Intergalactic Summit

Now see, that's a sentiment I can get behind.

Aside from the God part. For any statement invoking God to be true, God must exist, and I'm fairly certain he does not.

No. One person works hard to narrow the road and plant trees alongit, the next person works hard to tear the trees out from the side of the road and build a stone sidewalk in their place to widen the road, the next person works hard to tear out the stone sidewalk and replace it with a narrower road with hedges and decorative cacti, and the next person works hard to tear out the hedges, widen the road, and plant trees. This isn't helpful. Society is about shared vision.

oh, that's a ridiculous metaphor. somebody OWNS that road and has final say on what gets done with it.

People who are as self centered as this seldom reach the point of 'getting around' to helping others, if they ever do at all. Helping others often requires sacrifices which an individualist would be loathe to do. "Me first, if there's something left over, then I'll do it. Maybe."

It is a mandate of our Faith to reclaim the lost and reinforce the Faith of our Brothers and Sisters. Through such trials God may show us grace, or favor.

Your outlook is backwards, Ms Mekhana.

Whos vision ? ... lets asume i leave the road, and walk out into the wilderness, i walk for time upon time until i enter lands never walked by neither you or i before, and there is anouther road and anouther road builder, with anouther vision that never heard off your vision, and that road builder is as certain upon theirs vision... you are one person, among many that follow a theory that makes up a religeon, that guides the Amar Empire, thats part in the Eden Galaxy... wich is a tiny speck in the universe, being humble before what other might think, and what might lay beyond the borders of something we dont yet understand or have ewen seen, nor the fact that what might be beyond the borders ewen heard of us, perhaps then we might realice that we are not the center of the universe

Well that would be some darn good acting. Makes him all the more interresting, huh ?
And that's assuming Minmatar girls are all atheists.
Or that Stitcher's general awesomeness is somewhat tied to his personnal set of beliefs.

Concerning the other, slightly less interresting subject :

Burden of proof
Either that, or astonish us heathens, unbelievers & miscreants with a valid argument showing that even if we can't prove the existence of your God, we need to postulate Its Existence.

Sciences don't need this postulate, thank you very much.

You failed the History test to show us such a postulate was needed in ethics.
On my right : an Army of Believers spoonfed to the marrow by your fairytale, willing to crush entire civilizations under their heels because "God Said It's Okay."
On my left : atheists fighting for common sense, decency and human dignity (looking at you Stitch, convo me whenever you want).

Maybe we need such a postulate to give the Whole Thingy Meaning and Sense ?
Well, that would be assuming the whole thingy needs meaning and sense. Can you prove that ?

Men have at their disposal an array of resources for generating greater knowledge of truth so that their lives may be ever more human. Among these is philosophy, which is directly concerned with asking the question of life's meaning and sketching an answer to it. Philosophy emerges, then, as one of noblest of human tasks. Born and nurtured when men first asked questions about the reason for things and their purpose. It is an innate property of human reason to ask why things are as they are.

Driven by the desire to discover the ultimate truth of existence, human beings seek to acquire those universal elements of knowledge which enable them to understand themselves better and to advance in their own self-realization.

Although times change and knowledge increases, it is possible to discern a core of philosophical insight within the history of thought as a whole. Consider certain fundamental moral norms which are shared by all. These are among the indications that, beyond different schools of thought, there exists a fundamental knowledge of good and evil which is a spiritual heritage of humanity.

Recent times have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to a dictatorship of relativism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth. On this understanding, everything is reduced to opinion; and there is a sense of being adrift. In short, the hope that philosophy might be able to provide definitive answers to these questions has dwindled.

On her part, the Church set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy. It sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life and an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and communicating the truth to those who do not yet know it. Sure of her competence as the bearer of God message, the Church reaffirms the need to reflect upon truth. This is why I have decided to address you, my venerable capsuleers, I do so in order to offer some reflections on the path which leads to true wisdom, so that those who love truth may take the sure path leading to it and so find rest from their labours and joy for their spirit.

There is a further reason why I write these reflections. The need for a foundation for personal and communal life becomes all the more pressing at a time when we are faced with the patent inadequacy of perspectives in which the ephemeral is affirmed as a value and the possibility of discovering the real meaning of life is cast into doubt. This is why many people stumble through life to the very edge of the abyss without knowing where they are going. At times, this happens because those whose vocation it is to give cultural expression to their thinking no longer look to truth, preferring quick success to the toil of patient enquiry into what makes life worth living. With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation. This is why I have felt both the need and the duty to address this theme, humanity may come to a clearer sense of the great resources with which it has been endowed and may commit itself with renewed courage to implement the Reclaiming of itself.

Cpt. Hakatain,

I'm somewhat disappointed that after the laurel you reached out with, you quickly fell back to your "predictable assault on Amarr".


Indeed doubt should be examined from all angles and expand the understanding of the subject it involves until it is complete as it can be. I did never mean to say that doubt has any other function in regard to our relationship with the divine: It urges us the examine that doubt and expand our understanding of the divine and our relationship with the divine until it is as complete as it can be.


You're taking quite the liberty here to pick a single dictionary that gives definitions of faith that suit your opinion, Cpt. Hakatain. I find that disappointing. While I already agreed that faith can have that meaning, I emphasized already that there are also other meanings to it, ones that you prefer to ignore out of your position. Let's have a look at the full range of meanings given by a few other dictionaries of the word "faith":

faith:
1) A feeling, conviction, or belief that something is true or real, without having evidence.
2) A religious belief system.
3) An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.
4) A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal.

Here the definitions 2, 3 and 4 offer something different meanings than the ones you want to exclusively ascribe as meaning to the term "faith".

and another one:

Definition of FAITH

1
a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty
b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

2
a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

3
a : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs

Again, definitions 1, 2a and maybe to some lesser degree also definition 3 differ from the use you do ascribe to the term "faith". That is because dictionary definitions by their very nature are descriptive, reporting actual usage within speakers of a language, and change with changing usage of the term. So while for you in the state the definitions you give might be appropriately reflecting usage of the word "faith", that by no means prescribes that it needs to be used like that everywhere and always and especially not in the Amarrian Empire.

That you use a descriptive definition and try to push it on others in a prescriptive way leads me to the conclusion that you are committed to give a persuasive definition - a form of definition which purports to describe the 'true' or 'commonly accepted' meaning of a term, while in reality stipulating an uncommon or altered use, usually to support an argument for some view. In argumentation such use of a stipulative definition is an example of the definist fallacy, though. Which is shown quite clearly by your following remark:


It makes transparent that the question whether there is the divine or not isn't an open question to you. You have, apparently, complete trust or confidence in the nonexistence of the divine and therefore, you are guilty of just what you accuse the Amarrian faithful of. Humans in the exercise of their ratio can come to quite different conclusions, though. That doesn't mean that one conclusion is by necessity irrational, but simply that human rationality is, indeed, bounded.

Data matrix:> Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.

Any reason, any logic needs to be based upon something... this knowledge is your viewpoint, from wich your reasoning will be built upon, and support any conclusions that will further your aproach to understandings... wich leads me to a circular argument, and points back to what i said earlier... -"We are defined by what we know, it sets the paradigm from who we whitin make asumptions, logical reasoning"

Arguing a case, i can choose to advocate something i prefer, and lay down a web of logical reasons to strengthen what i prefer to justify it, or i can choose to reason from a more neutral and universal way... Wich points to the core of what i think is a underlaying factor in this topic, to make something true or justify, that we lack proof off

Data matrix:> Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, such as the relationships between truth, belief, and theories of justification. Skepticism is the position which questions the possibility of completely justifying any truth. The regress argument, a fundamental problem in epistemology, occurs when, in order to completely prove any statement, its justification itself needs to be supported by another justification. This chain can do three possible options, all of which are unsatisfactory according to the Münchhausen Trilemma. One option is infinitism, where this chain of justification can go on forever. Another option is foundationalism, where the chain of justifications eventually relies on basic beliefs or axioms that are left unproven. The last option, such as in coherentism, is making the chain circular so that a statement is included in its own chain of justification.

... because each step leads further down into the shadows.