams type of genius who I believe does exist among us today:)

Interesting that humans need to have all the answers. Why can't we accept some unknowns? Not saying, I'm any different, though.

For me this is an ultimate question of, whether you believe in god, God, other deity or in science. In the first case, the reason for universe's existence is self-explanatory, it is that deity responsible for it. As to why, it is impossible to know for us. An ant cannot and will not understand humans, and so we cannot hope to know the intentions of the being capable of creating universe. Since there was no communication (or you can believe there was, and accept religion) we must accept uncertainty.

On the other hand, if you reject existence of all-powerful, all-knowing being, you end up with Science. And Science bases on proofs and facts. But not much is really known about big bang. This is just a leading theory, but I think that nowadays, scientists tend to say we live in multiverse, where we are but one of infinite number of possible universes. But why does this multiverse exist? Seems to me like this is just adding another step on the ladder.

Long time ago, people believed that there was just one continent. Then, they discovered others. After that, they discovered another planets, another galaxies, local groups, clusters of galaxies, superclusters, and finally we ended up with observable universe. But that is just the limit of our current technology. As we see, historically with the invention of new technologies, we increased the size of our "universe". What I want to say is that, we cannot hope for Science to give us all the answers.

To sum up, the way I see it, we must accept the uncertainty. But that does not mean we have to stop looking for an answer. You can also do a further reading on Pascal's wager. I am not convinced by it, but it can give you an alternative solution to your question.

>Why do you keep saying you've "shown" something?

Because that's what I did. The fact that you fail to understand such a simple argument just shows how hard you cling to your religious views how this causes you to refuse or make you unable to adopt a different point of view, even as a hypothetical, as well as how closed minded you show yourself to be.

Someone stating, a personal creator God exists and has given us an objective purpose.

Is there anything contradictory in that statement which could cause it not to be true? If not (and I personally think there's not) then it's possibly true. If it's possibly true then theism allows for objective meaning.

Someone stating: The main activity of lions is hunting so it seems like their objective purpose is to hunt, and maybe nature has imbued them with this purpose to balance itself or the ecosystem.

Anything contradictory there? Nope, so it could be true. Very similar statements. In the first statement it does not matter whether God truly exists, or why God exists, or why he has given us objective meaning, or how God has given us objective meaning. As long as it's not contradictory it could be true. Same for the other statement. It does not matter why purpose would exist in nature or why it has the property of balancing itself or why this person is born with an urge to become an artist or how nature gives the birds and the bees a purpose. It does not even matter if such an objective purpose truly exists (at least for as long as it's not falsified and shown to be contradicting with some novel discovery). All of that is irrelevant. If it's not logically contradictory it could be true. If it can be true then naturalism does not reject objective purpose, and a naturalist can include it if they think they have a good reason to (and I already pointed to naturalistic or close to naturalistic philosophies which do).

Whether you have a reason to believe it is also irrelevant. Your ignorance or refusal or inability to imagine how it could work is not a good counter-argument either, just as "you haven't shown me how God could give people objective meaning" would fail as an argument for theism being antithetical toward objective meaning. All which matters is if it possibly could be true, and anything else is just distraction.

The argument is as simple as the theist's argument for God giving us purpose or, no, it's even simpler as my argument doesn't require an extra added supernatural entity we have no evidence of. But yet you fail to understand, which means you're either extremely obtuse or not very honest with yourself.

>that's not an argument much less a demonstration of anything.

It is, it shows naturalism indeed does not contradict a believe in objective purpose. If it doesn't contradict logic it could be true.

>certainly doesn't make an obvious connection to objectivity of purpose/meaning.

That's irrelevant. I don't care if you believe it or not or think there's an obvious connection. Your idea that it's somehow impossible is false and that's all I wanted to show.

>this is a far cry from showing something to be true.

I don't care if it's true. I'm not here to show that it's true, again. Your claim was there's no foundation, even though there's objective physical stuff to point to while all you have to bring to the table is philosophical speculations like Kalam which has been debunked a million times apparently. Regardless of whether purpose exists in nature or not there is an objective physical foundation for the idea, where you have only speculative hot air to offer.

>Surely you're not using monism as a justification to conflate logical possibility and metaphysical possibility...

Your claim was that it was (metaphysically) impossible for the prime minister to be a prime number. But yet the Pythagoreans as well as the Neo-Platonists, Kabbalists and other philosophies or mystical strands derived from or related to monism prove you wrong. They could be correct and the basic foundation of reality and everything which exists could be numbers.

(also, the way you used "metaphysical possibility" is just meaningless word-babble in the context of this discussion. If anything you've just shown that you don't understand metaphysics or what it means for something to be metaphysically possible)

>I don't think that objective purpose on naturalism is logically impossible

Well, good, because it is logically possible. And it means that naturalism does not preclude objective meaning.

>I'm saying there's no good reason given to think it's actual.

It does not matter to me if it's actual. You claimed naturalism precludes objective meaning. It does not.

>Whether the result of our actions are the same or not is trivial to me.

That just makes your whole boat hypothetical meaningless then, because the only ones who are not going for the life jacket are the depressed nihilists who see no meaning or the delusional theists who think some supernatural force is going to save them. Everyone else will be going for the life jacket and the result will be the same, regardless of the existence of or their belief in objective meaning or not.

But I agree. Pascal's boat did sound like trivial drivel, at least the way you put it.

>This isn't the thread for your beef with God.

That was just me pointing out that you're using an argument from ignorance fallacy, reaching conclusions based merely on preference, and keep ignoring your cognitive dissonance while you keep using bad arguments which hold as much weight against the existence of your God as they do against objective purpose in nature. In other words you want to have your cake and eat it too. There's nothing there which indicates I have a beef with your God.

Its not about reform or pennince or justice. Our system justice system is designed for one purpose, profit. creating repeat customers is what they do, and they do it well. If they can put more kids in cuffs they would, A lifelong customer

Screwed for life.

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