What Value Do Atheists Find In Celebrating Christmas?

[Honorentheos]

I skipped to the end after the first page and scanned the posts above but didn't see this referenced.

I wish to point out that the very premise of this thread strengthens the contention that the US was never a christian nation if one places an abnormal emphasis on the religious importance of the holiday.

Consider this - US and Christmas

So Christmas was finally accepted at that time?

No. Anti-Christmas sentiment flared up again around the time of the American Revolution. Colonial New Englanders began to associate Christmas with royal officialdom, and refused to mark it as a holiday. Even after the U.S. Constitution came into effect, the Senate assembled on Christmas Day in 1797, as did the House in 1802. It was only in the following decades that disdain for the holiday slowly ebbed away. Clement Clarke Moore's poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" — aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" — was published in New York in 1823 to enormous success. In 1836, Alabama became the first state to declare Christmas a public holiday, and other states soon followed suit. But New England remained defiantly Scrooge-like; as late as 1850, schools and markets remained open on Christmas Day. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow finally noted a "transition state about Christmas" in New England in 1856. "The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful, hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so," he wrote. Christmas Day was formally declared a federal holiday by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870.

You might find this article interesting as well - All Hail to Christmas: Mormon Pioneer Holiday Celebrations

The LDS faith appears to have developed an emergent holiday celebration that combined the traditions of it's many immigrant converts. At it's heart, Christmas is a cultural event. Religious meaning has been added, subtracted or modified consistently over time. Since atheists are every bit a part of the cultural, they are part of the ever-ongoing dialog regarding what the holiday means.

For myself, I tend to side with those who would distance the commercialism from the season. That's really more of a reflection of my deeply seated concern about consumerism in general. As a reason to indulge, I think it's fine as part of the holiday. As an extension of year-round excess...hmmm....

[mfbukowski]

I skipped to the end after the first page....

Well thanks for the interesting articles, but that post is a derail and has nothing to do with the thread.

I would be interested in your comments on what we are actually discussing if you are so inclined.

[Honorentheos]

It was, MFB. The point being - Christmas isn't a religious holiday per se, but a cultural one. Atheists find as much value in cultural celebration as everyone else. People are people, after all. In fact, I'd suspect the next major evolution we see in Christmas celebration will be a greater exodus of Christians away from the co-opted pagan holiday and towards something more akin to the puritan view. A little googling on the interweb shows there's an undercurrent in that direction already.

[mfbukowski]

It was, MFB. The point being - Christmas isn't a religious holiday per se, but a cultural one. Atheists find as much value in cultural celebration as everyone else. People are people, after all. In fact, I'd suspect the next major evolution we see in Christmas celebration will be a greater exodus of Christians away from the co-opted pagan holiday and towards something more akin to the puritan view. A little googling on the interweb shows there's an undercurrent in that direction already.

The thread is about the VALUE of Christmas- the emotional appeal, the magic, or whatever it is that atheists "get" out of celebrating Christmas as opposed say, to the Fourth of July, which is also a "cultural holiday".

The thread is NOT about the commercialization of Christmas.

If you feel there is no difference in the feel of Christmas and the 4th of July, then fine, you don't have much to say about it. Yes, I understand patriotism too, but that is another topic as well.

[Honorentheos]

You disagree that most celebration of Christmas, even by christians, is culture-based? And if atheists are as bound by cultural to the tradition as you they can't find similar value in the traditional celebration of it without having to accept a literal birth of Jesus-as-God?

[Honorentheos]

Christmas is a creation of culture. I find value in it for reasons similar to what sethbag said, but also because people have an innate need to strengthen social ties and feel like they belong to a group. Christmas makes some people feel awash in connectedness, while others become even more depressed by a heightened sense of their disconnectedness. As an agnostic/atheist I take advantage of all the connectedness I can derive from the season.

OR - are you suggesting it might just have something objectively outside of your experience of the holiday that is out of the person's cultural or psychological state-of-being? Is there something that is "Christmas" with a capital "C" that people are sensing and responding to that means an atheist is being subjugated by religion whether they know it or not?

[mfbukowski]

You disagree that most celebration of Christmas, even by christians, is culture-based? And if atheists are as bound by cultural to the tradition as you they can't find similar value in the traditional celebration of it without having to accept a literal birth of Jesus-as-God?

No. Please read the thread.

[Honorentheos]

Read the thread. My post above about connectivity still stands. You are inserting religious significance derived from an immediate cultural context and assuming some universal facts about it that do not stand under scrutiny.

Fact still is - Christmas is a cultural event with cultural significance. If we look at people universally, we see they have psychological needs including the need to belong. Holidays and festivals are part of this, and fulfill certain needs common to human beings generally.

But when you ask about doing so based on feelings, you are misconstruing the "form" of this need with the "style" of your particular religious view of choice.

It's perfectly rational to participate in the Holiday Season/Christmas in the US regardless of one's religious preference. It's why judaism elevated hanukkah to it's current practise and kwanzaa was invented. It's equally rational to celebrate it in it's secular form.

But this has no bearing on the irrationality of denying, say, Joseph Smith's involvement with other women than his wife when it comes to considering the truth claims of Mormonism simply because of one's subjective experience when praying about the book of mormon. Well, I need to qualify that. A person who refuses to examine LDS historical truth claims on the grounds of a subjective experience is likely also responding to similar psychological needs such as the need to belong, desire for community, etc. So in that narrow definition I concur there is a similarity.

[mfbukowski]

Read the thread. My post above about connectivity still stands. You are inserting religious significance derived from an immediate cultural context and assuming some universal facts about it that do not stand under scrutiny.

CFR

[Honorentheos]

Slightly out of order, but in answer to your CRF that I claim you are "inserting religious significance derived from an immediate cultural context and assuming some universal facts about it that do not stand under scrutiny":

Why do you permit Christmas "good feelings" to enhance your life when the truth claims about Christmas are no better founded scientifically than other truth claims of the LDS church?

…

Let me make it more direct. If atheists accept celebrating Christmas for cultural and pragmatic reasons, why not accept religion for the same reasons? (my emphasis added)

In fact I think most TBM's like me are little concerned about the alleged "truth claims" at all and find their veracity irrelevant. (again, my emphasis)

Those who are former Mormons on the other hand, I think, concentrate almost exclusively on the "data" in favor or against the church as they see it. I think the difference between the two groups almost becomes an issue of personality types more than anything else- hence the intransigence on both sides.

And what are the implications of this if God is human? Are human traditions now Godly traditions?

Can you prove that God is human?

Of course not, but that is the LDS view after all. Believing that makes all this fall into place imo.

I am arguing that the way they ACT- not believe- is consistent with the what we believe. We believe it is rational to act in accordance with our feelings and though they protest that such things are "irrational", they do the same thing.

Of course we do not believe it is irrational, but that in fact it is the only way we can know certain things. They act on their feelings, and find that those feelings enhance their lives just as we do. But I think they hate to acknowledge that.

Again, based on form you are correct that there is overlap. It is incredibly rational to act on one's psychological needs. This has, though, no bearing on truth claims.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Honorentheos

[volgadon]

Why Kwanzaa seems odd to me- manufactured even- is that most any other holiday I can think of commemorates some event. Bank holidays are the only exception that I can think of and they spring from entirely utalitarian considerations.

[mfbukowski]

Again, based on form you are correct that there is overlap. It is incredibly rational to act on one's psychological needs. This has, though, no bearing on truth claims.

On what theory of truth? Religion makes no provable truth claims or else we would call it "science". People of faith KNOW they are acting on faith because of the meaning religion gives to their lives, just as atheists find meaning in their lives, presumably, through other channels.

If you want to call that meaning one's "psychological needs", be my guest.

[mfbukowski]

You are inserting religious significance derived from an immediate cultural context and assuming some universal facts about it that do not stand under scrutiny.

In none of the examples cited did I assume any "universal facts" at all.

That would be difficult considering I do not believe "universal facts" exist, except in the sense of certain maxims which always work in a civilized culture, like the golden rule.

[Honorentheos]

In none of the examples cited did I assume any "universal facts" at all.

That would be difficult considering I do not believe "universal facts" exist, except in the sense of certain maxims which always work in a civilized culture, like the golden rule.

I see I must have missed the implied "generally speaking but not specifically applicable to any actual person" intended in the statements below then?

I am arguing that the way they ACT- not believe- is consistent with the what we believe. We believe it is rational to act in accordance with our feelings and though they protest that such things are "irrational", they do the same thing.

Of course we do not believe it is irrational, but that in fact it is the only way we can know certain things. They act on their feelings, and find that those feelings enhance their lives just as we do. But I think they hate to acknowledge that.

[mfbukowski]

I see I must have missed the implied "generally speaking but not specifically applicable to any actual person" intended in the statements below then?

As usual, I have no clue what you are saying anymore. This is the way these threads always end, you and me miscommunicating.

[mfbukowski]

OK- well I love these new moderation tools that we have when we open a thread- I had closed this thread because I thought there would be no value in continuing- but Honorentheos made some interesting comments in PM I would like to discuss to clarify perhaps for others.

In PM, Honorentheos said the following:

My follow-up question was going to be about "universals". It still seemed you were making an argument about human behavior generally. Granted, the subsets of Mormon/Atheist were called out specifically. But still, it seemed the intent of your points in the thread were as follows -

P1 -people act on their feelings.

P2 - Christmas and the feelings it evokes are rooted in religion

P3 - Atheists celebrate Christmas

Conclusion - Celebrating Christmas shows that atheists act on feelings even in instances when the cause of those feelings is rooted in religion.

Follow-Up Question - If atheists act on feelings rooted in religion in one context, why not in others?

......................................................................

My points in the thread were in response to these, but in particular to the idea that acting in a way to meet one's psychological needs has any more meaning than - "all other things being equal a person will tend to act in a way that meets their psychological needs."

In the past, your point actually explains why so many atheists hid their atheism. And why so many Mormons who have doubts chose to become so-called NOM's. Given the choice of ostracism and suffering, most people will choose hypocrisy over isolation. It's a very compelling psychological need.

But in this day and age, atheists have the ability to meet others who think as they do and form connections that compensate for the lost community of believers. So, atheists aren't compelled to act in the same way towards faith as they once might have done.

My broader contention, though, is that feelings really have nothing to do with investigating truth. Yes, we've been down this road many times. No, we've never managed to see eye-to-eye until some magic moment at the end where we discard the previous page-after-page of discussion to settle on some broad axiom for which I can't help but think we usually assign different meaning. I guess I keep coming back because I think it's an important item to discuss.

So, in this sense I think we taken the broad psychological and universal truth - "people will act to fulfill their psychological needs" and we've misapplied it.

If you wish to discuss in here in private, I think that's fine. Or if you wish to reopen the thread, that's ok with me as well. I respect your choice. Even if you choose to drop the subject.

I will now take this line by line, repeating and editing the post. I wanted to get the context of the message in intact, since there was no public post originally, and now I will respond.

My follow-up question was going to be about "universals". It still seemed you were making an argument about human behavior generally. Granted, the subsets of Mormon/Atheist were called out specifically. But still, it seemed the intent of your points in the thread were as follows -

P1 -people act on their feelings.

P2 - Christmas and the feelings it evokes are rooted in religion

The fact that Christmas is "rooted" in religion actually was irrelevant to the post- it would equally have applied to the Fourth of July in a discussion on Patriotism and why people join the military because they think on some emotional basis that they "should". Religion has nothing to do with the point- the point is that we make important decisions based on emotions and feelings all the time- atheists do and religious people do, REGARDLESS of what can in any reasonable way be called "evidence" in a scientific objective sense.

So the decision to join the church can in many ways be compared to a decision to join the military (though I think there are differences in degree in the level of feelings- at least in my personal case- but the principle is still the same) After 9-11, patriotic feelings ran high in this country, and I bet many felt inspired to join the military. All I am saying is that is is a similar decision process.

The problem is that I think many if not all atheists would see such a decision as "irrational" because of a lack of objective "evidence" for making such a decision- my point is that everyone does this all the time, and such a decision based on feelings is perfectly "rational".

My broader contention, though, is that feelings really have nothing to do with investigating truth. Yes, we've been down this road many times. No, we've never managed to see eye-to-eye until some magic moment at the end where we discard the previous page-after-page of discussion to settle on some broad axiom for which I can't help but think we usually assign different meaning. I guess I keep coming back because I think it's an important item to discuss.

I don't think we have ever settled on some "broad axiom"

And yes, feeling DO have something to do with what we should or should not do in a subjective sense, and expressions about those subjective decisions can be regarded as "rationally justified". I think it is clear that the statement "I should join the military" can be regarded as "rationally justified" and, if you want to use the word "true" fine.

And if you don't like that use of the word "truth" I suggest you once again see the video I always post, which I will again post at the end of this post.

So, in this sense I think we taken the broad psychological and universal truth - "people will act to fulfill their psychological needs" and we've misapplied it.

I don't see at all why you say this; I feel that once again you do not understand what I mean by "justification" and how that is a superior way to deal with these issues than using the confusing and highly ambiguous and ontologically question begging word "truth".

I will now for the zillionth time post this video, which I invite you, Honorentheos, to listen to each word at least 3 times. Because we cannot know anything beyond our experience, we are stuck in an epistemolgical trap where in some matters feelings are the only "evidence" we can have for beliefs, and in all cases, even in the most scientific of endeavors, you cannot distinguish between "appearances" (including interpretations and feelings involved in making those interpretations) and "reality" to the point that appearance and interpretation of data IS "reality"

There can be no "correspondence" of sentences with "reality" if there is no way to know what "reality" is, beyond our interpretation of the appearances.

I am sincerely hoping you at least understand my position this time- I don't expect you to accept it, but just to understand it. I really hope you do not come back with some variation of "but Mormons don't believe that" or something along questioning the "truth claims" of Mormonism having to do with a correspondence theory of truth, because that would, again, miss the point. You are obviously a very smart guy and I would like to discuss this further with you but it seems we always get stuck here, so I hope at last we can finally speak about these issues without speaking past each other.

Edited December 31, 2011 by mfbukowski

[Honorentheos]

Hi mfb,

I wish you a happy new year, and many valuable discussions in 2012.

The fact that Christmas is "rooted" in religion actually was irrelevant to the post- it would equally have applied to the Fourth of July in a discussion on Patriotism and why people join the military because they think on some emotional basis that they "should". Religion has nothing to do with the point- the point is that we make important decisions based on emotions and feelings all the time- atheists do and religious people do, REGARDLESS of what can in any reasonable way be called "evidence" in a scientific objective sense.

I not only agree with the above, but feel the general sentiment is critical to understanding how the mind works. There are a trio of books on the subject, pop science thus accessible, that I think speak to to this issue very well. They cover both the pros as well as the cons of what you describe, and more particularly on the appropriate realms of decision making where non-conscious as well as executive brain functions are best suited to making good decisions.

There are: The Hidden Brain, by Shankar Vedantam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2D6Slt8bOQ

How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer

(not specifically about the book, but relevant info from it with Jonah Lehrer) -

[Honorentheos]

Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman

[Honorentheos]

Hello again, mfb

I'm sure the videos I posted are a bit much to get through and it's highly unlikely anyone would take the time who didn't already have an interest in the subject material. But it being New Years Eve I was short on time.

Let's set aside the idea of justified beliefs or truth for the moment and consider the first points you made in your response above.

"the point is that we make important decisions based on emotions and feelings all the time- atheists do and religious people do, REGARDLESS of what can in any reasonable way be called "evidence" in a scientific objective sense.

"So the decision to join the church can in many ways be compared to a decision to join the military (though I think there are differences in degree in the level of feelings- at least in my personal case- but the principle is still the same) After 9-11, patriotic feelings ran high in this country, and I bet many felt inspired to join the military. All I am saying is that is is a similar decision process."

Not only do I agree with the above, but the science has shown that people who have suffered brain damage and are no longer able to make emotion-based decisions become unable to act on simple questions. They suffer from the paralysis of analysis because their "gut" isn't leading them towards a choice. In fact, these decisions are so ubiquitous that you'd see in the Jonah Lehrer video his description of what happens when you become over-rational in selecting a breakfast cereal.

But all three videos also include examples of what happens when a person allows their emotional mind to override their executive functions. It isn't an either-or process.

The way the above books describe the healthy mind working is via a conversation between the two processes.

So when we are discussing things like Mormon historical claims, it would be dishonest to say either side is ignoring their feelings or their prefrontal cortex in making decisions. I'm sure many critics would actually agree (with some persuation maybe) that the disgust at reading about Josephs' polygamous relationships played a role in their leaving. It did for me. My emotional mind empathizes with Emma Smith when I read how she was treated, as another example.

Where I think most critics become critical of the use of emotion is when it's given undue weight - when it is allowed to dominate the conversation over the executive rational mind. Because at that point you aren't establishing justified belief.

Using the example of psychological needs, one could argue that a person who feels their adherence to Mormon beliefs is justified by the results is merely prejudicing their life in favor of social constructs over emperical information. And, as you and I have discussed in the past, that wouldn't bother me at all if that was were it stayed. But it doesn't. You hate when I bring up same sex marriage as a real life example of the dangers of doing so, but it's timely and cuts quickly past all the hypothetical bs. The church has taken a stand on the issue, and it has real impacts on other people's emotional well-being and psychological health. One has to apply rational, executive higher-level thinking to the issue, and this includes how reliable the LDS church is in regards to defining truth. I'd say the real example of the priesthood ban should, by itself, be sufficient grounds for a person to question enough to not just accept the argument the church is right. But people acting emotionally do so all the time.

So, there's more to it than just justified belief and emotional responsive decision making. I'm advocating for a healthier mental dialog.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Honorentheos

[mfbukowski]

The point I was making has to do with anti-realism and pragmatism and the fact that acting on feelings is often perfectly "rational".

The fact that we also make irrational decisions emotionally is irrelevant to the point I was making. The fact that atheists have the nerve to tell others that they are making "irrational" decisions based on emotions when atheists do the same sorts of things was what the thread is about.

It appears you still do not understand the pragmatic/constructivist position. This is relatively short- maybe it will help.

http://marxists.org/...ks/us/rorty.htm

One difficulty the pragmatist has in making his position clear, therefore, is that he must struggle with the positivist for the position of radical anti-Platonist. He wants to attack Plato with different weapons from those of the positivist, but at first glance he looks like just another variety of positivist. He shares with the positivist the Baconian and Hobbesian notion that knowledge is power, a tool for coping with reality. But he carries this Baconian point through to its extreme, as the positivist does not. He drops the notion of truth as correspondence with reality altogether, and says that modern science does not enable us to cope because it corresponds, it just plain enables us to cope. His argument for the view is that several hundred years of effort have failed to make interesting sense of the notion of “correspondence” (either of thoughts to things or of words to things). The pragmatist takes the moral of this discouraging history to be that “true sentences work because they correspond to the way things are” is no more illuminating than “it is right because it fulfils the Moral Law.” Both remarks, in the pragmatist’s eyes, are empt y metaphysical compliments – harmless as rhetorical pats on the back to the successful inquirer or agent, but troublesome if taken seriously and “clarified” philosophically.

...On this view, the activity of uttering sentences is one of the things people do in order to cope with their environment. The Deweyan notion of language as tool rather than picture is right as far as it goes. But we must be careful not to phrase this analogy so as to suggest that one can separate the tool, Language, from its users and inquire as to its “adequacy” to achieve our purposes. The latter suggestion presupposes that there is some way of breaking out of language in order to compare it with something else. But there is no way to think about either the world or our purposes except by using our language. One can use language to criticise and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one’s body to develop and strengthen and enlarge it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole in relation to something else to which it applies, or for which it is a means to an end. The arts and the sciences, and philosophy as their self-reflection and integration, constitute such a process. of enlargement and strengthening. But Philosophy, the attempt to say “how language relates to the world” by saying what makes certain sentences true, or certain actions or attitudes good or rational, is, on this view, impossible.

It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins – the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and self-criticism – and compare ourselves with something absolute. This Platonic urge to escape from the finitude of one’s time and place, the “merely conventional” and contingent aspects of one’s life, is responsible for the original Platonic distinction between two kinds of true sentence. By attacking this latter distinction, the holistic “pragmaticising” strain in analytic philosophy has helped us see how the metaphysical urge – common to fuzzy Whiteheadians and razor-sharp “scientific realists” – works. It has helped us be sceptical about the idea that some particular science (say physics) or some particular literary genre (say Romantic poetry, or transcendental philosophy) gives us that species of true sentence which is not just a true sentence, but rather a piece of Truth itself. Such sentences may be very useful indeed, but there is not going to be a Philosophical explanation of this utility. That explanation, like the original justification of the assertion of the sentence, will be a parochial matter – a comparison of the sentence with alternative sentences formulated in the same or in other vocabularies. But such comparisons are the business of, for example, the physicist or the poet, or perhaps of the philosopher – not of the Philosopher, the outside expert on the utility, or function, or metaphysical status of Language or of Thought.

Man makes the word, and the word means nothing which the man has not made it mean, and that only to some other man. But since man can think only by means of words or other external symbols, these might turn around and say: You mean nothing which we have not taught you, and then only so far as you address some word as the interpretant of your thought... ... . the word or sign which man uses is the man himself Thus my language is the sum-total of myself; for the man is the thought. (Peirce)

Peirce goes very far in the direction that I have called the de-construction of the transcendental signified, which, at one time or another, would place a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign. (Derrida)

... psychological nominalism, according to which all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short all awareness of abstract entities – indeed, all awareness even of particulars – is a linguistic affair. (Sellars)

It is only in language that one can mean something by something. (Wittgenstein)

Human experience is essentially linguistic. (Gadamer)

... man is in the process of perishing as the being of language continues to shine ever brighter upon our horizon. (Foucault)

Speaking about language turns language almost inevitably into an object ... and then its reality vanishes. (Heidegger)

Edited January 2, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Using the example of psychological needs, one could argue that a person who feels their adherence to Mormon beliefs is justified by the results is merely prejudicing their life in favor of social constructs over emperical information.

In light of the above, can you see how confused this seems to me?

Social constructs over empirical information which is also a social construct? The distinction has no teeth whatsoever.

Edited January 2, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Another quote from the above linked site- this one really captures it, I think

If the pragmatist is advised that he must not confuse the advisability of asserting S with the truth of S, he will respond. that the advice is question-begging. The question is precisely whether “the true” is more than what William James defined it as: “the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.” On James’s view, “true” resembles “good” or “rational” in being a normative notion, a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so. To think that Truth is “out there” is, on their view, on all fours with the Platonic view that The Good is “out there.” To think that we are “irrationalist” insofar as it does not “gratify our souls to know/That though we perish, truth is so” is like thinking that we are “irrationalist” just insofar as it does not gratify our moral sense to think that The Moral Law shines resplendent over the noumenal world, regardless of the vicissitudes of spatio-temporal lives. For the pragmatist, the notion of “truth” as something “objective “ is just a confusion between

(I) Most of the world is as it is whatever we think about it (that is, our beliefs have very limited causal efficacy)

and

(II) There is something out there in addition to the world called “the truth about the world” (what James sarcastically called “this tertium quid intermediate between the facts per se, on the one hand, and all knowledge of them, actual or potential, on the other”).

The pragmatist wholeheartedly assents to (I) – not as an article of metaphysical faith but simply as a belief that we have never had any reason to doubt – and cannot make sense of (II). When the realist tries to explain (II) with

(III) The truth about the world consists in a relation of “correspondence” between certain sentences (many of which, no doubt, have yet to be formulated) and the world itself the pragmatist can only fall back on saying, once again, that many centuries of attempts to explain what “correspondence” is have failed, especially when it comes to explaining how the final vocabulary of future physics will somehow be Nature’s Own – the one which, at long last, lets us formulate sentences which lock on to Nature’s own way of thinking of Herself.

For these reasons, the pragmatist does not think that, whatever else philosophy of language may do, it is going to come up with a definition of “true” which gets beyond James. He happily grants that it can do a lot of other things. For example, it can, following Tarski, show what it would be like to define a truth-predicate for a given language. The pragmatist can agree with Davidson that to define such a predicate – to develop a truth-theory for the sentences of English, e.g, – would be a good way, perhaps the only way, to exhibit a natural language as a learnable, recursive structure, and thus to give a systematic theory of meaning for the language. But he agrees with Davidson that such an exhibition is all that Tarski can give us, and all that can be milked out of Philosophical reflection on Truth.

[Tarski]

Atheists value Christmas for

nostalgia

family and vacation time

the general idea of peace on earth and good will toward mankind.

then there is the colored lights, the food, the music, presents, Santa Claus,

oh and the parties.

Finally, there is that naughty, skimpy santas helper outfit that my wife puts on at just the right moment in the evening. The one that makes it so very obvious that she has been working out at the gym,

[Xioneye]

Atheists value Christmas for

nostalgia

family and vacation time

the general idea of peace on earth and good will toward mankind.

then there is the colored lights, the food, the music, presents, Santa Claus,

oh and the parties.

Finally, there is that naughty, skimpy santas helper outfit that my wife puts on at just the right moment in the evening. The one that makes it so very obvious that she has been working out at the gym,

Tarski, I went almost one day before this board began to banish my input. NL

[Calm]

Tarski, I went almost one day before this board began to banish my input. NL

So now you are trying to get banned by posting completely off topic posts complaining about being banned.....

Does NL stand for "not listening"?