People Who Can’t Stop Eating: Are You Trying to Fill a Void Food Can’t Satisfy?

I left Catholicism around 30 years ago. Studied many other religions and philosophies in addition to my self-education in many different fields. Now I don’t do religion, of any kind or to any degree. I continue to study many things and nothing has convinced me that anything supernatural (for lack of a better word) exists. In fact, that is what I now know to be true.

I have had this conversation many times, a number of them on this site. I’ll try to sum up:

No, there is nothing other than what we can see (often with the aid of various kinds of technology). Reality is what it is, independent of our existence. And reality is all that there is. When we die, our life ends and nothing comes after.

I don’t call myself an atheist because that’s nowhere near the root of my thinking. It’s a result, a necessary conclusion based on the evidence, processed by my capacity to reason. I don’t have a name for my “system” – I can’t come up with a good one and none is necessary anyway because I’m the only “follower” of my way there will ever be.

I have no interest in changing anyone’s mind. I know what I know and that’s as far as it goes. I’m not going to try to convince anyone else that I’m right and I expect the same in return. I have no quarrel with other people thinking differently than I do, as long as they don’t try to force their system on me. I’m happy to discuss ideas in a thoughtful, mutual pursuit of knowledge; I don’t care if I change anyone’s mind and no one is going to change mine (on the deep points, the roots – the edges, the leaves, might be a different matter).

I have spent decades reaching this point. I have tried various religions (most notably Zen, Quakerism, and some of the different brands of Christianity, but there are more) and studied various fields (primarily philosophy (including religion), psychology, physics, and mathematics, but there are more). I have yet to find anything – any fact, reasoning, or claim – that contradicts my conclusions. I base my thinking on the observable facts of reality and reasoning from them. It’s not strictly scientific – because it can’t be when dealing with abstractions – but it’s as scientific as I can make it.

I accept nothing that doesn’t come from facts and reason. Any claims I encounter must be able to reduce themselves via logic to reality. If they can’t, then they’re arbitrary and not worth examining further, no more valid than Russel’s Teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Both of those are amusing, but that’s all they’re good for when it comes to answering the Big Questions™.

It’s almost impossible to offend me. I speak confidently and with no wishy-washy qualifiers. I don’t deal in vagueness or implications, I say outright exactly what I mean and nothing else. Some people think that arrogant. It’s not, it’s merely straightforward. If we were discussing things in person, that would be obvious. Interpreting what I say the wrong way is the responsibility of the listener. I’m almost infinitely patient with honest error: I abhor deliberate misrepresentation.

There. I think that covers everything needed pre-discussion. Now, if you’d like to continue, as I said I’m happy to do so.

All that stuff sounds like boilerplate, I know. But relax, get comfortable. Maybe have a Bourbon and a cigar. If you enjoy intellectual discussion anywhere near as much as I do, you’re gonna love this. 🙂

If there is nothing in the world that cannot be quantified or measured or explained, why is it that we have more questions now than ever?

I’m going to ask you to be more careful in reading what I write. That will avoid the logical fallacy called the “strawman argument,” where someone, intentionally or not, uses a misinterpretation of an argument as if it’s the actual argument, then argues based on that.

I didn’t say there’s nothing that can’t be quantified. For example, it’s physically impossible for us to see or measure anything beyond the boundary of the observable universe. The light, therefore all information, outside what we can observe will never reach us. We assume that there’s just more universe out there but it’s impossible to verify that. And just because everything we can observe can be measured doesn’t mean we’ve measured it all. There are many, many things we either don’t know is don’t understand yet, hence all the questions. I doubt we’ll ever run out of them.

You say anything that does manifest itself but defies mortal means to identify or reproduce are not worthy of consideration.

Again, that’s not what I said. I said that claims that cannot be reduced to, i.e. are explained in terms of, real things in reality are arbitrary. Russel’s Teapot is a thought experiment that says, “I claim that there’s a teapot out there floating amongst the asteroids. You can’t prove it doesn’t exist, therefore it does exist!” It demonstrates the logical fallacy called “proving a negative,” which goes just like the second sentence above. The burden of proof is always on the person making the positive claim, in this case that the teapot exists. Failure to prove that it doesn’t exist does not prove that it does. If it did, anyone could make any claim at all and it would have to be accepted as true without evidence. Positive claims, i.e. claims that something is true, that have no evidence to back them up can be dismissed out of hand. It’s those kind of claims that can be dismissed as not worthy of discussion. Until there’s evidence that the claim is true, there’s nothing to discuss.

What exactly are the Big Questions?

What is this place, this universe, this existence we find ourselves in? Why are we here? What’s the best way to live? What kind of idiot puts pineapple on pizza?

Things like that.

You have not gone so far as to deny you have a soul at present, but insist that you have a belief independent of us all and understandable only by you.

Again, not at all what I said.

I didn’t explicitly state that there’s no such thing as the soul, but I will now. And my belief is different than anyone I’ve ever met, but it’s not necessarily independent of anyone, whatever that means. And I would never claim that it’s only understandable by me. Anyone could learn it or develop it themselves – reality is there for anyone to examine. I have no interest in keeping anything to myself.

If there is no afterlife, of what use is a soul if it is as perishable as flesh and blood and has no permanence? When does it die, if it can at all die?

As I said above, there’s no such thing as the soul. If it doesn’t exists, “die” can’t apply to it.

Take, for instance, this video. It speaks of virtues, but who can lay any of the virtues on a table so we could teach them to our children that they might be able to identify them at sight?

That’s not how knowledge works. Virtues are abstractions, concepts that only exist in the mind. They can’t be seen. (That means there is some arrangement and/or relationship of neurons that “store” the concept. How that happens is an extraordinarily complex and only partly understood subject.)

What I’m saying is that it’s necessary to be able to take an abstraction and “break it down” into other concepts that underlie it, and break those down the same way, and continue to do that until you reach actual, physical existents in reality. For example:

Simple: “Red” is a concept. To explain “red,” the only thing you can do is point at something that’s red. That concept breaks down directly into something physical that exists in reality.

Complex: “Thirst” is another concept, but you can’t point at anything and say, “That’s thirst.” So you have to break it down, something like this: Thirst is a particular physical sensation of the body. The body requires certain consumable substances to stay alive. One of them is water. When your body is short of water, it generates a sensation that makes you want to drink water. We call that sensation “thirst.” (This is a simplification. A complete breakdown of “thirst” would be much longer, but this illustrates the general idea of tying abstractions to physical reality.)

By our own means in how we measure reality, how would you gauge each one if they are true at all? Yet, you would dismiss them because there is no science for their classification.

Virtues and vices aren’t true or false, they are beneficial or detrimental. They are abstractions that must be tied to the physical facts of human life. If that’s not done, then they’re sort of floating in the mind, not understood. Maybe someone lives a virtue because they were told to do so. That’s another logical fallacy called the “argument from authority.” Accepting something someone says just because they say it is a recipe for failure. If someone wants to truly understand a virtue, they have to know how it ties to physical reality, based on the fact of a living human. Otherwise, they’ll most likely often misapply the virtue because they don’t completely grasp why it matters. Leaving it “floating” like that also leaves a doubt lurking in the mind, a sense of incompleteness and misapprehension that dulls and depresses thought, making life less successful, often to the point of serious problems.

Is there such a thing as love, loyalty, honor, justice? What of hate, lust, betrayal and envy?

Yes. They are concepts, as I explained above. We use them to guide our lives.

How many things can you dismiss while they rock the world, because it seems to rest on them?

I’m not dismissing anything. The virtues do exist as concepts and they are important. All I’m talking about is how to understand them and verify their effects on our lives.

The virtues and vices that build or consume us will forever be unquantifiable by material measure or standard. Their volume, depth and weight are beyond the scales and units by which we gauge what we can touch and see, yet we recognize them in the light immediately, entering discourse enthusiastically with each other over which comparably is best, highest, or purest. In horror we slap a hand over our mouth or clap our hands over our heads as if to keep them from bursting when old evil is unmasked, when fermented treachery is discovered, when innocence is lost. At such times when the scales of reason are often abandoned.

They aren’t quantifiable – concepts in and of themselves, being abstractions in the mind, cannot be seen and examined. But they can be defined and described in terms of actual, physical facts, as I illustrated above. Why is gluttony bad? Sticking to only the physical, it leads to poor health, which is obviously detrimental to actual, physical human lives. That connects it to actual facts and not mystical “revelation.”

Also, reason must never be abandoned. It’s our only tool for understanding the reality we find ourselvse in. Without it, we would be helpless and dramatically short-lived.

Is all love the same? If there is no higher love, then we could compare the love of lesser things to that love we have of greater things. We could compare the love of a pet to the love of so many hamburgers to the point that we can reduce the love of a child to the love of so many possible slices of pizza.

Now you’re getting into very complex territory. It’s well known that the single term “love” has multiple definitions. In fact, that single word is the language marker for more than one concept. Linguistically, it’s actually multiple words that just happen to be spelled and pronounced the same (the formal term is “homonyms”). The different concepts that “love” refers to are not the same. Their effects are quite different and they apply differently to our lives. So “reduc[ing] the love of a child to the love of so many possible slices of pizza” is a serious mistake, not to mention nonsensical. It’s like equating apples and elephants.

What is a human life that makes it different from anything else that is temporary or fleeting?

Our ability to reason makes us vastly different from other living things. And living things in general are vastly different from non-living things. That’s why the term for the human species is homo sapiens, “wise man.” We can do things mentally that no other species can.

One of the facts of life is that it ends. There’s no way to get around thst (although a lot of people are working on it; my personal goal is to live to at least 300 because why not? If I fail, what happens? 🙂 )

What is a life without virtue?

Unsuccessful and miserable. But that doesn’t mean virtue isn’t derived from the facts of reality.

Even if I understood all things and knew what rested at the farthest end of space or discovered the depths of the ocean, would that knowledge surpass a single glimpse of the uncreated?

Yes, because there’s no such thing as “the uncreated.” You can’t glimpse it. (That is not to say that there is therefore a creator. There doesn’t exist anything outside of the reality we experience.)

However much one would deny the miraculous, that denial itself can never undo its effect.

If the miraculous existed, there might be an effect to undo. But it doesn’t, therefore there isn’t.

Facts are stubborn things, and simple ignorance of their nature does not remove them from existence.

True, facts are stubborn things. And the fact is that the supernatural things you’re speaking of don’t exist.

There is no greater sin than for one to deny the Holy Spirit present within them.

That might be true if there was such a thing as the “Holy Spirit.”

Here is where I apply the rule that the one claiming that something exists must prove that it does. Can you do that for these mystical things you’re talking about? You say they exist, so show me.

Maybe life has been everything you have expected it should be, and everything you hope to get out of such a short time here. Certainly there has never been anything in life that was not able to be overcome by will; there is never anything constructive that has failed to be rewarded by its fruit; that there has never been an injustice, as there is nothing that will ever answer for it; there is only fulfillment, since there is no reason to believe that there is such a thing as disappointment, as there is no reason to expect anything beyond what actually is.

I’m not claiming anything remotely like you describe. We’re not infallible, that’s our nature. We don’t and can’t know everything and success is never guaranteed. That’s why the Declaration of Independence says that we have a right to the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself.

If there is nothing beyond, and nothing beyond the flesh that has opposed us…

What do you mean, “opposed?” That’s another claim you have to back up with evidence. Our flesh doesn’t “oppose” us – our minds implement our free will but the physical components of our bodies have no will – they’re not capable of “opposing,” only a being with the ability to choose to do that can.

…there could only be contentment for all our travail in this world and nothing to regret, since there is no blame.

Here you’re adding things to my ideas that I never stated. These are not conclusions that align with reality. We aren’t guaranteed contentment and there are such things as blame and guilt. I don’t claim anything like what you state here.

We took anything that was within our power to take, and nothing was denied which was never within our power to reach.

Again, you’re putting words in my mouth. Of course we can’t get what’s not in our power to reach, and none of us takes, or could take, everything that’s within our power to take. You’re kind of going off the rails here.

Loss or gain belong to chaos, pleasure and pain are for the weak. What is enjoyment and suffering to science when they are found together? You don’t need science to know there are things that should never be. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away.

As regards what I wrote, this nears insanity. There’s nothing remotely in my “system” that claims anything resembling this. And the most important “rule” of my thinking is that ignoring reality is the worst possible thing you can do. I’m not trying to make anything go away, reality must be accepted exactly as it is, good, bad, and indifferent. That includes our own abilities to alter things, but “nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” – if we want to do anything, we have to adhere to reality, to the nature of things, otherwise we fail. You can’t build a house out of water. If you ignore the facts of reality, your life will be, at best, much less than it could be.

I ask you to try harder to understand what I write, exactly as it is. As I said before, I say exactly what I mean. You’ve misinterpreted my words and gone places they do not go. Those assumptions don’t help the discussion. Please stick to what I actually say, don’t assume I mean anything I haven’t stated. I’ll explain and clarify as needed, but I don’t imply things. I just say what I mean.

I took it to an extreme because insanity is real. Evil is real.

Yes, they are. But nothing in your extreme relates in any way to what I wrote. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish but it is not a discussion of the ideas as presented.

If evil were not real, how can you dismiss it as simply a choice based on what you think presents obvious (to you) consequences that someone will suffer for what is ‘bad’ or for what it ‘good’.

I’m afraid this question is nonsensical. I don’t dismiss evil, it is real. However, it’s not some kind of force that lurks in the atmosphere or something, striking people and making them do things. Actions are evil, not people or things. An action is evil if it causes harm to another human being. The extent of the harm determines the severity of the evil committed. Only humans can commit evil – everything else is just existence doing what it does, amorally.

Actions are the result of choices, so yes, it is “simply a choice.” We choose our actions and they have moral import, for good or evil.

The rest of this passage, “based on what you think presents obvious (to you) consequences that someone will suffer for what is ‘bad’ or for what it ‘good’,” simply makes no sense, not just in relation to what I said but logically on its own. Based on my attempt to understand it, I can say that I never said that anything is necessarily obvious – these things can be extremely complex. And I said nothing about “suffering,” although actions that have evil results do cause people to suffer.

Who is it that determines what these are?

We do, each of us individually according to our judgment.

It may very well be that you have never met a man that could qualify as wicked, therefore these concepts appear to you as incomprehensibly mad and nonsensical.

I have no idea how you came to this based on my words. If course I have known people who have done wicked things and these concepts are in no way mad or nonsensical. Then again, I don’t think we’re talking about the same concepts. Either that or we have radically different definitions of them, different enough that we’re not even close to agreeing even on what we’re discussing, let alone the truth of the ideas.

If that is the case, I envy you. What you think is insane, to say that there are circumstances some people look for in where there is suffering and enjoyment together.

I have no idea what this means. It makes no sense of any kind.

That there actually exist people who squeeze to hear the wail and delight in the confusion and suffering they cause.

Such people clearly exist but, again, I don’t see the relation between this statement and anything I said.

It may comfort you to believe these bad actors always face consequences of what they do, as if there was some magical formula for cause and effect, which is just as fantastic as any person uttering in all serious words, in all seriousness, like luck, karma, or fate.

At what point and in what manner can a rational person get to this from what I wrote? You’re going to have to start explaining how you reach these conclusions starting with my statements. Otherwise you’re merely ranting based on nothing (i.e. being completely arbitrary as I discussed previously) and there’s no reason for me to reply.

There are those who sow terror and reap fortunes; there are those who selflessly serve the dying, while relentlessly oppressed by the living.

Yes there are. What makes you think I deny that?

Miracles. They happen every day. They exist and can’t be explained, but your response is to ignore them?

Not at all. My response is to investigate and discover what actually happened, if I have a reason for doing so.

Even if I planted a seed in your front lawn and you woke up the next morning to a tree with fruit on it that wasn’t there the day before, you would still shake your head at it while you took a bite.

Again, this is nonsense. How do you base this on what I said? Nothing like a tree reaching full maturity overnight has ever happened and never will. It does nothing to advance the discussion to throw in ridiculous things like this.

Such are the miracles that defy normal patterns of growth or recovery. How does a leg or an organ regrow itself after bathing in the waters of Lourdes? How can a terminally ill person eat like a strongman after practically starving from a disease? And that’s just one single place, with ample evidence of the condition prior to the healing on many of these cases.

Missing limbs, for humans, anyway, don’t re-grow. That’s just a fact. Period. Whatever happened with this leg you’re talking about, it didn’t re-grow. I suspect that someone, not you because you obviously believe you’re telling the truth, is lying. People can make idiotic claims when they’re desperate to believe something that isn’t true. So, if this wasn’t a deliberate attempt to fool people, it was a delusion.

As for the eating, how is someone’s appetite changing a miracle? That’s a perfectly normal occurrance. If you’re going to bring up these examples, you’re going to have to not assume I know about them and provide details.

Prove that they are not miraculous.

This is precisely what I talked about in my last reply. You’re demanding that I prove a negative. My answer is, prove that the happy, invisible imp that lives on my shoulder doesn’t exist.

Your demand is no more valid than that. “Miracles,” by definition, violate the natural. Therefore you’re making a claim that goes against all of human knowledge and experience. It’s your responsibility to provide evidence that what you claim is true, not for me to prove it’s not.

If there is nothing on the other side then there is no Law. There are no rules that bind us together or brings us to account.

This is demonstrably not true. Using life as the basis, it is possible to develop, using facts and reason alone, a perfectly functional morality that serves to guide and improve human life. No god needed. That’s exactly what I, and others, have done.

The belief that the “Law” must come from somewhere beyond reality comes from a primitive time when kings and despots pronounced arbitrary laws by decree. People weren’t permitted to decide these things for themselves. It’s clear that this changed over time and became the belief that “God” made the rules, probably because there were times when there was temporarily no king. What happens to the rules in that case? If there’s no king and we’re not allowed to make and not capable of making our own rules because they come only from the king and can only come from him, well, then, they must come from some celestial king, right?

That’s no rational basis for either rules or belief.

I can eat an apple or an elephant and you couldn’t do anything about it.

True. So what? I wouldn’t want to do anything about it.

Not all men can find contentment in their work and after have a glass of good bourbon in one hand and a Nicaraguan in the other.

Also true. But again, so what? What does that mean in terms of what we’re discussing? You asked me to explain my views. I’m doing exactly that. But you’re not addressing them, you’re flying off on wild tangents that don’t actually intersect in any way with my explanations. I now wonder if you’re able to understand the straightforward language I’m using.

Such things are for simple and genuine men, but the world is full of complications that are born from acts that are at odds with nature,

That depends on what you think “at odds with nature” means. Nothing ever does, or can, happen that violates the so-called Laws of Physics™. That’s the only way anything could be at odds with nature. If you mean something other than that, you’ll have to explain what you mean. I’m not going to do as you are and ascribe meaning to your words that you haven’t provided.

and at odds with the spirit that was placed within them.

You have to explain what this “spirit” is and provide evidence that it exists. Then you have to explain what “placed within them” means – how it was done and, because it implies a “placer,” prove that that also exists and explain what exactly it is.

We are not above the animals because we are wise.

Not because we are wise, that’s an incorrect, literal interpretation of a metaphorical term. It’s because we have a capacity for reason that no other living thing comes anywhere close to. It’s why we’re humans and not something else. Also DNA. 🙂

We are above them because of what we were meant to resemble. A man without God, soon begins to resemble the beasts of the earth; as one dies, so dies the other.

There’s a lot to unpack in this bit, but it all comes down to “God.” There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anything exists outside of the physical reality we are a part of, let alone the specific being you call “God,” and every last argument that claims to prove that something like that does exist has been disproved beyond doubt, whether that be Pascal’s Wager or the Kalam Argument or any other. So, until you demonstrate with actual evidence, which doesn’t include claims from a book or your intuitions and feelings, nothing else needs comment.

If your next reply doesn’t show any connection to my statements, like the last two haven’t, I won’t be continuing. So far, you’re not discussing my ideas, you’re making unwarranted assumptions, failing to understand clear language, putting words in my mouth, and throwing out verbiage that doesn’t appear to be based on anything and is often mere nonsense. This makes actual discussion, in any known sense of the word, impossible.

I’ll get right on investigating your miracles and get back to you.

The rest is just more misrepresentation of my words, indications that you don’t understand the subjects you talk about (binaric?), and bloviating nonsense completely unrelated to what I said.

Last example, “What you call settled science as things ‘disproved beyond doubt’ is anything but.” I wasn’t talking about science at that point. I didn’t mention science on that point. Science isn’t germane to what I was talking about there. Science isn’t even implied in my statements about that point. The only way you could have thought science was at issue on that point is if you have no idea what science, philosophy, religion, logic, reason, debate, and facts are.

Thanks for the words. A discussion, it was not.