So, at worst, the rate of such diseases was ~0.076% with Gardasil and ~0.031% without it. But these numbers are so low that the difference could easily be due to chance. There's no real evidence that Gardasil had anything to do with those cases. Saying otherwise is just scare tactics.
The problem with defining morals in terms of subjective individual goals or meaning to particular individuals is that it makes morals purely relative and robs them of objectivity.
Is it really 'subjective' that 'moving your king out to the center of the board' is a bad strategy?
Chess theory has developed a lot. At the higher levels at least, modern chess has changed greatly since the 1800s. A grandmaster from then would get creamed now, most of the time. Some strategies really are objectively better than others. But even back then, they knew not to sacrifice their queen early in the game.
Now, is there such a thing as 'human nature'? Does it mean something to say that a person is human as opposed to something else? There is a huge commonality among humans as to goals, and that has consequences - whole general classes of strategies can be objectively better than others given those common goals.
Admittedly, intelligent insects might have different strategies... but I'm a human. Indeed, I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that you're a human being instead of an insectoid alien. I'm totally fine settling for developing morals that 'only' apply to all of humanity.
It appears that my use of the phrase "in some sense" without explaining the sense is where you get this. The use of "in some sense" in this case means "partially". God is the ultimate standard of goodness ("God is Love"), but he is not only the ultimate standard of goodness. (It does not follow that "Love is God').
In what way is God 'love'? I love my wife and kids very much (agape and philia for my kids; agape, philia, and eros for my wife) - is that 'God'? In what sense is that a sentient being with intentions that created the universe?
Apart from God objective moral values do not exist.
You saw the reference I made to 'meaning' - well, 'value' is closely related. The purpose of an object is the same way - an object has a purpose to someone, in support of some goal. Value, too, is 'relative' in this manner - it's inherent in the very concept of value. Something is of value to someone, and for some purpose.
Consider a wooden chair. What value does it have? It depends on the purpose you have for it. It might be something to s
it on; it might be an heirloom; you might be using it to ward off a lion; you might be using it for kindling during a blizzard. It might be of only middling worth in the first case and literally worth your life in the last. Which purpose is the "real purpose" - and why? Values are always relative - relative to the purpose that someone has for something.
If I trade some gold away to keep a simple wooden chair, break the chair up and burn it to keep my child warm... have I erred in assessing the value of the gold, or the chair? (Or the child?) The guy who made the chair intended it for sitting on (well, actually, he made it to sell to people, probably expecting them to sit on it) but was I wrong that it would make a warm fire?
Even worse for the concept of 'objective value', different people will assign different values to the same things. A woodworker might trade you a chair for some of the corn you grew. Who came out better on the deal? You both did - you both have more value (by your personal estimates) than before. (Or else why did you trade at all?) Differential valuing is what makes economics possible. But think - if there's some kind of 'objective value', then at least one of you is wrong. Either the chair was worth 'objectively' more than the corn, in which case you cheated the carpenter - or else the corn was 'objectively' worth more than the chair, in which case the carpenter cheated you. (Or else they are 'objectively' equal, in which case you're both wrong about having more value than you did before.)
The Good only exists because it is part of God's essential nature. In some sense, God is identical to the ultimate standard for goodness (i.e. "God is Love".)
In some always unexplained sense. This seems to me to be a patent case of special pleading, and sounds a lot like, "Shut up, you're wrong, even if I
don't know quite why!"
If the "Good" is separated from God, any moral codes or laws become arbitrary rules without moral force or ultimate meaning. (i.e. "If there is no God, everything is permissible").
Consider chess. There are certain fundamental 'rules of the game' that define it. An 8x8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.
However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.
Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. They are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? From the combinations of two things - first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.
We have physical laws, and we have human desires. "Oughts" - strategic rules - morals - arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila - cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food. That's not an "arbitrary" at all.
And as to 'meaning' - meaning to whom? I think this essay makes a very cogent point:
To say that some event means something without at least some implicit understanding of who it means something to is to express an incomplete idea, no different than sentence fragments declaring that "Went to the bank" or "Exploded." Without first specifying a particular subject and/or object, the very idea of meaning is incoherent.
Yet too often people still try to think of meaning in a disconnected and abstract sense, ending up at bizarre and nonsensical conclusions. They ask questions like: What is the meaning of my life? What does it matter if I love my children when I and they and everyone that remembers us will one day not exist? But these are not simply deep questions without answers: they are incomplete questions, incoherent riddles missing key lines and clues. Whose life? Meaningful to whom? Matters to whom? Who are you talking about?
Once those clarifying questions are asked and answered, the seeming impossibility of the original question evaporates, its flaws exposed. We are then left with many more manageable questions: What is the meaning of my/your/their life to myself/my parents/my children? These different questions may have different answers: your parents may see you as a disappointment for becoming a fireman instead of a doctor, and yet your children see you as a hero.
Over the years it seems that most of the religious people I knew, Christian and Jewish with an occasional follower of Islam, Buddhism, or the Eternal Dharma; these people I say ended up well off and happy. The followers of "science" by contrast are mostly dead or wish they were. No kidding.
Writing in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and God's handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout.
But a careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.
You have some kind of fierce negative emotional reaction to a character in a story you do not believe.
The noted Christian apologist C.S. Lewis coined a term for this kind of argument: Bulverism. As he put it, "You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong... Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is 'wishful thinking.' You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself... If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic..."
"Morality is not imparted nor defined by the creator." Please explain.
This leads directly to the Euthyphro Problem. The
question that needs answering is, "Does the Good conform to God, or does
God conform to the Good?"
If God can define 'good' and 'evil' however It likes, then of course
there's no problem with God always being 'good' - 'good' is whatever
God does by definition. Ordering people to kill babies isn't immoral
if God does it (1
Samuel 15:3,
Joshua
10:40). But now we simply have the ultimate case of "might makes right".
There's no real difference between "Speed Limit 55" and "Thou shalt not kill"
except that presumably God enforces Its rules better. In the end, the people
who collaborated with the Nazis had the right idea, they just picked the
wrong bully to submit to.
This isn't terribly satisfying to me and many others, though apparently
some monotheists aren't bothered by it. So far as I can see, in this
case the only difference between a 'good' action and an 'evil' one is
God's arbitrary whim. Even if you assume that God can't change Its mind
now, there's no reason why It couldn't have decided that torturing
children was the greatest 'good'. God just didn't happen to have chosen
that way.
If one asserts that something besides God's arbitrary whims guided the
decision that torturing children is 'evil', then one has to ask, "What
might that something be, that even God cannot change?" If some things
just are 'good' and 'evil', regardless of God's assent, then
'good' and 'evil' exist apart from God, and are recognized,
not created, by God. God conforms to 'good', not
vice-versa.
Besides which, you can't claim that a creator has moral rights to a creation without a pre-existing moral foundation. I mean, on what
authority does the principle that 'the creator of something owns it' rest? How is that justified? We're back to the Euthyphro Problem. If it's because God says so, we don't have any real authority at all beyond raw power, and God's just the biggest bully around.
I mean, what if God is exactly like a shepherd... down to the shearing and slaughter, too? (I'm sure sheep feel comforted by the presence of the shepherd... until the knife comes down.) If a God is totally beyond anything we can understand, there's no way to disprove this. By definition, It's perfectly capable of fooling us perfectly. There's no way to tell.
The current infrastructure is up to providing for everyone at a subsistence level. It is not up to providing for everyone at the standard-of-living of a developed Western nation.
As you acknowledge, we use a lot more square feet than what we're standing on. What's not generally appreciated is that some use more than others - a lot more. Given existing tech, there is no way everyone could live the way people in the United States do. Heck, the way anyone reading this does.
I'm kinda sad you could read the essay and not come away with that take-home point. I thought I hammered it in the summary.
I even stated that was not what was beng proposed in the post you are responding to. This indicates to me that you have an agenda and are unwilling to listen to facts.
And I stated in the link (which you read, right?): The key implication is not "We can't pack everyone into Texas
and anyone who talks about doing that either doesn't know whereof they
speak or is being deliberately deceptive." (Though that's a valid
conclusion.) The key implication I'd hope you take away from this is that humans
use a lot more land than just the square feet they are standing on.
And as I said in this thread, "To change that, you need to either (greatly) improve the tech, or (drastically) change the living standard and policies. Or a combination of both."
How is proposing a "decades"-long process of converting to solar not 'greatly improving the tech and/or drastically changing the living standard and policies"?
In other words... are you sure you grasped my point?
Let's see your cost estimate for "Covering two percent of the unused portions of the Sahara with photovoltaics". (Ballpark estimates are fine, but... sources, please!)
Next, let's see the cost estimates for the distribution system needed to actually get the energy from the Sahara to "the world". In what form will it be transferred?
There's plenty of food, energy and fresh water to go round.
Not if everyone wants to live in the style to which Americans have become accustomed. As I note in the link, for that to happen (given current tech), "We're going to need three or four New Earths."
To change that, you need to either (greatly) improve the tech, or (drastically) change the living standard and policies. Or a combination of both.
As an illustrative statement about earth maximum human occupancy, I think it puts things in perspective a bit.
Actually, I make the point that it doesn't. "Occupancy" doesn't begin to cover it. To quote:
So even at a wildly optimistic guess, 98.3% of the space you take
up is just in support. Where you live is your least important use of space...
The key implication I'd hope you take away from this is that humans
use a lot more land than just the square feet they are standing on.
Think about how much space your house or apartment takes up, and your
car and/or bike, and the place where you work, and the parks where you
play, and the restaurants you go to, and the movies theaters you visit,
and so on and so on. People take up a heck of a lot of room.
Then think about how much water you use, and food you eat, and
various objects you use and buy and wear out. Think about the fact
that space and resources are needed to supply those.
No, I don't want people to feel guilty about living. But if
we're going to sensibly discuss overpopulation, we need to understand
how much land people really use, and reason from that.
It'd probably be best to take this to email (mine's easy to find) - I'm growing to really hate Slashdot's new comment system. In any case, as a quick summary I'd say that 'existence claims about entities' are very different from 'fundamental logical propositions' and that while evidence isn't always necessary (or possible) for the latter, it's always appropriate for the former.
for a strict definition of "reason" (or maybe I should say "logic" or "science"), yes.
I'd say that's a rather too strict definition of 'reason'. Compare this.
There are practical considerations for believing in a god vs believing in solipsism as well.
But those two are not the only alternatives. There's a range between "solipsism" and "God(s) exist(s)", and it includes at least "an external world exists that may or may not include God(s)."
I've already argued for the reasonableness - indeed, the necessity for - Ockham's Razor. Since I've already argued for the rejection of solipsism, the middle ground - "external world that must be investigated to see what its properties are" - sure seems the most reasonable to me.
Basically I'm arguing that it is arrogant when people say that others who believe in religion are stupid or that religion is "bad" because there is no evidence of a higher power, when they themselves have made a decision that is also not provable and for which there can be no evidence.
As I've noted, the decision that there's a 'higher power' is not forced by practicality, unlike basics like 'rejecting solipsism' and 'reason can work' and 'entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity'. As an assumption, it's superfluous. Given evidence, it would no longer be superfluous, but until then...
Neither side has any more basis for their claims than the other. Occam's Razor is a good rule of thumb, but it isn't based in reason either. It's just practical.
So, just so I'm clear... your claim is that being practical is unreasonable? Or that choosing based on practicality is the same as choosing for no reason at all?
We've just seen that some propositions are futile to deny. It's not that they couldn't be true. It's just that if they were true, they'd inevitably and automatically render everything else pointless.
So it's possible to have pragmatic grounds for selecting certain 'axioms', specific 'properly basic beleifs'. I can't prove fundamental notions like 'my reason has the potential to be effective' and 'my senses relay information correlated with an external reality' and 'the simplest explanation that covers the facts should be preferred'. And yet... it's not whimsy or prejudice that drives me to accept these ideas. It's the fact that not assuming them automatically means 'game over'.
And, interestingly, if you accept such 'non-defeatist' axioms, you get a coherent and demonstrably productive worldview. You get logic and science and medicine... and, yes, even love and all that. (Based on this, I'd probably best be categorized as a "Foundherentist" who leans to Foundationalism.)
...[So] there are a few limited things that I take 'on faith' not because of evidence but because assuming anything else is automatically futile. However, I try to keep those to the smallest possible set - because one of those assumptions is Ockham's Razor.
But I don't (or, at least, I'm not aware that I) take anything 'on faith' in the sense of 'despite' evidence. So if you want to convince me to take God 'on faith', you're going to need evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
I went and looked up the actual report on Gardasil's adverse reactions. Here's the straight dope:
Potential Autoimmune Disorder | Gardasil (11,813) | Placebo (9701)
Juvenile Arthritis | 1 | 0
Rheumatoid Arthritis | 2 | 0
Systemic lupus erythematosis | 0 | 1
Arthritis | 5 | 2
Reactive Arthritis | 1 | 0
So, at worst, the rate of such diseases was ~0.076% with Gardasil and ~0.031% without it. But these numbers are so low that the difference could easily be due to chance. There's no real evidence that Gardasil had anything to do with those cases. Saying otherwise is just scare tactics.
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/10/arguing-with-your-crazy-uncle-about.html
Is it really 'subjective' that 'moving your king out to the center of the board' is a bad strategy?
Chess theory has developed a lot. At the higher levels at least, modern chess has changed greatly since the 1800s. A grandmaster from then would get creamed now, most of the time. Some strategies really are objectively better than others. But even back then, they knew not to sacrifice their queen early in the game.
Now, is there such a thing as 'human nature'? Does it mean something to say that a person is human as opposed to something else? There is a huge commonality among humans as to goals, and that has consequences - whole general classes of strategies can be objectively better than others given those common goals.
Admittedly, intelligent insects might have different strategies... but I'm a human. Indeed, I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that you're a human being instead of an insectoid alien. I'm totally fine settling for developing morals that 'only' apply to all of humanity.
In what way is God 'love'? I love my wife and kids very much (agape and philia for my kids; agape, philia, and eros for my wife) - is that 'God'? In what sense is that a sentient being with intentions that created the universe?
You saw the reference I made to 'meaning' - well, 'value' is closely related. The purpose of an object is the same way - an object has a purpose to someone, in support of some goal. Value, too, is 'relative' in this manner - it's inherent in the very concept of value. Something is of value to someone, and for some purpose.
Consider a wooden chair. What value does it have? It depends on the purpose you have for it. It might be something to s it on; it might be an heirloom; you might be using it to ward off a lion; you might be using it for kindling during a blizzard. It might be of only middling worth in the first case and literally worth your life in the last. Which purpose is the "real purpose" - and why? Values are always relative - relative to the purpose that someone has for something.
If I trade some gold away to keep a simple wooden chair, break the chair up and burn it to keep my child warm... have I erred in assessing the value of the gold, or the chair? (Or the child?) The guy who made the chair intended it for sitting on (well, actually, he made it to sell to people, probably expecting them to sit on it) but was I wrong that it would make a warm fire?
Even worse for the concept of 'objective value', different people will assign different values to the same things. A woodworker might trade you a chair for some of the corn you grew. Who came out better on the deal? You both did - you both have more value (by your personal estimates) than before. (Or else why did you trade at all?) Differential valuing is what makes economics possible. But think - if there's some kind of 'objective value', then at least one of you is wrong. Either the chair was worth 'objectively' more than the corn, in which case you cheated the carpenter - or else the corn was 'objectively' worth more than the chair, in which case the carpenter cheated you. (Or else they are 'objectively' equal, in which case you're both wrong about having more value than you did before.)
In some always unexplained sense. This seems to me to be a patent case of special pleading, and sounds a lot like, "Shut up, you're wrong, even if I don't know quite why!"
Consider chess. There are certain fundamental 'rules of the game' that define it. An 8x8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.
However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.
Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. They are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? From the combinations of two things - first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.
We have physical laws, and we have human desires. "Oughts" - strategic rules - morals - arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila - cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food. That's not an "arbitrary" at all.
And as to 'meaning' - meaning to whom? I think this essay makes a very cogent point:
To say that some event means something without at least some implicit understanding of who it means something to is to express an incomplete idea, no different than sentence fragments declaring that "Went to the bank" or "Exploded." Without first specifying a particular subject and/or object, the very idea of meaning is incoherent.
Yet too often people still try to think of meaning in a disconnected and abstract sense, ending up at bizarre and nonsensical conclusions. They ask questions like: What is the meaning of my life? What does it matter if I love my children when I and they and everyone that remembers us will one day not exist? But these are not simply deep questions without answers: they are incomplete questions, incoherent riddles missing key lines and clues. Whose life? Meaningful to whom? Matters to whom? Who are you talking about?
Once those clarifying questions are asked and answered, the seeming impossibility of the original question evaporates, its flaws exposed. We are then left with many more manageable questions: What is the meaning of my/your/their life to myself/my parents/my children? These different questions may have different answers: your parents may see you as a disappointment for becoming a fireman instead of a doctor, and yet your children see you as a hero.
How true that is...
I've been unable to replicate your results.
Writing in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and God's handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout.
But a careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.
My own personal favorite example here.
The noted Christian apologist C.S. Lewis coined a term for this kind of argument: Bulverism. As he put it, "You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong... Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is 'wishful thinking.' You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself... If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic..."
There's a difference between 'irrational' - contrary to reason - and 'prerational' - something that feeds into reason.
I might not have a rational reason to prefer cake to ice cream... but if I do, then I'm not being irrational in choosing cake over ice cream.
If I prefer to live, and love, then acting in ways that promote that is not in any sense irrational. Indeed, it's entirely rational.
This leads directly to the Euthyphro Problem. The question that needs answering is, "Does the Good conform to God, or does God conform to the Good?"
If God can define 'good' and 'evil' however It likes, then of course there's no problem with God always being 'good' - 'good' is whatever God does by definition. Ordering people to kill babies isn't immoral if God does it (1 Samuel 15:3, Joshua 10:40). But now we simply have the ultimate case of "might makes right". There's no real difference between "Speed Limit 55" and "Thou shalt not kill" except that presumably God enforces Its rules better. In the end, the people who collaborated with the Nazis had the right idea, they just picked the wrong bully to submit to.
This isn't terribly satisfying to me and many others, though apparently some monotheists aren't bothered by it. So far as I can see, in this case the only difference between a 'good' action and an 'evil' one is God's arbitrary whim. Even if you assume that God can't change Its mind now, there's no reason why It couldn't have decided that torturing children was the greatest 'good'. God just didn't happen to have chosen that way.
If one asserts that something besides God's arbitrary whims guided the decision that torturing children is 'evil', then one has to ask, "What might that something be, that even God cannot change?" If some things just are 'good' and 'evil', regardless of God's assent, then 'good' and 'evil' exist apart from God, and are recognized, not created, by God. God conforms to 'good', not vice-versa.
Besides which, you can't claim that a creator has moral rights to a creation without a pre-existing moral foundation. I mean, on what authority does the principle that 'the creator of something owns it' rest? How is that justified? We're back to the Euthyphro Problem. If it's because God says so, we don't have any real authority at all beyond raw power, and God's just the biggest bully around.
Funny you should ask....
Once you accept that there are things that are fundamentally beyond human comprehension, it's like dividing by zero. All bets are off, you can 'prove' anything then.
I mean, what if God is exactly like a shepherd... down to the shearing and slaughter, too? (I'm sure sheep feel comforted by the presence of the shepherd... until the knife comes down.) If a God is totally beyond anything we can understand, there's no way to disprove this. By definition, It's perfectly capable of fooling us perfectly. There's no way to tell.
(A little more about time-travel in general here)
There's also Charlie Stross' "Halting State", but he chose to write it in "second person" style which is highly offputting.
The current infrastructure is up to providing for everyone at a subsistence level. It is not up to providing for everyone at the standard-of-living of a developed Western nation.
As you acknowledge, we use a lot more square feet than what we're standing on. What's not generally appreciated is that some use more than others - a lot more. Given existing tech, there is no way everyone could live the way people in the United States do. Heck, the way anyone reading this does.
I'm kinda sad you could read the essay and not come away with that take-home point. I thought I hammered it in the summary.
So you're admitting the current infrastructure isn't up to the task of providing for everyone we have now? Which was my point?
And I stated in the link (which you read, right?): The key implication is not "We can't pack everyone into Texas and anyone who talks about doing that either doesn't know whereof they speak or is being deliberately deceptive." (Though that's a valid conclusion.) The key implication I'd hope you take away from this is that humans use a lot more land than just the square feet they are standing on.
And as I said in this thread, "To change that, you need to either (greatly) improve the tech, or (drastically) change the living standard and policies. Or a combination of both."
How is proposing a "decades"-long process of converting to solar not 'greatly improving the tech and/or drastically changing the living standard and policies"?
In other words... are you sure you grasped my point?
Let's see your cost estimate for "Covering two percent of the unused portions of the Sahara with photovoltaics". (Ballpark estimates are fine, but... sources, please!)
Next, let's see the cost estimates for the distribution system needed to actually get the energy from the Sahara to "the world". In what form will it be transferred?
Not if everyone wants to live in the style to which Americans have become accustomed. As I note in the link, for that to happen (given current tech), "We're going to need three or four New Earths."
To change that, you need to either (greatly) improve the tech, or (drastically) change the living standard and policies. Or a combination of both.
Actually, I make the point that it doesn't. "Occupancy" doesn't begin to cover it. To quote:
I know you were kidding, but I got tired of people talking about 'unused land' back when the world population hit six billion, and I did the math to show how stupid an idea it is.
It'd probably be best to take this to email (mine's easy to find) - I'm growing to really hate Slashdot's new comment system. In any case, as a quick summary I'd say that 'existence claims about entities' are very different from 'fundamental logical propositions' and that while evidence isn't always necessary (or possible) for the latter, it's always appropriate for the former.
I'd say that's a rather too strict definition of 'reason'. Compare this.
But those two are not the only alternatives. There's a range between "solipsism" and "God(s) exist(s)", and it includes at least "an external world exists that may or may not include God(s)."
I've already argued for the reasonableness - indeed, the necessity for - Ockham's Razor. Since I've already argued for the rejection of solipsism, the middle ground - "external world that must be investigated to see what its properties are" - sure seems the most reasonable to me.
As I've noted, the decision that there's a 'higher power' is not forced by practicality, unlike basics like 'rejecting solipsism' and 'reason can work' and 'entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity'. As an assumption, it's superfluous. Given evidence, it would no longer be superfluous, but until then...
So, just so I'm clear... your claim is that being practical is unreasonable? Or that choosing based on practicality is the same as choosing for no reason at all?
We've just seen that some propositions are futile to deny. It's not that they couldn't be true. It's just that if they were true, they'd inevitably and automatically render everything else pointless.
So it's possible to have pragmatic grounds for selecting certain 'axioms', specific 'properly basic beleifs'. I can't prove fundamental notions like 'my reason has the potential to be effective' and 'my senses relay information correlated with an external reality' and 'the simplest explanation that covers the facts should be preferred'. And yet... it's not whimsy or prejudice that drives me to accept these ideas. It's the fact that not assuming them automatically means 'game over'.
And, interestingly, if you accept such 'non-defeatist' axioms, you get a coherent and demonstrably productive worldview. You get logic and science and medicine... and, yes, even love and all that. (Based on this, I'd probably best be categorized as a "Foundherentist" who leans to Foundationalism.)
But I don't (or, at least, I'm not aware that I) take anything 'on faith' in the sense of 'despite' evidence. So if you want to convince me to take God 'on faith', you're going to need evidence.
He posits a large number of these dwarf gas giants, and a spacefaring civilization that lives around them: http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/permanence