The world is insane

Obviously the fact that something has value to someone does not make that something real. Think about all the mindless christians who value their non-existent god over all other things. Think about people who value the state over their lives, and die for such nonsense in meaningless wars.

There have always been common mediums of exchange. This however has no bearing on the validity of the claim that 'the dollar', or any other fiat currency, actually exists. My hypothesis, as with all things listed in the original post, is that these are fictional entities and the only 'evidence' anyone is going to be able to provide for their existence is that other people also believe they exist.

Also to address the argument in a couple of posts that "love, value, etc doesn't exist" -- yeah those 'things' don't exist. They should not be nouns, and in so far as they are, they tend to be used in a kind of word-play fiction. It is only correct to use these terms in the context of their derivation from real concepts. (Concepts that map directly to real things.)

Really these words do not describe real things, they are attributes, not the entities themselves. Love isn't a thing; It is an emotion, a mental state. Value is not a thing, it is a class of subjectively assigned attribute to a thing. If one talks about "value in general", one is referring to the class of attribute. -- The approximate mental state one can expect if an experiment measuring 'value' is repeated enough times.

This really gets into ontology -- a field many philosophers have really failed to arrive at good arguments in. I have what I believe is a strong argument to make the case against the incorrect use of derivative concepts, but I will post it later.

 

To clarify your statement, you agree it doesn't exist then you claim 'it's all around you.' Well the thing is, it can't be all around me if it doesn't exist.

What *IS* all around me are crazy people who believe in fictional entities and are quite willing to do violence against me in the name of said fictional entities. I would rather not live in a world full of crazy people. I think we would agree about this.

Firstly, 'the dollar' is a fictional counterfeit. It's not real money, its fake, fictional money. No greater validity than runescape GP, except that it is 'issued' by people with guns.

Secondly, it is not 'a dollar' you hold, but a piece of paper, like any other piece of paper. The piece of paper used to be a receipt for something physical, gold and silver typically. Now it's a receipt for another piece of paper. The currency is fictional. Everyone is just swapping bits of paper at the point of a gun. So no, it is not a valid or morally tolerable substitute, especially considering that it's issuance was instituted via fraud.

This is really just a straw-man argument. We both have the same criteria for valid real evidence, except that I do not accept as evidence "the fact that other people also believe it." If this fact is documented on pieces of paper -- well so what? Does that improve it's validity?


I already gave you the mailbox example. I'll give you another example. The server from which the electric signals constituting the text you are now reading emanate, exists. This is my claim. My evidence is that the server has an IP, one can connect to that IP, and one can download page content from that IP given a standard HTTP request. This is all perfectly demonstrable, experimentally verifiable, and constitutes sound and valid evidence. If one doubts the carrying of a signal to another destination where the server is housed, one can actually go to said destination and see their same message as it arrives at the server, and see the server itself.

Ramblings...
Sanity:

• The condition of being sane; Reasonable and rational behaviour; ability to get what you want without doing things that will ultimately get you more of what you don’t want
• sane - reasonable: marked by sound judgment; "sane nuclear policy"
• normal or sound powers of mind

Well so what? Feel free to assign nil value to your life and your offspring, such that 'none of it matters', but don't try to spread your nihilism to others.

People who erroneously believe it exists steal money and support chattel slavery in its name. You don't think it's worth bringing such a major oversight into the minds of it's followers?

 

Taxation is theft, and income taxation is chattel slavery.

Public healthcare is funded through violence and enforced via violence.

 

Skip back to page 1,2 where this was already debated. If you have any further arguments to bring which weren't already covered, please bring them now.

This is a misnomer. Liberty is the absence of the initiation of force. By definition liberty cannot be brought at the point of a gun.

No, and that would have no relevance to the claims.

 

Irrelevant. It doesn't matter what my opinion may or may not be. If you claim god exists, then you must provide evidence to substantiate your claim. If not, then it is just opinion, and does not belong in a rational discourse.

What are the facts? Show me the evidence.

 

Have you read any of this thread?

I can prove that a rational 'god' doesn't exist, via the omnipotence contradiction, and if 'god' isn't rational then you cannot reason about him in a rational debate.

Your claim that this is merely opinion is unsubstantiated. I offer, in my defense, the entire body of the arguments presented in this thread and its sister thread "God does not exist."

If you would like to debate any of these arguments, or actually present some evidence to substantiate your claim, then go right ahead.

 

This is your argument? Ok what is your evidence that there 'must be a starting point' to everything?