If you don't read diligently what someone posts, then you are not respectful if you reply.
Likewise if you attribute your own words and thoughts to the mouths of another.
It is not only what is said that counts, but also what is not said. So if I did not say something, don't make a presumption or assumption and say I did.

There is a generally accepted definition of what a belief is. Outside of that, you can make anything a belief if you so choose.

Likewise there is a generally accepted definition of preaching. Once again, you could make anything uttered as preaching, even "the sky is blue".

Things can get awfully complex and idiotic and pointless, if you step outside the general definitions.

So I will respond to sensible and respectful debate, but not rude or pointless.

Very few people change their point of view in a debate, so virtually useless to engage with them, unless something can be gained. So I say something, not to convince, but to sow seeds of thought, that might bear fruit somewhere at some time. And remember, it is not just those replying that are reading.

So I suggest that those responding to things I have written, that they look at what I specifically said, and what I did not, and the context. In most cases I have already answered your later questions ... you just need to read a bit more carefully, and not just my replies to you specifically, but perhaps in a reply to another ... no point repeating myself.

If I am wrong, if I am stupid or delusional, well it is pretty much there for all to see. Everyone is free to read with an open mind or a blinkered one. I shouldn't have to state the obvious, but I have done so a few times ... but no more.

Enjoy!

P.S. Here is an example. I never said a God or Gods don't exist. Except where I was very specific about one type of God not existing. All the logic and reason I specified is related to that God. That said, I have seen no evidence of any other God existing ... but I remain more open-minded about that.

Thank you for your response, I should not have stated Aristotle coined the term, that was sloppy. (Posts are restricted to 10k characters.)

I am envious of your education, if you were studying Aristotle in the first class (Physics 101) !

By the way, the Koine adverbial preposition ΜΕΤΆ is a workhorse, and has many meanings, depending on the case and placement in the sentence. Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, p.436

So, even though the probable meaning of the phraseology of Andronicus of Rhodes is clear, it could also imply any of the other meanings which meta imputes, like reversely, behind, in community with, etc.

But, your correction "physics describes HOW the nature works, metaphysics explains WHY" doesn't materially change my comment: "… stuff that is, by definition, unknowable. (No Popper falsifiability for a definitive demonstration.) This is what Emil du Bois-Reymond (1872), referred to as ignoramus et ignorabimus [“We do not know and will not know”], in Über die Grenzen des Naturekennens [“On the Limits of Our Understanding of Nature”]". In fact, it supports it. :)
Amen.
In the same vein, free speech allows the indefensible to be clearly demonstrated, without (physical) harm. Prohibiting words because they are offensive is short-sighted, if only because it removes a method for disproving illogical constructions. Surely it is better to defeat an ideologue before they physically harm others, if only by providing tools for people to escape ensorcellment in their sophistry.

Theoretically it could mean, but to my knowledge history of philosophy holds that Aristotle never used the term metaphysics, and I never remember it being used in the book. Then again, I suck at details.

"Things which are by definition unknowable" depend on your definition of knowledge, knowable and unknowable. These things are dependent on ontology (aka the main discipline of metaphysics) and epistemology; and I hardly believe that 19th century physician is going to give a definitive definition of it...

Well, I haven't read his book, I was borrowing his avvedutezza; what Horace called a clever verbal collocation (callida iunctura, Ars pœtica 46–7).

(It's not really relevant what he thought was unknowable, merely that he named such a concept.)

It wasn't proven until Kurt Gödel published his Incompleteness theorem (1931), in response to the mathematician David Hilbert's challenge (1930). Hilbert implored his fellows "We must not believe those who today, with philosophical bearing and deliberative tone, prophesy the fall of culture and accept the ignorabimus. For us there is no ignorabimus, … our slogan shall be wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen! [“We must know — we shall know!”].
First Gödel, in response to Hilbert, invented a way to turn linguistic symbols into (eponymous) numbers. (Brilliant.) Then he used this process to prove a formal system (like that Bertrand Russell and Richard North Whitehead created for set theory, in Principia Mathematica, earlier in the twentieth century) can have statements that are true but are cannot be proved in that system.
And then Alfred Tarski (1936, with little knowledge of Gödel) proved that, in any system of axioms and algorithms, the truth of a statement is undecided, without adding a second-order reference to it (a meta-language to help describe the linguistic substantives being analyzed). In other words, one cannot define arithmetic (or semantic) truth in arithmetic (or semantics).

So, whether Emil du Bois-Reymond was just guessing or not, the nineteenth century physician was correct. And his terminology is both apt and eloquent. (See the Vienna Circle was where Wittgenstein's work was processed with Russell's logicism into Logical Positivism, which is all about "hard" science and empiric verifiability.)

ignoramus et ignorabimus
[“We do not know and will not know”]

:)

Edit: [expletive] Gog link parsing, again.
Gödel Incompleteness
Also added linkie to logical postivism

You do not need to link me Logic, I still need to pass that exam. And I have very little respect for logicians, analytic philosophy in general and especially positivism.

My points are that Aristotle didn't named the term metaphysics; that if you are going to define something as unknowable you are making a metaphysical (and epistemological, since knowledge) statement; and lastly that natural and formal sciences are continually evolving that things which are considered unknowable now may not be such in the future.

I actually wanted to get back to a couple of games that are religious no one mentioned.

1.Breath Of Fire 2-I remember playing through this and getting the vibe they were depicting Christianity in general as a cult. I was thrilled to see some depth of plot in this however censored they were from Nintendo of America in getting it released. I even called Capcom USA to compliment them on this.

2.Grandia 2-Definitely some Catholic symbolism and the way one of the main "evil" characters comes to be in this world...well play the game. ;-)

Regarding the earlier comments on SaGa 2 is this ISIS of the Egyptian religion or ISIS the Weaver of the Universe who was later bastardized into Mother Mary in Christianity?
To some of Squid's points, in "Beautiful Mind" if a Schizophrenic refuses to take meds to be treated and an Herbal or some other way doesn't work they should devote themselves to Pyrrhic skepticism, even if it kills them. That is the only safe way then.

For another poster who admitted being very Anti-religious whom I can't remember if they said they were Atheist or Agnostic, just as long as you're the latter and not an Anti-Theist. Frankly Atheists who are Anti-Theists and just as Dogmatic as Ardent religious people piss me off, I speak of the ones who make Science as their new faith. Science at its purist is suppose to be open-minded and constantly evolving but money corrupts even it as Scientists are not priests/reverends/monks/etc. or teachers. Even these figures can usually be bought, not because they want to be but because they usually don't make enough to facilitate a healthy standard of living. Case in point, look at Stephen Hawking's living situation shortly after he won the Nobel prize.

I would add even when there isn't the money problem Kuhn lays out how Science itself can be lazy and not shift fast enough because it's not absolutely necessary. his argument is laid out in "The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions".

Oh and to the person who responded to Squid laying out why the Parliamentary system is better when having more eyes to look at the problem, I have a term for this. The term I coin for this is "The Efficiency Of Redundancy", this is especially a godsend(no pun intended) in food distribution and other like logistics where perishables are involved.

It's true that in the future we might uncover knowledge of what we now regard as impossible. (Gödel's theorem doesn't preclude the determination of truth, it just means there is algorithmic way — that we know of — to do it; one has to iterate through the calculations manually.)

But, I think it isn't controversial to say, there are things that we know we will never know, like whether there is any existence beyond this three dimensions of space plus time that we experience through our symbolic comprehension.

But, as noted, there is no way to prove it and therefore the empiricist philosophers dismiss all such conjecture as idle and extraneous to science. :)

PS You may not be interested in the link, but I will be if and when I re-read these notes at a later time. Also others might be interested in the links. (It's not all about you. ;-)
Good term, I like it.

Of course everything is about me (but not solely about me). I am an egoist after all. And as I already said, I have very low opinion of analytic philosopher, and that includes empiricism.

Oh and it isn't nothing anything controversial to say that there are things which we will never know, I only find it stupid. Not least because you first need to define knowledge itself.

Ah, Grandia 2 was my favorite game of those that I played last year, but wouldn't you say it's very Anti-Theistic game, and thus it should bother you?

:D
I think Immanuel Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction was a useful methodology. (Kant, 1781, Kritik der reinen Vernunft ["The Critique of Pure Reason"].)

Empiricism is just a sanity check on the unbounded "pure" logical nonsense that was post-Kantian idealism, which is both not even wrong, as Pauli said, and as impracticle as the subjective idealism of Bishop Berkeley. If there is no shared reality between us, we have nothing left to discuss!

You are speaking about why empiricism is great, and then you say that (empiricist) Berkeley is impractical? Would you make up your mind already:D I would not dis German idealism as nonsense, most who do either don't understand it; or have political reasons for that (such as Marx and anti-Marxists/liberals).

And I am sorry, but ain't the idea of "shared reality between us" metaphysical assumption?

I was ridiculing Bishop Berkeley's concept (there are a lot of Berkeleys, perhaps you mean a different one?) that only mental processes are real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_idealism

Just because Marx disliked it doesn't mean it was right, either — a broken clock is right twice a day! ;-)

I can't claim to be an expert on post-Kantian Idealism, though. What do you like about it?
[Trick] Question: Is mathematics invented or discovered?

No, that's the one. Bishop Berkeley is empiricist after all.

Well, that broken clock was right at least 60 % of the time. And I am more interested in way somebody dislikes than if they dislike it or not. For Marx, I belive it was political reasons.
I don't like it, I just can't deny it's influnce (Germany is state based on Hegel's ideas, after all. And they are very successful by neo-liberal standards, if we are going to speak about empirical evidence), and I am also not expert on it.
Oh, and BTW, teaching Hegel's critique of religion is banned on local university of theology, while Marx's critique of religion is allowed. Make of that what you will.
Don't know. Husserl would say discovered.

Politics and science don't mix.
It is an ancient philosophical argument with erudite thinkers arguing from each side. They are all wrong, and all correct!

To wit: Dr Paul Ernest, 1996, with a perlucid perspicacity, demonstrated that virtual reality is shared.* Paul Ernest, New Angles on Old Rules.
It was Immanuel Kant who most eloquently believed the virtual was real: transcendental idealism was the fundamental reality that humanity could perceive. (He further used the analytic-synthetic dichotomy to differentiate statements of fact, as prefaced in his first treatise (1781), Critique of Pure Reason: “a critique … of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience”.)

Kant postulated that, either a proposition is true because the predicate affirms the subject of its proposition (analytic), or because it is experimentally verifiable (synthetic). He further differentiated rational inference (a priori thought), i.e., that which is generated in the mind beforehand, as distinct from that which is demonstrable (a posteriori). Analytic propositions are true by virtue of their meaning: By definition, their predicates are contained within their subjects, a form of tautology. Synthetic propositions are true because their meanings correlate empirically, thereby adding something to a concept.

The distinction is important because, as Kant noted, mathematics produces metaphysical truths, or “sentences both informative and known, without recourse to experience”. Jacques Derrida (1967)

In 1966, Derrida famously criticized Edmund Husserl for his Constructivist epistemology of language, because binary opposites are inherently wedded to their context.

Similarly, Platonists criticized mathematical Fallibilists for their relativism, arguing that categorized mathematics as too useful to be arbitrary (the straw man erroneously regarded as the binary opposite of necessary), therefore mathematics cannot be absolute, universal and objective, but merely a social construct that is incomplete, corrigible and continuously changing.

But then Richard Rorty demonstrated that contingency is the true binary opposite of necessity.**

The truth value of the proposition is contingent upon the truth values of the sentences which comprise it (that which is arbitrary is merely whimsical).

Using the Hegelian dialectic to produce a synthesis from this thesis and its antithesis, we may conclude that mathematics is contingent both to its history of external forces — i.e., based on the deliberate choices and efforts made by mathematicians and contemporaneous political forces — and necessary, since it was used for empirical study and real-world applications.

But it was Hersh who postulated that mathematics is neither real nor imaginary, but exists socially, amongst those who share the perception (like a MMORPG that gamers inhabit, this forum for our thoughts and the interwebs altogether). linkie: Reuben Hersh (1997), What Kind of Thing is a Number?, Edge 5.

edit: footnotes
________
* Mlodinow-Hawking model-dependent realism refined Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism and Kuhn’s paradigmatic incommensurability, postulating that we know only an approximation of reality provided by the intermediary of the models in use.
** Richard Rorty, Philosophy & the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton, NJ: PUP, 1979), p.170.