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Comment by honkycat | Hacker News Reader

This argument is incoherent.

I can prove that institutional racism exists and patriarchy exist in modern society. The same cannot be said for a god.

what do you mean by "exists"? They don't exist as a solid physical object. They exist more like a gust of wind, which moves all the leaves in the same direction and that's all we see. You can't "prove" that they exist, you can only postulate them as theories that explain why we see a whole collection of physical data that we can see. Your proof might be considered good if it coherently explains a large amount of the data, and makes predictions that come true. But you certainly can't "prove" that they "exist" to the same level of proof that an atheist will demand for the existence of God.

Patriarchy and institutional racism are even ascribed agency, they "want" to hurt people, rather than merely being general forces such as gravity or a fluid flow.

I live in the real world where we have conversations and attempt to convince people and convey information.

If we are digging into the bedrock of "can a thought exist" then you are not worth talking to.

I don't question the existence of thoughts, I merely pointed out that "existence" is different for different types of things. I think there are "layers" of existence, similar to how the OSI networking model works. One layer is the physical. Something like a single human being is another layer. Collective phenomena such as the patriarchy are another layer. We have limited understanding, so we may not perceive these things accurately, but that does not stop them from being real, in other words "existing". I personally believe that the layers scale right up to levels not visible to the tools of science, which work at a lower layer. It seems a pity to write people off with a different understanding of the world as not being worth talking to. I recommend being open minded to this perspective even if it doesn't convince you. For a much better presentation of what I'm saying, I recommend looking into Jonathan Pageau; he has a good book or you can catch some interviews here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX78CipFi-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGglfl5j_I

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