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| Thread: The Spirituality Thread |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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USAtheist
Hired Hero
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posted September 16, 2005 11:36 AM |
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So, here it is. Nothing, to me, is universal. I choose to beleive that I see auras and USAtheist chooses to beleive I do not. In fact, we both beleive everything/anything we want.
Completely wrong. One cannot "choose" what one believes or does not believe. Try choosing to believe in Santa Claus right now and see if it works. No matter what "choice" you make(to believe in Santa for example) your brain will tell you "That sounds ridiculous!" . Same goes for someone telling a mathematician that 2+2 = 7. He cannot choose to believe this no matter how hard he tries.
Your claim to be able to see these "auras" is akin to someone claiming to be able to charm dragons using psionic, mind control. First off, we have no evidence to warrant the existence of dragons OR "auras". Second, we have no reason to think that there are people with some mytical gift to "charm" dragons or see energy which somehow shows no indication of it's existence.
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To be a real skeptic, one would question everything exept his existance. Like DesCartes said, the only thing I know for certain is that I exist, because I think. Hence: "I think therefore I am".
Couple of corrections here:
Modern skepticism is NOT as you characterize it here. Yes, we question everything...within reason! It would be completely moronic to question gravity's existence for example(at least until people start flying off the planet en masse).
DesCartes' "I think, therefore I am." was originally offered in an attempt to prove idealism(as opposed to materialism) but it failed (Hume also tore apart the argument IIRC).
"Thinking" proves materialism correct and puts my own existence beyond question. If I am thinking then I must not only EXIST, but exist in such a way that allows this "thinking" I recognise to occur. Ergo, not only do I exist but brains, bodies, matter etc. exist and since we cannot have ideas without the material things to conjure them(brains) then matter is the primary stuff of the universe.
"Thinking"/thought is not a thing in itself. It is an action/effect(like walking). Therefore, as an action/function, it must have a physical source from which it originates(a brain) just as "walking" can only be performed by things with LEGS(and yes, arms count as legs when the hands are used to walk on). Walking is defined as an act of ambulation by which one takes advantage of friction and uses applied force through the legs(in alternating fashion...landing one foot and then using that foot to achieve another step) to propel the whole of the body of the entity in a direction.
Given this, one cannot say that fishes can "walk" since what they are doing is swimming. Hence, one needs legs in order to walk.
Similarly, thinking is defined as using a brain to contemplate, evaluate and decide. Legs cannot be used to "think" anymore than brains can be used to kick a soccer ball(beyond the point of deciding to kick the ball, ala thought).
In 500 b.c., Hericlitus realized that a blow to the head would effect one's thinking while blows to other body parts did not. He concluded, rightly, that man thinks with his brain("He thinks with a piece of meat...not with a piece of magic" as my friend Charles Fiterman used to say).
This was the birth of modern skepticism. Not just blindly questioning everything and deciding that there could be no answers. Skepticism is questioning with the intent to find answers, with the firm conviction that these answers exist and reality is a certain way, regardless of how we wish it to be.
Skeptics, for the most part, do not deal in certainties but rather likelihoods. It is not a matter of a 50/50 chance that the moon is made of green cheese. The moon being made of cheese is as unlikely as things get! The skeptic concludes therefore that the moon is NOT made of cheese. He does not sit around on his hands questioning whether he is wrong and some alien-induced delusion is causing him to not realize the cheesy nature of the moon! That would be pointless!
Similarly, skeptics do not sit around wondering if some god or spiritual boogeyman has fooled us into not seeing that the universe is spiritual rather than material/physical. That would be a pointless and stupid way to go about living. Such solopsist ideas lead to sitting on one's hands starving to death and chattering on about how "I can't KNOW that anything is real! I cannot even know that I cannot know that anything is real! I cannot even KNOW that I cannot know that I cannot know..." etc, ad nauseum.
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To a certain extent, I too question everything. How do you know for certain that the stimuli you are receving really translate into what your brain tells you?
Same way that I know that the car YOU drive is not made of fog and is therefore, like my car, a mechanical device of steel and plastic. I have never seen your car to know this. Don't need to. It is a simple matter of understanding the physics of the universe well enough to know that fog cannot be shaped into an automobile and driven around by humans.
These same physics dictate that your brain operates, mechanistically, like mine with largely irrelevant, subjective differences(akin to your car being a different color or style than mine).
If the brain and senses cannot be trusted to tell us what is going on around us, how would you know this? Are you not using your brain to come up with these ideas(or at least decide that they make some sort of sense to you)?
The difference of course, between me trusting what is concurrently observed and you trusting what is NOT, is that I can partake of the benefit of logical consistency. I use my material brain to think about what I want to tell you. I use a material keyboard to type out my messages. I watch the material monitor to see how typo-laden those messages are and I will observe you typing a response by the same process.
All of this is consistent with materialism, but NOT withy idealism and the like.
Idealism suggests that people use "walking" for legs and that people use their taste's good to fruit into bites to decide their mouths.
It is gibberish.
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Does an eye see without a brain?
Depends on how you are defining "eye"(cameras anyone?) but I think we agree here anyway.
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No it does not, and so you must "beleive" what your brain is telling you.
No I don't. In fact I have no "beliefs" beyond my conceptual attachments such as belief in "liberty" and such. There is a great difference between aknowledging something and believing something. People can believe in any sort of nonsense from fairies to conspiracy theories. Science cannot do much about this because of the "transcendence clause" which renders proving negatives nigh impossible.
I do not "believe" in gravity. I observe that this force exists and holds me to the earth.
I had a friend once who was coming down off some nasty drugs(meth) and he BELIEVED there were tons of spiders and bugs crawling all over him. To HIM this was reality and it was horrible.
I and everyone else in the room recognised and aknowledged that there were no bugs crawling on him. If this were simply us "believing" differently(as you would argue) then we should not expect concurrent observation. We should not be in agreement about what we witnessed.
There are many things which can incite delusion, drugs being only one notorious example. Belief itself often induces the most vivid delusions man has ever experienced!
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You will never have evidence of what is truly out there, you only have your 5 senses; but you must beleive them.
No. I need not ever "believe" them. If my observations ever cease to coincide with everyone else's around me then I will be begging someone to take me to my neurologist and eye doctors etc.
But if my senses and brain are NOT "misfiring", then I must simply AKNOWLEDGE what they are telling me. Not "believe".
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A true skeptic like USAthiest would question even his own senses.
False. The implication you are making is that persons of sound mind and body should be questioning whether they are in fact sound of mind and body, regardless of what the medical examinations say. THis is, again, a pointless solopsist nightmare of non-living.
Think about this for a moment...what is the ultimate conclusion to your line of reasoning?
It is sitting on your hands, unable to decide whether you are actually sitting on your hands or possibly stabbing childrren with your pincer-claws or listening to martian jazz with your antennae...etc. You could not ever accom,plish anything and reagardless of the true nature of reality, you would die of starvation, chattering on about how you can't know that you cannot know that you cannot know...ad infinitum.
So given the fact that we MUST use some method to decide what is likely real and true and what is not, what method besides sensory perception/observation and reason do you suggest?
OH! And remember, since you cannot trust in reason and rationality please use some other means to explain this to me.
"Faith me some knowledge. Intuit me some understanding." - Issac Asimov, X Stands For Unknown.
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So, in conclusion, you might have science, but you need to beleive in it - you need to beleive that what your eyes see of that science is true. Hence, I choose to beleive one thing and USAthiest decides to beleive another. In essence, we agree to disagree. 
SO...by YOUR reasoning, when the doctor is examining you for a head cold and decides to prescribe a lobomy to cure the condition, because it is his belief that this works best, no one should complain? Heck, why stop there?! Instead of scientific standards we currently rely on for pretty much every facet of our lives from airline travel to food preperation, we should immediately recognise that the standdards in aviation and aeronatughtical engineering are "just beliefs" and we should allow United Airlines to try and slingshot us to other countries using giant rubber bands if they simply believe differently than the scientists and engineeers?
Do you see now how ridiculous it is to characterise tested, empircal fact/logic/reasoned conclusions as mere "belief"?
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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USAtheist
Hired Hero
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posted September 16, 2005 12:24 PM |
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For just a couple of brief observations.
First, I think it's not completely accurate to state that all human eyes functions in precisely the same way. For instance, there is such thing as color-blindness, which causes people to percieve less color detail than others.
As I said earlier, all HEALTHY/non-damaged eyes DO function in EXACTLY the same way, mechanistically. THere is no one who chews and swallows food with their eyes or somesuch.That is what I am talking about as far as mechanisms go. If I have some deficiency akin to color-blindness that prevents me from seeing auras, then an eye doctor should be able to describe this and if Conan has some extra bits to his eyes that allow him to see stuff that I cannot, then science should be able to easily reveal this.
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I "suffer" from a particular type of color-blindness. There is a very specific shade of neon violet which, when it hits my field of vision even in just one small place, causes everything else in my field of vision in the red-blue end of the spectrum to turn the same shade of purple. I always know when that color is hitting my retina, but frequently have to look around for the source, becasue there are so many objects that have suddenly turned that color.
Isn't that wierd???
Weird? Maybe. But if it were "unexplainable by science"(as so many paranormalists will assert for their claims) then you would have no explanation to give us here.
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Now consider the fact that there are electrical fields around living things. We are a kind of subtle electrical conductors. These electrical fields surround us. Also, no two biological entities are completely identical. Some are more keenly sensed, others less. It stands to reason that some eyes are therefore naturally more sensitive than others.
Correct, but no eyes on this planet are able to detect what does not exist. "More sensitive" is akin to being more adversely affected by bright light or better able to distinguish shapes in dim light. Not seeing entirely new entities that no one else is gasping at at the bus stop under optimal lighting.
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Isn't it possible that some eyes are sensitive to the point they can detect the disturbance surrounding a living thing caused by the electrical field?
No. IIRC, the body generates energy in the form of extremely tiny(unperceptible to the naked eye) electrical discharges which are themselves converted to(or is it from? Blasted memory!) ionized salts which are dispersed throughout the body. Even to a peregrine falcon, these occurances would be undetectable without the use of technology.
I am unaware4 of any humans being so "sensitive" that they have 50,000 X binocular vision!
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Finally, there isn't a single thing within the purview of science that is not subject to the laws of science or that cannot be scrutinized by the scientific method. But this does not necessarily mean that therefore nothing exists outside the purview of science. Let me explain further.
Humans employ 5 to 7% of their brains on everage.
Completely false. This is an oft repeated urban legend but the fact is that humans use 100% of their brains. Think about it...have you ever heard of a surgeon saying "Yeah, he was shot 5 times in the head but fortunately all of those bullets hit only the 90% of his brain that is unused so he will be outta here tomorrow!".
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I just wonder what the other 95% would be capable of "perceiving" if we were ever to tap into it. There may be aspects of reality we are not perceiving (or not perceiving as a group). This does not mean those other aspects of reality do not exist, but it is argumentum ad ignorantium to argue that they do at the same time just because science cannot prove they don't.
I may be misunderstanding you here and if so I apologise but are you saying that claims without evidence to support them should be considered TRUE? It is not an argument from ignorance to say that something without inference is false. The rational default for extraordinary claims lacking in inference/justification is FALSE(until such time as they are warranted).
Let me try to make my point clear with analogy:
Someone claims that a 500' radioactive dinosaur lives in the Pacific Ocean and will attack Tokyo soon. There is no scientific evidence to suggest this is at all likely.
But if there is even a 5% chance of this being true, then scientists first priority should be to work on preventive/defensive measures to stop[ such monsters.
The reason tehy will not do so is because the odds of this being true are as close to zero as odds can be.
That is an extreme example but what of "auras" and "souls"? Say that somewone tells us they can affect healing by manipulating auras or "spirit energy" and that "moods" can be discerned by observing auras.
Do you realize the implications of this? Cures for cancer and diabetes, paralysis...even death itself need to be approached from a whole new angle! All of medicine has to be revised to account for this! Law enforcement has to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up to deal with "aura perception". Laws will be written to prohibit intentional masking of one's mood to avoid being detained to prevent pre-crimes and such!
And that is just the tip of the iceberg!
Such claims such as being able to see "auras" seem inocuous enough until you examine them but there are no extraordinary claims which, if true, would not have signifigant effect on all of reality as we understand it.
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In fact, arguing about ultra-sensory events either way becomes kind-of circular, because our entire linguistic and logical system of thought is built up around the portions of the world we can sense.
But that is just it! We only have our sense and brains. THese are the means we have of obtaining and processing information. Some people use their brains to postulate that these are NOT the only means we have but these postulations are meaningless and without ANY value since this very claim itself cannot be defined. To say that our sensese and brains are not the only means we have of obtaining understanding about reality is like saying that reality is not the only place you can be(exist independently). Sounds fun until you think about it then it falls apart like any nonsense statement.
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Let me give you another example: The T-Rex's vision was based on movement. T-Rex would have no conception of color. If T-Rex were an intelligent creature, if it were to come across a being which could perceive color, the concept would be outside it's realm of experience. But this doesn't mean color doesn't exist. It simply means that its sensory mechanisms were not designed to perceive it and ingest the concept into its mental contruct of the universe.
No. Even color blind creatures percieve color. They just percieve it in varying shades of grey. But lacking a standard human level of vision does not equate to being able to percieve enitre existential phenomenae that other members of your species cannot percieve!
Therefore, a false analogy.
Plus, it IS possible to devise experiments(theoretically at least) by which even a TOTALLY blind person can percieve colors and such using other senses.
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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Conan
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 16, 2005 02:37 PM |
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Edited By: Conan on 16 Sep 2005
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My point is that we are binded by our senses and what our brain is sending us as information. We do not control the desicions the brain makes and so we do not control what we beleive. For example:
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I do not "believe" in gravity. I observe that this force exists and holds me to the earth.
How do you observe it? Inevitably, you perceive gravity with one of your senses, whether it be an apple falling from a tree or feeling it in your legs. In any case, it passed through your brain and your brain tells you what your senses are feeling. So you take for granted that gravity exists. You beleive in it to live your everyday life.
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No. I need not ever "believe" them. If my observations ever cease to coincide with everyone else's around me then I will be begging someone to take me to my neurologist and eye doctors etc.
But if my senses and brain are NOT "misfiring", then I must simply AKNOWLEDGE what they are telling me. Not "believe".
Ah, now, making an argument out of "my observations coincide with everyone else's" is not a very good argumentation, do you not agree? I don't know what you'd call this type of argumentation, because unlike you I don't have knowledge of different types of Sophists, yet we both know that that is a flawed arguement. We both also know it is a sophist, yet I just don't know the exact one.
To me, if you acknowledge something, it's because you believe it is working properly in the first place.
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Think about this for a moment...what is the ultimate conclusion to your line of reasoning?
It is sitting on your hands, unable to decide whether you are actually sitting on your hands or possibly stabbing childrren with your pincer-claws or listening to martian jazz with your antennae...etc. You could not ever accom,plish anything and reagardless of the true nature of reality, you would die of starvation, chattering on about how you can't know that you cannot know that you cannot know...ad infinitum.
So given the fact that we MUST use some method to decide what is likely real and true and what is not, what method besides sensory perception/observation and reason do you suggest?
OH! And remember, since you cannot trust in reason and rationality please use some other means to explain this to me.
Thank you. That is where I wanted this discussion to lead. First, I never said I do not trust in reason. I simply said that you can question anything even reason, so let's move past that last statement of yours.
I am not suggesting any other way of perceiving the way we do now. And you have a very good point of saying that we cannot spend the rest of our lives deciding if we see real food or else we will die. My point, was to make you realize that everything is questionnable, even/especially our own perceptions. My point was to say that my brain is telling me there is more out there that what your brain is telling you. Both our brains get their sensory input from our eyes.
Finally, I find we take for granted our own existence. We take for granted when we "acknowledge" without thinking of the beleif we put in that acknowledgment. You can question the fact that I see auras, and I can question the fact that you see at all. We can question anything because as you said, the only real truth is the fact that we exist. So trying to argue with me that what I see might not be auras is pointless, as I "acknowledge" the fact that I see them, much like the fact that you acknowledge the fact that you can eat an apple. When you dig deeper, I ultimatly beleive I see auras, and you beleive you can eat apples.
This debate of mine was not to say we must question everything - it was to prove we can question other's perceptions, much like you question mine.
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Do you see now how ridiculous it is to characterise tested, empircal fact/logic/reasoned conclusions as mere "belief"?
Ummm, no. the empirical facts and conclusions are not argued here. Our perception of them was. All perceptions are inevitably beleifs.
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Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service.... us. - Star Trek TNG
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Shiva
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted September 16, 2005 04:58 PM |
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But if you worship a transcendent god such as those typical of monotheistic religions, then YES...I CAN prove God does not exist.
It all comes down to defining "existence" and "transcendence" and then showing that these qualities are logically inconsistent. Existent things have sense contents(the only way we are able to know of their existence) and are bound by linear time and causeality(otherwise saying that they "exist" would be a nonsense statemetns since "exist" implies a state of being from one moment to another.
"transcendence" is a quality of being WITHOUT sense contents(and thus beyond empirical evidence and observation) and/or unconstrained by linear time.
Viola! Proof of God's nonexistence! Really no more difficult than proving that round squares cannot exist.
This whole exercise reminds me of a book I had in grade
5 called "Fun With Words". You have taken too many
logical liberties and in the end, proved nothing. Most
importantly, you totally misunderstand the meaning of a
transcendant "God". It does not imply a "super-conscious being" that has left this world and experiences behind as you suggest, but one that includes all
of this(ordinary experience) and that(extra-ordinary
perception), for this creation is whole and unified, not
fragmented as the mind would like it to be.
However, you did state some element of the truth in that
non-existance, or the void is there, but that only
implies that our solid seeming lives are really just a
part of the grand illusion, and we take them, and this
debate, way too seriously 
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted September 16, 2005 06:32 PM |
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Hey bort! Nice to see you passing through.
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Humans employ 5 to 7% of their brains on everage....
False. (short version of the explanation here : [url=http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm])
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I just wonder what the other 95% would be capable of "perceiving" if we were ever to tap into it. There may be aspects of reality we are not perceiving (or not perceiving as a group). This does not mean those other aspects of reality do not exist, but it is argumentum ad ignorantium to argue that they do at the same time just because science cannot prove they don't.
The "other" 95% is a plot device for shows such as the X-files. Don't get me wrong, there are things that lay beyond the purview of science, but the "unused" portion of the brain is not one of them.
Define "use."
(LOL -- just kidding)
Seriously, I didn't know that was an urban legend, you guys. Interesting site but here's a link that actually works. As is apparent, I used 100% of my brain to post the link in a useable manner.
(LOL again bort, just kidding.  )
http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm
USAthiest:
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I just wonder what the other 95% would be capable of "perceiving" if we were ever to tap into it. There may be aspects of reality we are not perceiving (or not perceiving as a group). This does not mean those other aspects of reality do not exist, but it is argumentum ad ignorantium to argue that they do at the same time just because science cannot prove they don't.
I may be misunderstanding you here and if so I apologise but are you saying that claims without evidence to support them should be considered TRUE? It is not an argument from ignorance to say that something without inference is false. The rational default for extraordinary claims lacking in inference/justification is FALSE(until such time as they are warranted).
Yes, you are misunderstanding me. What I meant to say is that any phenomena which might or might not exist outside the realm of normal human thinking, experience and scientific observation cannot be proved to exist or not exist, either way. One cannot take a completely confident stance: "it exists because you can't prove it doesn't," nor can you confidently say "it doesn't exist because you can't prove it does." (However, this is not the same thing as saying "I can reasonably infer it doesn't exist until I receive verifiable data to the contrary)
In fact, one cannot have much of a meaningful scientific/logical dialogue at all (beyond fanciful speculation) concerning any alleged phenomena outside the normal purview of human perception, as this conversation is rapidly demonstrating.
But I thought this thread was about that fanciful speculation, which can be fun, thought-provoking and even mind-expanding, as long as one allows such a converation to take place.
P.S. What does "IRRC" stand for?
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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Shiva
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted September 16, 2005 07:15 PM |
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In fact, one cannot have much of a meaningful scientific/logical dialogue at all (beyond fanciful speculation) concerning any alleged phenomena outside the normal purview of human perception, as this conversation is rapidly demonstrating.
But I thought this thread was about that fanciful speculation, which can be fun, thought-provoking and even mind-expanding, as long as one allows such a converation to take place.
I agree. I went through this with Svarog. If somebody posts some experience they find interesting and then is
faced with someone basically saying they crazy, it kind of
takes the fun out of continuing, and sidetracks the
thread into a debate about what kind of drug they must
have been on 
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted September 16, 2005 07:31 PM |
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Yes, what we're talking about here are unusual individual experiences. The very thing that makes them intriguing is that they're unusual and not readily verifiable or explainable. But they're people's personal experiences nonetheless.
USAthiest, I just read one of your statements again that caught my attention the first time but I failed to respond to it. You stated that people cannot choose what to believe and what not to believe. You then gave examples such as Santa Clause.
I disagree with your statement here and think the example is not on point. People choose to believe things they cannot verify every day. People choose to believe that the Christian God wrote the words of the bible, for instance. There is no evidence to verify this, but that does not stop individuals from choosing to believe it.
Some choose to believe the phenomenon they see surrounding other people are the auras of those people. They cannot verify it beyond their personal experience, but that does not eliminate the personal experience nor does it prevent them from arriving at their own conclusions about that experience.
I choose to believe that every event in existence serves some purpose that is not always obvious -- that "everything happens for a reason" or somehow serves some higher good than is readily apparent. It's kind of a "spiritual physics" I believe in, and while I have some examples of how an event that started out looking bad actually turned into something good, I cannot objectively verify it for you beyond that. This doesn't mean I can't choose to believe it, because I do.
It may not be a rational thing for me to believe but I don't care. The belief has served me well in my life, and has allowed me to accept negative occurrences and see the good in them that I might not have been able to see without holding such a belief. It's sort of a "trust in the universe" -- a relinquishment of my ego-understanding as a human being that every force at work around us is readily observable. I personally strongly suspect that not all those forces are as observable as we think, and that it is perhaps arrogant for us to presume we can.
It's sort of a thinking that just because we can't observe something then it may be because of our limitations, rather than thinking that if we can't observe it it doesn't exist. These two perspectives are the real heart of this discussion. Unless the participants are in agreement over one or the other prespective, there is little point in developing arguments in favor or against the larger issues.
Also, dreaming up outrageous examples of charming dragons and making jokes about green cheese is an entirely separate thing than discussing personal experiences and observations. One could easily take such comparisons as ridicule, if it were not so obvious that the comparisons are not accurate. If an individual has an unusual experience and cares to discuss what it might mean with others and arrive at personal conclusions, then such activity is perfectly legitimate human activity. You choose not to believe his claims of seeing auras, but you are not the one having the experience -- he is. I see no great flaw in either point of view. Both are perfectly rational responses to differing experiences. You choice not to believe auras exist arises from the fact that you did not have the experiences of witnessing some such phenomenon. His choice to believe they do exist arises from his personal experience of seeing the halos.
Hope you see what I mean.
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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bort
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Discarded foreskin of morality
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posted September 16, 2005 11:46 PM |
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Edited By: bort on 16 Sep 2005
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I just want to talk a little bit about the scientific method and what it can and can't say. It's very important to recognize what is observation and what is inference since all too often people confuse the two. This leads to people claiming science "knows" what it doesn't and, on the other side, people claiming science has been "proven wrong many times before," when, in fact, what happened is new observations force a change in the prevailing model. Science is about making observations, nowadays normally through experimentation and then inferring a model that explains those observations. The correct way of explaining the results of an experiment is not "Result X shows that theory Y is correct." The correct way is "Result X is consistent with theory Y." It may be mere linguistics, but there's a huge difference.
Take gravity, for instance. Nobody "knows" that gravity "exists." Here is what is known -- objects with mass appear to accelerate towards one another. In other words, if I drop a ball, I observe that it appears to move towards the ground until the two touch (then it can bounce or roll or whatever). The observation that objects with mass accelarate towards one another has been repeated many times by many people. There are a number of models that can explain this phenomenon, including:
a. There is a force generated by massive objects that acts on other massive objects in an attractive manner
b. A massive object distorts space, causing objects to appear to bend towards them, when in fact they are moving in a straight line
c. The two objects are destroying the space between them. There is no motion, but the dissappearance of space between them gives that impression.
d. God/Demons/Tiny invisible squirrels are pushing the objects towards eachother.
e. Massive objects like eachother and are trying to mate to make more objects (snows)
f. Everybody has been hallucinating for a long time
g. Objects move randomly. The reason that every recorded observation is the same is a collosal coincidence. (Quick kiddies, how can this be rephrased to be identical to the anthropic principle?)
h. magic
Now, the reason that we generally accept models a and/or b is because they have tremendous predictive power (well, that or people who are predisposed towards the other models probably don't survive long enough to reproduce and pass on their ideas). It's not because we know that either model is "true" in that they accurately represent the mechanism by which the phenomenon we observe occur. I have to admit that my knowledge of physics is not to the degree that I can say one way or another why model c is a good or bad one. The other models are not accepted not because we know that they are false but because they provide no predictive power and thus cannot be either validated or invalidated.
Scientific models have provided tremendous benefits and believe me, the rational thing to do is to accept them (well those that are in good journals). But the really rational thing to do is accept them for what they are : models, damn good ones, but models nonetheless.
(Both sides commence claiming I was agreeing or disagreeing with them starting in 3... 2... 1...)
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Drive by posting.
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USAtheist
Hired Hero
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posted September 17, 2005 09:31 AM |
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@bort:
Earlier you responded to my bit about "round squares" by stating that I was correct only if we posit that flat/2D space is necessary for "squareness"(for lack of a better word).
But that is exactly the point I am making! As soon as you enter 3 dimensional space into the equation you are not talking about "squares", but possibly cubes and even then a "round cube" cannot exist since a cube, by definition is something lacking 'roundness'.
A square is a flat(negligible thickness), 2D object of four equal sides that meet at 90 degree angles. If it has rounded corners, it is no longer a square. For all intents and purposes, the relevant definition of "square" is " a 2 dimensional shape that lacks any roundness or curves" and therefore such a shape cannot also be "rounded" in any way. A thing cannot be 'A' and 'Not A' at once.
@Conan
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My point is that we are binded by our senses and what our brain is sending us as information. We do not control the desicions the brain makes and so we do not control what we beleive. For example:
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I do not "believe" in gravity. I observe that this force exists and holds me to the earth.
How do you observe it? Inevitably, you perceive gravity with one of your senses, whether it be an apple falling from a tree or feeling it in your legs. In any case, it passed through your brain and your brain tells you what your senses are feeling. So you take for granted that gravity exists. You beleive in it to live your everyday life.
Exactly! Now if we had multiple means of generating thought, and percieving objects and existential phenomenae, then yes...you could make a rational argument that we should not be so quick to assume the sensory and brain powered means were the best or more substantial.
But we have no other means of processing data or perceiving reality. We do not have hidden antennae that are more powerful at identifying things than our eyes. We do not have any "faith-sense"(only speculations of such) that can be rationally infered or demonstrated any more than magic gremlins can be!
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No. I need not ever "believe" them. If my observations ever cease to coincide with everyone else's around me then I will be begging someone to take me to my neurologist and eye doctors etc.
But if my senses and brain are NOT "misfiring", then I must simply AKNOWLEDGE what they are telling me. Not "believe".
Ah, now, making an argument out of "my observations coincide with everyone else's" is not a very good argumentation, do you not agree?
That is not my argument. My argument is this:
Say you and I live in the same neighborhood. One morning I go out to get the newspaper and while I am at the paper box I see you on your porch drinking coffee so I wave. You wave back and at the same time our neighbor Mrs. Smith runs out of her house screaming "Help! FIRE! FIRE!" and we both see smoke pouring out of the kitchen windows of Mrs. Smith's home.
Meanwhile, Tom looks out of his window to see what all the ruckus is about and soon afterwards dials the fire department. Once the blare of sirens is heard on our street, lots of people begin coming out of their homes and pointing towards poor Mrs. Smith's house.
Now, by YOUR argument I would be wrong to assume that Mrs. Smith's house was on fire, that you were on your porch or that my neighborhood existed as I percieved it, as opposed to being a mideivel castle being attacked by dragons.
It is what I refer to as "concurrent observation". It is not just that I alone saw Mrs. Smith's home on fire. THAT could well be a delusion. But the fact that everyone reacted in concert to the same phenomenom I percieved disproves the "personal delusion hypothesis".
Likewise, we ALL walk AROUND the same walls and trees in life and those who either try to walk THROUGH those walls OR who walk around walls that the rest of us do not see/ feel, ARE delusional!
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I don't know what you'd call this type of argumentation, because unlike you I don't have knowledge of different types of Sophists, yet we both know that that is a flawed arguement. We both also know it is a sophist, yet I just don't know the exact one.
No idea what you are talking about here so I will move on...
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To me, if you acknowledge something, it's because you believe it is working properly in the first place.
What you are doing is a pretty common tactic that Christian fundemetnalists here in the US use a lot(only they most often use the term "religion" in this way. Will explain later). You are trying to make my position easier to attack by characterizing it as "only a belief" and therefore "Just as bad as your position". Something of a fallcy of equivocation happening here as well.
The reason I make a distinction between things which we accept or aknowledge based upon what rationality tells us and things which are believed is this: "Beliefs" can and most often DO occur in the complete absence of rational justification or even contrary to rationality. '2+2 = 4' is not a "belief" because it is conclusively proven by the axioms of mathematics. '2+2 = 5' would be a belief and so would ' 2 is a better number than 4' also be a "belief" since it is not demonstrated logically or empirically.
When you try to use a word like "belief" as a catch all for a broad array of possibly accepted things, regardless of the reasons for the acceptance, you render the word "belief" as worthlessly ambiguous. No one would ever be able to understand anyone else if words and terms became so vague!
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Think about this for a moment...what is the ultimate conclusion to your line of reasoning?
It is sitting on your hands, unable to decide whether you are actually sitting on your hands or possibly stabbing childrren with your pincer-claws or listening to martian jazz with your antennae...etc. You could not ever accom,plish anything and reagardless of the true nature of reality, you would die of starvation, chattering on about how you can't know that you cannot know that you cannot know...ad infinitum.
So given the fact that we MUST use some method to decide what is likely real and true and what is not, what method besides sensory perception/observation and reason do you suggest?
OH! And remember, since you cannot trust in reason and rationality please use some other means to explain this to me.
Thank you. That is where I wanted this discussion to lead. First, I never said I do not trust in reason. I simply said that you can question anything even reason, so let's move past that last statement of yours.
You CANNOT question reason as doing so would be an act of reasoning and would make no sense! That is why I asked you if you had some other means than reason by which you could challenge reason in such a way and possibly show it to be, to some degree, untrustworthy or suspect.
Now if you simply meant that we can(and even SHOULD) question OUR PERSONAL reasoning, then yes...I am with you all the way!
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I am not suggesting any other way of perceiving the way we do now. And you have a very good point of saying that we cannot spend the rest of our lives deciding if we see real food or else we will die. My point, was to make you realize that everything is questionnable, even/especially our own perceptions.
I never denied this(or at least it was not my intent to do so. I may have been unclear to an extent). But when you come to the point of saying that any posited "belief" that anyone has should be on equal footing with logical/rational/scientific conclusions by equating those conclusions with "mere beliefs", you are acting 'anti-skeptically'. It is one thing to toss around, for example, a question such as "Does the moon exist?". Nothing wrong with questioning in this way. But to treat the moon's existence as "questionable" is an entirely different thing!
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My point was to say that my brain is telling me there is more out there that what your brain is telling you. Both our brains get their sensory input from our eyes.
Not so! It is not necessarily true, nor can you demonstrate that your eyes sensed auras in the way that my eyes see the monitor in front of me. Scientists can mechanistically explain how my eyes percieve the existent monitor.
But going by what you have said thus far in regards to "auras", we are left with a ton of more likely explanations(as per Occam's razor):
*You are experiencing delusions.
*You are misunderstanding what you are percieving.
*Your pattern-seeking belief mechanism is playing tricks with you and conjuring false memories
etc.
All of the above are very, VERY common, regularly observed happenings. Before I accept your extraordinary explanation that you are sensing some mysterious new energy that science cannot detect/measure, I must be able to rule out the mundane explanations such as deceit, delusion etc.
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Finally, I find we take for granted our own existence. We take for granted when we "acknowledge" without thinking of the beleif we put in that acknowledgment. You can question the fact that I see auras, and I can question the fact that you see at all.
Big difference: To question an unsubstantiated claim such as "aura sensing" which no empirical evidence or rational argument has been offered in support of, is entirerly RATIONAL. I have no reason to conclude you are actually seeing auras.
But to question whether I see at all, unless I tell you I am blind and use a braile keyboard setup or somesuch, is NOT rational. Being able to see is not an extraordinary claim.
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We can question anything because as you said, the only real truth is the fact that we exist.
I never said that and do not believe that. There are countless truths every bit as 'truthful' as my own existence. Do I know all of them? No. But even our own existence being beyond question is only a truth from the materialist POV(ironically enough)! If we do not live in a materialistic reality then it is quite possible to be "thinking" and still not exist or even to not be thinking at all, even though I seem to think I am here. This is because outside of materialism, logic holds no sway.
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So trying to argue with me that what I see might not be auras is pointless, as I "acknowledge" the fact that I see them, much like the fact that you acknowledge the fact that you can eat an apple.
No. aknowledged things are those which can be rationally explained and demonstrated to others(skeptics in particular). You BELIEVE you see auras but until you are able to put forth a mechanism by which this sensing might occur and are able to rationally justify the existence of "auras", it remains a belief.
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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USAtheist
Hired Hero
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posted September 17, 2005 10:45 AM |
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@ bort:
Agree 100% with your last post on science and such. Bravo!
Peace':
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USAthiest, I just read one of your statements again that caught my attention the first time but I failed to respond to it. You stated that people cannot choose what to believe and what not to believe. You then gave examples such as Santa Clause.
I disagree with your statement here and think the example is not on point. People choose to believe things they cannot verify every day. People choose to believe that the Christian God wrote the words of the bible, for instance.
Nope. Doesn't happen. People either believe that or they do not. They cannot simply snap their fingers and decide to believe it if their mind is saying "That sounds like nonsense!" and vice versa.
"Choosing" requires and imlies free will in that, all other things being equal given multiple options a person could realistically decide upon any, wiothout need of being convicned by someone.
For example: I "choose" to take the long way home from the post office. I do NOT "choose" to believe my moth is a good person. I CANNOT simply "decide" to believe my mother is evil. I could LIE about such but this would not change what I believed to be true or accepted as a rational conclusion.
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Some choose to believe the phenomenon they see surrounding other people are the auras of those people. They cannot verify it beyond their personal experience, but that does not eliminate the personal experience nor does it prevent them from arriving at their own conclusions about that experience.
Well, for all I know that may be 100% true but it has nothing to do with me or anything I said so...
I have never argued that believers should not have the right to believe whatever they believe for whatever reason. I am just pointing out that these beliefs are not rational(not saying that rationality should be the 'be all and end all' of how people view the world BTW).
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I choose to believe that every event in existence serves some purpose that is not always obvious -- that "everything happens for a reason" or somehow serves some higher good than is readily apparent.
Case in point. WHY do you believe such a thing? What phenomenom or knowledge leads you to the inference that there is some "purpose" behind everything that happens? Not enopugh time to get deep into this here but you will one day discover that this line of reasoning leads to some pretty mind-boggling paradoxes when followed to it's logical extents.
But in any case you do NOT "choose" this belief. it either makes sense to you or it does not. You beli9eve it or you don't. Same way that tomatos either taste good to you or they do not. If tomatos casue you to gag(as they do ME) then you cannot simply wake up adn decide to like them adn all of a sudden they will taste like chocolate or soemthing.
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It's kind of a "spiritual physics" I believe in,
I believe the term you are looking for is metaphysics
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and while I have some examples of how an event that started out looking bad actually turned into something good, I cannot objectively verify it for you beyond that. This doesn't mean I can't choose to believe it, because I do.
You believe it, yes and you have every right to believe it. But it is not a simple concious choice to decide that these ideas will make sense to you.
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It may not be a rational thing for me to believe but I don't care. The belief has served me well in my life, and has allowed me to accept negative occurrences and see the good in them that I might not have been able to see without holding such a belief.
Just out of curiosity...do you think that those of us who do not share these sorts of beliefs are worse off in terms of dealing with "negative occurances"?
Also, do you think that your personal desires should be taken into consideration when determiniung what is real and what isn't?
For example, I really wish and want for magic to exist. I am a huge fan of fantasy fiction and would love to live in a world of swords and sorcery. It would better enable me to handle negative occurances such a my relatives getting cancer or my own dibetes since I could search for an arcane cure for these conditions when scientific cures are not forthcoming.
SHould I then view sorcery as being probable?
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It's sort of a "trust in the universe" -- a relinquishment of my ego-understanding as a human being that every force at work around us is readily observable. I personally strongly suspect that not all those forces are as observable as we think, and that it is perhaps arrogant for us to presume we can.
Argh! Someone has once again trotted out the "arrogance" chestnut. I know that you probably were not intending to insult me or any other critical thinkers here but nonetheless, this IS insulting. Let me put it this way: How would YOU react to the following:
People hold onto mystical and karmic views of the universe out of arrogance and egotism. They get so full of themselves, imagining that everything that ever happens in the universe, no matter how bad, is somehow existent for the purpose of bettering the universe, for THEM!
?
Doesn't sound so innocent directed at you does it? I won't even get started on what Einstein had to say about such things(you think I am a skeptic? Einstein was like a "no more Mr. Nice guy" version of me at times!).
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It's sort of a thinking that just because we can't observe something then it may be because of our limitations, rather than thinking that if we can't observe it it doesn't exist.
Big problems with that line of thinking though:
1)This argument suggests that we should beware of gremlins while driving and careful not to step on pixies while hiking through the woods. After all, just because we are so limited in our ability to percieve does nopt mean they don't exist!
2)It does not logically follow that, because we are not able to see every detail of the universe at once, ANYTHING may be possible or even likely. That is akin to saying that since my ability to inspect the automobiles of the world is so limited( I can check out a dozen or so cars every 5 minutes of working fast), there MAY be some street legal cars made entirely of fog!
3)Contrary to popular belief, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence! It is very STRONG evidence indeed! Not "proof" but EVIDENCE! Things which so completely lack evidence for their existence can be ontologically proven to not exist and are, in fact imaginary things.
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These two perspectives are the real heart of this discussion. Unless the participants are in agreement over one or the other prespective, there is little point in developing arguments in favor or against the larger issues.
True... if we are discussing axiomatic positions(materialism, idealism etc.). But even then i notice that the ONLY time that non-materialists actually behave according to their stated axioms is when trying to justify mystical/paranormal beliefs.
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Also, dreaming up outrageous examples of charming dragons and making jokes about green cheese is an entirely separate thing than discussing personal experiences and observations.
This is wrong. You are presuming my examples were "outrageous" or "jokes" because you do not believe these things. It is like a Christian saying "Do not compare God(Yahweh) with such silly ideas as "Allah" or "Zeus"!"
Fact is, NO extraordinary claim has a default degree of rationality or silliness compared to any other claims. I did not compare dragons and auras and such because I think dragons are sillier and was trying to make someone else's beliefs seem silly as dragons. To skeptics/rationalists dragons, auras, souls, gods, fairies...all of these are equal. We do not allow personal biases to cloud our objective evaluations of these claims. It may surprise you to know that even today there are a great many believers in dragons(especially amongst wiccans and such).
The point is that ALL extraordiunary claims are subject to the same demands for evidence and rational justification. Your beliefs and Conan's beliefs do not get a proverbial "free pass" because YOU happen to think some beliefs are silly or less popular than your own.
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One could easily take such comparisons as ridicule,
And to do so would be fallacious. The rational course would be to show SOME evidence which suggests the beliefs in question are "less silly" than dragons and such. NOT to feign indignation adn start shooting at teh messenger who dares point out that your beliefs are on equal footing with things you do NOT believe in!
In other words, you disbelieve in dragons, NOT because they have been disproven or because they lack some degree of justification that your own beliefs meet.
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if it were not so obvious that the comparisons are not accurate. If an individual has an unusual experience and cares to discuss what it might mean with others and arrive at personal conclusions, then such activity is perfectly legitimate human activity. You choose not to believe his claims of seeing auras, but you are not the one having the experience -- he is.
I do not "choose" to believe or not to believe ANYTHING. When people claim to be experiencing an existential pneomenom such as "auras" or "pink unicorns" or WIND for that matter, there are a few possibilities:
1)The phenomenom exists and can theoretically be demonstrated through science.
2)The phenomenom does NOT exist and the person is believing a faslehood.
The ONLY things which cannot be substantiated through science are imaginary things and delusions.
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I see no great flaw in either point of view. Both are perfectly rational responses to differing experiences.
But here is the thing: We are NOT talking about two different "experiences", per se. We are talking about experiences and CLAIMS fo experiences. This is not to imply that someone is lying or somesuch nonsense either. There are a plethora of natural explanations for why people regularly believe in patently false things, having mostly to do with human behavior and psychology.
I have never been to Six FLags amusement park. And yet I do not doubt that these parks adn teh rides therein exist! Now why is that if I am such a (as some have basically said) 'closed-minded skeptic who has to have scientific proof of his full bladder before he can pee!'?
The answer is that amusement parks are not extraordinary claims. We regularly observe such things to exist and understanding basic physics adn engineering principles confirms that rollercoasters and such are not doubtful.
But if someone points to apparently empty parking lot and says "Lets go over there and ride that giant FTL rollercoaster with the topless supermodels!" they are making an extraordinary claim because invisible coasters that travel faster than light not only violate physics but are NEVER observed. SO before I agree to go ride that coaster, I will need some extraordinary evidence..
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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bort
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Discarded foreskin of morality
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posted September 17, 2005 03:26 PM |
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@bort:
Earlier you responded to my bit about "round squares" by stating that I was correct only if we posit that flat/2D space is necessary for "squareness"(for lack of a better word).
But that is exactly the point I am making! As soon as you enter 3 dimensional space into the equation you are not talking about "squares", but possibly cubes and even then a "round cube" cannot exist since a cube, by definition is something lacking 'roundness'.
A square is a flat(negligible thickness), 2D object of four equal sides that meet at 90 degree angles. If it has rounded corners, it is no longer a square. For all intents and purposes, the relevant definition of "square" is " a 2 dimensional shape that lacks any roundness or curves" and therefore such a shape cannot also be "rounded" in any way. A thing cannot be 'A' and 'Not A' at once.
Squares, circles and lines still exist in 3D space. 2D space can still have curvature. "Dimensionality" is defined by how many coordinates you need to identify a position in space. One dimensional space, such as a number line only requires one number. 2D space requires 2 - X,Y or an angle and r, for instance. 3D space requires 3 - X,Y,Z or 2 angles and r or whatever other coordinate system you choose. So, for instance, the surface of a pool ball is a 2D surface even though it is curved (you could represent any point on its surface as two angles, much the way that we use longitude and latitude). Now if you draw an object on that with 4 90 degree angles, what you see will not be a square (in fact, if I remember my math correctly, the shape won't actually be closed). Another way of seeing this effect is to draw a square on a deflated balloon and then blow it up - the square has curvature now because the space that it is on has curvature. Similarly, a planet's orbit can be adequately described by having it move in a straight line along space that is distorted by the gravitational field of the sun.
Unfortunately, there are no known adequate analogies for curved 3D space but the physical models that are a consequence of allowing curvature of space do turn out to be very good ones.
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Drive by posting.
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TheAsgard
Adventuring Hero
Wise and helpful being
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posted September 18, 2005 12:56 PM |
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USAtheist,
I believe that you should set back from your scientific stance because the world does not revlove around science and science cannot explain everything in the world and you should know that. I think that you need to step outside the square that you live in.
I agree with everyone above in saying that Conan was just posting his experience with the spirits and aurors and what he is able to do. Wether you choose to believe it or not is up to you but I do not think that Conan asked for a scientific explination and analysis of this.
Just because it seemingly does not have a scientific explination does not mean that he is mentally unstable or on some kind of drug(s). Life is full of mysteries and it takes people to another place to expand the confinds of their minds and ways of thought and we don't need you to walk all over it be ripping it to pieces with your scientific debunk.
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted September 18, 2005 10:52 PM |
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This has gotten so long, I've decided to put my responses in italics.
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Nope. Doesn't happen... People either believe that or they do not. They cannot simply snap their fingers and decide to believe it if their mind is saying "That sounds like nonsense!" and vice versa.
"Choosing" requires and imlies free will in that, all other things being equal given multiple options a person could realistically decide upon any, wiothout need of being convicned by someone.
For example: I "choose" to take the long way home from the post office. I do NOT "choose" to believe my moth is a good person. I CANNOT simply "decide" to believe my mother is evil. I could LIE about such but this would not change what I believed to be true or accepted as a rational conclusion.
It doesn't happen according to your philosophical view of the universe, which I can see is extremely deterministic, and according to your definitions of the terms "choose," "decide" and "believe."
FROM MERRIAM WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY:
choose 1 : to select esp. after consideration 2 : decide 3 ; to have a preference for
decide 1 : to arrive at a solution that ends uncertainty or dispute about 2 : to bring to a definitive end (one blow decided the fight) 3 : to induce to come to a choice 4 : to make a choice or judgment
believe 1 : to have religious convictions 2 : to have a firm conviction about something : accept as true 3 : to hold as an opinion : SUPPOSE
Now in the case of personal experiences, the alternate use of the terms you claim are impossible are not impossible at all. For instance, Conan experiences a personal event: i.e. he observes a light phenomenon surrounding people. Assuming this is true, he considers the options available to him (see 1 under "choose" above), he then makes a choice or judgment (see 4 under "decide" above) and either accepts as true or holds as his opinion that the term "aura" is the most appropriate explanation in his mind (see 2 and 3 under "believe" above). Whether the option he has chosen is one you and others think is rational or not is not the point. The point is that IT DOES HAPPEN -- human individuals choose or decide to believe things every day, despite your claim to the contrary.
What confuses me is why you apply such strict determinist rules about "choice" to your conception of the mental construct known as "belief," but then apparently allow free-will to turn up in day-to-day decisions. However sensible arguments concerning determinism are, your certainty in respect to these issues is not readily verifiable by any abservable phenomena. The debate concerning free-will v. determinism (or some combination of the two) rages on, seemingly becoming only more complex with modern advances in physics and psychology, and is anything but settled in the scientific community.
I personally think the jury is out on that one, along with a lot of other stuff, including auras.
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Some choose to believe the phenomenon they see surrounding other people are the auras of those people. They cannot verify it beyond their personal experience, but that does not eliminate the personal experience nor does it prevent them from arriving at their own conclusions about that experience.
Well, for all I know that may be 100% true but it has nothing to do with me or anything I said so...
Interesting attempt to sidestep the heart of the issue by claiming irrelevance. This is actually what the whole conversation is about. The fact is that you and Conan are engaging in this conversation for two different purposes, which is why it is rather useless IMHO. The above statement has everything to do with your statements above. Most specifically, why do you allow me to make the claim here that Conan can make a choice to believe in this statement, but not in the previous one? Your entire point is that Conan should not believe he sees auras because they cannot be independently verified or experienced. Isn't it? If it's not, then what is your point?
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I have never argued that believers should not have the right to believe whatever they believe for whatever reason. I am just pointing out that these beliefs are not rational(not saying that rationality should be the 'be all and end all' of how people view the world BTW).
rational 1 : having reason or understanding 2 : of or relating to reason
Here I tend to agree except that I would not state it so definitively. I would say that it is less rational than some of Conan's other options, and this is only my opinion. However, your point about rationality not necessarily the "be all and end all" is also a good one. I also believe some things that are less rational than some of my options, but that is because I believe that human reason has its limits as I have discussed before.
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I choose to believe that every event in existence serves some purpose that is not always obvious -- that "everything happens for a reason" or somehow serves some higher good than is readily apparent.
Case in point. WHY do you believe such a thing? What phenomenom or knowledge leads you to the inference that there is some "purpose" behind everything that happens? Not enopugh time to get deep into this here but you will one day discover that this line of reasoning leads to some pretty mind-boggling paradoxes when followed to it's logical extents.
Man you're not kidding on that one. Been there done that. In fact the paradoxes are rather mind-boggling, especially on the surface. However, if you and I were to engage in weeks of discussion about this idea of mine it might at least become an interesting brain-teaser. There's just too much wrapped up in it to make a meaningful statement about it here.
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But in any case you do NOT "choose" this belief. it either makes sense to you or it does not. You beli9eve it or you don't. Same way that tomatos either taste good to you or they do not. If tomatos casue you to gag(as they do ME) then you cannot simply wake up adn decide to like them adn all of a sudden they will taste like chocolate or soemthing.
Not so black-and-white. Once again, I, like Conan, contemplate my personal experiences and observations, consider the options available to me, then make a choice or judgment and accept as true or hold as my opinion that "everything happens for a reason" I therefore choose or decide to believe it.
Your example of disliking tomatoes is not on point. This is a direct sensory experience you are having, not a choice, just as you state. Your senses do not allow you to have multiple options from which to choose, your brain makes the choice for you. In the case of personal beliefs, the range of options is broad.
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It's kind of a "spiritual physics" I believe in,
I believe the term you are looking for is metaphysics
Well, metaphysics is a bit too general for what I was referring to, especially if you're thinking of it in the esoteric/occultist sense. What I believe is a very specific type of spiritual cause-effect relationship between all occurrences, which is indeed a brand of metaphysics, but also encompasses elements of Grand Unified Field Theory, particularly quantum theory/indeterminism, at which level many physicists see Newtonian determinism breaking down. (Either that or there is a deeper principle of determinism which lies beyond the Human ability to perceive it).
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It may not be a rational thing for me to believe but I don't care. The belief has served me well in my life, and has allowed me to accept negative occurrences and see the good in them that I might not have been able to see without holding such a belief.
Just out of curiosity...do you think that those of us who do not share these sorts of beliefs are worse off in terms of dealing with "negative occurances"?
Ahh -- ferreting out a few details here, are we??? Very well then... Let me think.
No, not necessarily. Maybe not at all. Part of my belief fabric is that peoples' decisions and beliefs are all part of the spiritually interactive process of the "everything happening." So the "negative occurrences" as you refer to them become part of the spiritual interactive-learning process, as is their perception that such occurrences are negative, as are their decisions and choices about how to react to those "negative occurances." That may not make any sense without discussing some of the larger pieces. but again, this is another subject.
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Also, do you think that your personal desires should be taken into consideration when determiniung what is real and what isn't?
Do I think they should? No, assuming you are speaking strictly of the material world. People frequently do so anyway. But these words all take on new meanings if you begin referring to things as love, altruism, and other less material concerns into the mix. For instance I believe that loving personal desires can alter reality. Not the material reality, but the reality of the energy coursing through sentient beings. But I don't think that's what you were talking about.Quote:
For example, I really wish and want for magic to exist. I am a huge fan of fantasy fiction and would love to live in a world of swords and sorcery. It would better enable me to handle negative occurances such a my relatives getting cancer or my own dibetes since I could search for an arcane cure for these conditions when scientific cures are not forthcoming.
SHould I then view sorcery as being probable?
So sorry to hear about these events, my friend. The answer is no as it was stated. But strict materialism/determinism, and swords and sorcerers, are not the only two options.
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It's sort of a "trust in the universe" -- a relinquishment of my ego-understanding as a human being that every force at work around us is readily observable. I personally strongly suspect that not all those forces are as observable as we think, and that it is perhaps arrogant for us to presume we can.
Argh! Someone has once again trotted out the "arrogance" chestnut. I know that you probably were not intending to insult me or any other critical thinkers here but nonetheless, this IS insulting. Let me put it this way: How would YOU react to the following:
People hold onto mystical and karmic views of the universe out of arrogance and egotism. They get so full of themselves, imagining that everything that ever happens in the universe, no matter how bad, is somehow existent for the purpose of bettering the universe, for THEM!
?
Doesn't sound so innocent directed at you does it? I won't even get started on what Einstein had to say about such things(you think I am a skeptic? Einstein was like a "no more Mr. Nice guy" version of me at times!).
It sounds fine to me (except the "FOR THEM" part, that's not accurate assuming you were referring to my beliefs). I happen to think that the Western World is highly arrogant. I also happen to think I am arrogant as well, to a degree I am unaware of. That's because I have both Indian and White blood coursing in my veins, I live with my feet planted firmly in two different worlds and worldviews, and I have a rather negative overall comparative impression of the Western World. I will be the first to admit my own judgments of the Western World are themselves arrogant, but I also happen to believe they are correct, and can trot out reems of examples if you'd like.
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It's sort of a thinking that just because we can't observe something then it may be because of our limitations, rather than thinking that if we can't observe it it doesn't exist.
Big problems with that line of thinking though:
1)This argument suggests that we should beware of gremlins while driving and careful not to step on pixies while hiking through the woods. After all, just because we are so limited in our ability to percieve does nopt mean they don't exist!
2)It does not logically follow that, because we are not able to see every detail of the universe at once, ANYTHING may be possible or even likely. That is akin to saying that since my ability to inspect the automobiles of the world is so limited( I can check out a dozen or so cars every 5 minutes of working fast), there MAY be some street legal cars made entirely of fog!
3)Contrary to popular belief, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence! It is very STRONG evidence indeed! Not "proof" but EVIDENCE! Things which so completely lack evidence for their existence can be ontologically proven to not exist and are, in fact imaginary things.
Yes, I agree with almost everything you say here. It seems perfectly compatible with my own observations. Especially the "not proof" part. But we have to proceed in a reasonable manner lest, as you have argued, we end up sitting on our hands in order to avoid running over those cute little gremlins.
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Also, dreaming up outrageous examples of charming dragons and making jokes about green cheese is an entirely separate thing than discussing personal experiences and observations.
This is wrong. You are presuming my examples were "outrageous" or "jokes" because you do not believe these things. It is like a Christian saying "Do not compare God(Yahweh) with such silly ideas as "Allah" or "Zeus"!"
Fact is, NO extraordinary claim has a default degree of rationality or silliness compared to any other claims. I did not compare dragons and auras and such because I think dragons are sillier and was trying to make someone else's beliefs seem silly as dragons. To skeptics/rationalists dragons, auras, souls, gods, fairies...all of these are equal. We do not allow personal biases to cloud our objective evaluations of these claims. It may surprise you to know that even today there are a great many believers in dragons(especially amongst wiccans and such).
Perhaps we are both overstating our claims. Are there individuals who believe in Santa Clause (who are not children)? I find your attempts to deny your comparisons between Conan's auras (a term he has selected to refer to a personal experience) to Santa Clause and dragons alike disingenuous and self-defeating.
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The point is that ALL extraordiunary claims are subject to the same demands for evidence and rational justification. Your beliefs and Conan's beliefs do not get a proverbial "free pass" because YOU happen to think some beliefs are silly or less popular than your own.
Totally agreed, but irrelevant. Nobody's looking for a free pass here. That's not the point. The point is comparing Conan's conclusions concerning his personal experience to ridiculous examples that have nothing to do with anyone's personal experiences.
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One could easily take such comparisons as ridicule,
And to do so would be fallacious. The rational course would be to show SOME evidence which suggests the beliefs in question are "less silly" than dragons and such. NOT to feign indignation adn start shooting at teh messenger who dares point out that your beliefs are on equal footing with things you do NOT believe in!
In other words, you disbelieve in dragons, NOT because they have been disproven or because they lack some degree of justification that your own beliefs meet.
None of this makes me feel terribly indignant, how about you? Sorry you didn't like my cleverly-disguised warning shot (LOL -- just kidding)
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if it were not so obvious that the comparisons are not accurate. If an individual has an unusual experience and cares to discuss what it might mean with others and arrive at personal conclusions, then such activity is perfectly legitimate human activity. You choose not to believe his claims of seeing auras, but you are not the one having the experience -- he is.
I do not "choose" to believe or not to believe ANYTHING. When people claim to be experiencing an existential pneomenom such as "auras" or "pink unicorns" or WIND for that matter, there are a few possibilities:
1)The phenomenom exists and can theoretically be demonstrated through science.
2)The phenomenom does NOT exist and the person is believing a faslehood.
The ONLY things which cannot be substantiated through science are imaginary things and delusions.
Already covered much of this above. You left out a third option:
3) Human perception is limited in a way that prevents said human (or the average human) from becoming aware of all phenomena occurring in the universe. Assumptions in favor or against the existence of such extra-sensory phenomena may or my not be accurate, but are not verifiable as existing or not existing either way.
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But here is the thing: We are NOT talking about two different "experiences", per se. We are talking about experiences and CLAIMS fo experiences. This is not to imply that someone is lying or somesuch nonsense either. There are a plethora of natural explanations for why people regularly believe in patently false things, having mostly to do with human behavior and psychology.
I have never been to Six FLags amusement park. And yet I do not doubt that these parks adn teh rides therein exist! Now why is that if I am such a (as some have basically said) 'closed-minded skeptic who has to have scientific proof of his full bladder before he can pee!'?
The answer is that amusement parks are not extraordinary claims. We regularly observe such things to exist and understanding basic physics adn engineering principles confirms that rollercoasters and such are not doubtful.
But if someone points to apparently empty parking lot and says "Lets go over there and ride that giant FTL rollercoaster with the topless supermodels!" they are making an extraordinary claim because invisible coasters that travel faster than light not only violate physics but are NEVER observed. SO before I agree to go ride that coaster, I will need some extraordinary evidence..
Probablity is a matter of degree. Not so black and white. It is clear from this entire last part of your post that a major part of our disagreement arises from the fact that I am assuming Conan's claim that he sees something surrounding people is true, and you are assuming his claim is false.
I maintain that making the comparisons you are making appears to be ridicule, whether you recognize it or not. Conan has stated that he observes certain light disturbances around people, and I have already offered one possible natural explanation for that phenomenon. This claim is therefore not entirely outrageous. You may repeat that Conan's observations are as probable as green dragons flying through the air, or that your examples are not comparatively outragous, or that Conan's is equally so, and in doing so will lose credibility in the minds of more critical observers.
This has been interesting, USAtheist. Thanks for the lively interchange!
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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USAtheist
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posted September 20, 2005 05:25 AM |
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Will reply to Bort, Peace', and anyone else I am forgetting about withion the next few days. REally busy adn really sick ATM.
BTW, Peace' to answer your earlier question; "IRRC" was a typo. Was supposed to be "IIRC"(If I Remember Correctly).
Be back in due time...
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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USAtheist
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posted September 25, 2005 05:26 PM |
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@bort:
Earlier you responded to my bit about "round squares" by stating that I was correct only if we posit that flat/2D space is necessary for "squareness"(for lack of a better word).
But that is exactly the point I am making! As soon as you enter 3 dimensional space into the equation you are not talking about "squares", but possibly cubes and even then a "round cube" cannot exist since a cube, by definition is something lacking 'roundness'.
A square is a flat(negligible thickness), 2D object of four equal sides that meet at 90 degree angles. If it has rounded corners, it is no longer a square. For all intents and purposes, the relevant definition of "square" is " a 2 dimensional shape that lacks any roundness or curves" and therefore such a shape cannot also be "rounded" in any way. A thing cannot be 'A' and 'Not A' at once.
Squares, circles and lines still exist in 3D space. 2D space can still have curvature. "Dimensionality" is defined by how many coordinates you need to identify a position in space. One dimensional space, such as a number line only requires one number. 2D space requires 2 - X,Y or an angle and r, for instance. 3D space requires 3 - X,Y,Z or 2 angles and r or whatever other coordinate system you choose. So, for instance, the surface of a pool ball is a 2D surface even though it is curved (you could represent any point on its surface as two angles, much the way that we use longitude and latitude). Now if you draw an object on that with 4 90 degree angles, what you see will not be a square (in fact, if I remember my math correctly, the shape won't actually be closed). Another way of seeing this effect is to draw a square on a deflated balloon and then blow it up - the square has curvature now because the space that it is on has curvature. Similarly, a planet's orbit can be adequately described by having it move in a straight line along space that is distorted by the gravitational field of the sun.
Unfortunately, there are no known adequate analogies for curved 3D space but the physical models that are a consequence of allowing curvature of space do turn out to be very good ones.
That is all well adn good but the point I am getting at is that something cannot be both "Round" and "Not round". If you personally are defining "square" in such a way that it is a "possibly round shape". then that is fine, whatever your reasoning for doing so. The point I am making about logical contraidction though is that something CANNOT be defined by two contradictory qualities such as "flat and completely lacking flatness" or "Only two dimensional but also three dimensional".
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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USAtheist
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posted September 25, 2005 09:09 PM |
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It doesn't happen according to your philosophical view of the universe, which I can see is extremely deterministic, and according to your definitions of the terms "choose," "decide" and "believe."
I am NOT a determinist. Not even close!
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FROM MERRIAM WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY:
choose 1 : to select esp. after consideration 2 : decide 3 ; to have a preference for
decide 1 : to arrive at a solution that ends uncertainty or dispute about 2 : to bring to a definitive end (one blow decided the fight) 3 : to induce to come to a choice 4 : to make a choice or judgment
believe 1 : to have religious convictions 2 : to have a firm conviction about something : accept as true 3 : to hold as an opinion : SUPPOSE
Just a side note but dictionaries do NOT give "meanings". They give USAGES. Citing a dictionary to make one's case in debates such as these is an exercise in futility at best.
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Now in the case of personal experiences, the alternate use of the terms you claim are impossible are not impossible at all. For instance, Conan experiences a personal event: i.e. he observes a light phenomenon surrounding people. Assuming this is true, he considers the options available to him (see 1 under "choose" above), he then makes a choice or judgment (see 4 under "decide" above) and either accepts as true or holds as his opinion that the term "aura" is the most appropriate explanation in his mind (see 2 and 3 under "believe" above). Whether the option he has chosen is one you and others think is rational or not is not the point.
Correct that my assessment of the rationality of his belief is not at issue here. But my point remains: He cannot CHOOSE to believe what he believes. Your above does nothing to refute this. The only way you can really show me to be wrong here is to explain mechanistically how someone can simply decide to believe something and it will suddenly seem reasonable to them.
Again, try "choosing" to believe in Santa CLaus and tell us how it goes. IF you are unable to simply decide to believe this then my case stands. The reason you CANNOT decide to believe such a thing is that your mind tells you this sounds like nonsense before and regardless of any contemplation you engage in. If after some contemplation your mind says "Hey! That makes sense!" then this will STILL not be a conscious "choice" on your part.
Choice does not imply or entail being compelled by rationality or evidence.
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The point is that IT DOES HAPPEN -- human individuals choose or decide to believe things every day, despite your claim to the contrary.
No, it does NOT happen. I am very open to being proven wrong here but you will have to give me more than this assertion.
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What confuses me is why you apply such strict determinist rules about "choice" to your conception of the mental construct known as "belief," but then apparently allow free-will to turn up in day-to-day decisions.
I am NOT a determinist. I fully accept that free will is a reality(though I could be wrong). These are not "determinist rules" either. It is simple logic and understanding of human behavior/psychology.
If you could pick and choose what you believe then you would be able to simply choose to believe in fire-breathing dragons and become instantly fearful of any shadowy objects passing overhead.
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However sensible arguments concerning determinism are, your certainty in respect to these issues is not readily verifiable by any abservable phenomena. The debate concerning free-will v. determinism (or some combination of the two) rages on, seemingly becoming only more complex with modern advances in physics and psychology, and is anything but settled in the scientific community.
I agree but I am not a determinsit. I do not expect the matter to be resolved anytime soon. My conviction that we have free will is something I cannot prove at this point to any determinist. You could say I strongly suspect that whenever I have chosen one option over others I could just as easily have chosen other options.
My problem with determinism is that there is no way to falsify such a belief.
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I personally think the jury is out on that one, along with a lot of other stuff, including auras.
I agree that the jury is out on free will vs. determinism(for the most part anyway) but as far as auras go...? Nope. These things do not exist. I would love to be proven wrong but I do not expect this will happen.
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Some choose to believe the phenomenon they see surrounding other people are the auras of those people. They cannot verify it beyond their personal experience, but that does not eliminate the personal experience nor does it prevent them from arriving at their own conclusions about that experience.
Irrelevant. To the objective skeptic we are still left with a mere CLAIM of being able to see such things. A claim unsupported by any evidence. I am not denying their right to believe whatever they believe I am just showing that, RATIONALLY, the case is not made. There are SCORES of more likely explanations for the claim than them actually being true.
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Well, for all I know that may be 100% true but it has nothing to do with me or anything I said so...
Interesting attempt to sidestep the heart of the issue by claiming irrelevance.
I made no such attempt and if you are going to insult me then come out with it. Quote the ENTIRETY of what I say, IN CONTEXT(that includes the portion that I was replying to) and then show my reasoning faulty. You posted an irrelevant conclusion and tried to apply it to me via strawman argument. Go back and try again.
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This is actually what the whole conversation is about. The fact is that you and Conan are engaging in this conversation for two different purposes, which is why it is rather useless IMHO.
This is not right. If Conan had responded to Svarog or me with "I am not interested in debate. I just want to post about my spirituality and listen to other like-minded people's comments" and I still kept posting the skeptic's angle THEN you could say that. But we have been engaged in a lengthy debate for some time now, both attempting to use rationality to support our positions(and I will let everyone decide for themselves who was successful in that regard). You cannot come in several pages later and try to wipe this all out by stating that we are here for different purposes, as if Conan was unaware that I was skeptical or I was unaware that he was a believer!?
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The above statement has everything to do with your statements above.
False.
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Most specifically, why do you allow me to make the claim here that Conan can make a choice to believe in this statement, but not in the previous one?
??? I do not follow. What "claim" are you refering to?
If I truly let such a "claim" slide then it was out of a concern for brevity and/or not beating a dead horse.
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Your entire point is that Conan should not believe he sees auras because they cannot be independently verified or experienced. Isn't it? If it's not, then what is your point?
Hardly. It is not for ME to tell other people what they should or should not believe. I am merely pointing out that there are HIGHLY likely, oft observed, rational/mundane explanations for why he believes these things. He is not obligated to accept this but the rationality of my skepticism and the irrationality of his beliefs remain so regardless.
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I have never argued that believers should not have the right to believe whatever they believe for whatever reason. I am just pointing out that these beliefs are not rational(not saying that rationality should be the 'be all and end all' of how people view the world BTW).
rational 1 : having reason or understanding 2 : of or relating to reason
Here I tend to agree except that I would not state it so definitively. I would say that it is less rational than some of Conan's other options, and this is only my opinion. However, your point about rationality not necessarily the "be all and end all" is also a good one. I also believe some things that are less rational than some of my options, but that is because I believe that human reason has its limits as I have discussed before.
You misunderstood my point about rationality not being the "be-all-and-end-all". I was simply saying that I was NOT arguing such a thing(that rationality was the be-all..."). It was a pre-emptive against the tired old "Science/reason/logic is not everything! It cannot tell you how to love your mother/raise your child/etc." nonsense.
Existential claism are either rational or they are not. I am NOT saying that people cannot believe in things that are irrational. I am only making the case that some claims, which people often assume are rational(auras, ghosts, magic, psi, gods etc.) are entirely IRRATIONAL(whether you have any appreciation of rationality or not).
SO why point this out? Simple. Most people will readily accept/believe in the validity of "auras"(for example), in spite of their being absolutely NO rational justiifcation for them but they will DISBELIEVE in, say, fairies or specific gods because these things lack rational justification.
To my mind this is nonsense piled atop a heaping plate of absurdity and sprinkled with a dash of wishful thinking which they attempt to devour with an imaginary fork!
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But in any case you do NOT "choose" this belief. it either makes sense to you or it does not. You believe it or you don't. Same way that tomatos either taste good to you or they do not. If tomatos cause you to gag(as they do ME) then you cannot simply wake up and decide to like them and all of a sudden they will taste like chocolate or something.
Not so black-and-white. Once again, I, like Conan, contemplate my personal experiences and observations, consider the options available to me, then make a choice or judgment and accept as true or hold as my opinion that "everything happens for a reason" I therefore choose or decide to believe it.
You are missing my point again. Yes, you contemplate. Yes, you make decisions. But you do NOT "choose" what sounds reasonable to you. You do NOT choose what makes sense to you. If your mind were to tell you right now "Hey, USAtheist has a point there. I can see what he is saying now!"(I know, highly unlikely but still...) then you would not be able to "choose" to believe I were an irrational lunatic spouting gibberish.
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Your example of disliking tomatoes is not on point. This is a direct sensory experience you are having, not a choice, just as you state.
It is entirely on point! The "sensory experience" is incidental. Many "believers" in patent falsehoods also believe they have had sensory experiences(whether they have had them or not) and they believe them to be of a particular nature of explanation. All we can do is, to the best of our ability, analyse the evidence and use logic to arrive at rational conclusions. But even arriving at the rational conclusion that, for example, "God does not exist" does not prohibit fideists from believing he exists. Any number of things from gut-feelings and emotions to delusion can lead to belief in something irrational.
For example: If I start seeing "shadow demons" coming out of my walls right now, I KNOW that there are many rational explanations for this experience but even so, I will recoild in fear/horror at them(thus, in a sense "believing them" regardless of my concious "choices").
But at the same time, as a skeptic, I would listen to my doctors and aknowledge the likelihood that I was disturbed and needed medications to control my delusions.
The difference between I, as a hypothetical shadow-demon seeing skeptic and Conan as an aura-seeing non-skeptic is that he seems adamant in refusing to accept the rational explanations. He is content to jump at the shadows.
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Your senses do not allow you to have multiple options from which to choose, your brain makes the choice for you. In the case of personal beliefs, the range of options is broad.
Our senses don't allow for multiple options? So it is impossible for two hunters in the woods to hear the same sound and draw different conclusions as to what made the sound? It is impossible for two different people to see an object in the sky and draw two different conclusions about what it was?
better run this by the UFOlogists and Sasquatch enthusiasts eh?
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It's kind of a "spiritual physics" I believe in,
I believe the term you are looking for is metaphysics
Well, metaphysics is a bit too general for what I was referring to, especially if you're thinking of it in the esoteric/occultist sense. What I believe is a very specific type of spiritual cause-effect relationship between all occurrences, which is indeed a brand of metaphysics, but also encompasses elements of Grand Unified Field Theory, particularly quantum theory/indeterminism, at which level many physicists see Newtonian determinism breaking down. (Either that or there is a deeper principle of determinism which lies beyond the Human ability to perceive it).
Skeptics often refer to you guys as "quarkpots" . It seems that there are many who atre under the impression that the newness of quantum theories/qunantum mechansics = a degree of uncertainty so great that anything is possible! The truth is not so dramatic as J.Z. Knight and Shirley McClaine make it out to be. Quantum physics and such do not indicate "spiritual truths" any more than other branch of science does. Things just behave somewhat differently at the quantum/micro level than they do at the general/macro level but not so differently that, for example, Middle Earth exists there or ghosts and gods or what have you.
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It may not be a rational thing for me to believe but I don't care. The belief has served me well in my life, and has allowed me to accept negative occurrences and see the good in them that I might not have been able to see without holding such a belief.
Just out of curiosity...do you think that those of us who do not share these sorts of beliefs are worse off in terms of dealing with "negative occurances"?
Ahh -- ferreting out a few details here, are we??? Very well then... Let me think.
No, not necessarily. Maybe not at all. Part of my belief fabric is that peoples' decisions and beliefs are all part of the spiritually interactive process of the "everything happening." So the "negative occurrences" as you refer to them become part of the spiritual interactive-learning process, as is their perception that such occurrences are negative, as are their decisions and choices about how to react to those "negative occurances." That may not make any sense without discussing some of the larger pieces. but again, this is another subject.
So your belief here is a spandrel? A spandrel is something in architecture that serves no utilitarian/structural purpose for the building but sort of "dresses up" the corners. In other words, the building would still stand and function as it does if the spandrels were removed but some people put them in for aesthetic reasons.
The universe appears to not have any need for any "spiritual reality" but some people put such stuff into their picture of reality for aesthetic reasons.
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Also, do you think that your personal desires should be taken into consideration when determining what is real and what isn't?
Do I think they should? No, assuming you are speaking strictly of the material world.
I am speaking of the only KNOWN "world". I cannot comment on what is likely imaginary and to presume a "spiritual world" exists without justification for such goes against my skeptical mindset. But when you say that something "exists"(independently existing)you are not talking about things like ideas, numbers, beauty etc.(which have a dependent existence), you are saying it is part of OUR reality. There is no difference between a non-existent thing and something that exists in "some other reality"(see invisible, intangible Angelina Jolie in my bedroom).
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People frequently do so anyway. But these words all take on new meanings if you begin referring to things as love, altruism, and other less material concerns into the mix. For instance I believe that loving personal desires can alter reality. Not the material reality, but the reality of the energy coursing through sentient beings. But I don't think that's what you were talking about.
Argh...going in circles here. IF emotional states(i.e. "loving, personal desires") can alter some "other reality" but none of this can affect material reality how can you even draw such an inference?
Let me try another analogy to make my point here:
We are standing in front of a house and an empty lot. I say to you "That is a nice house." and you say "I agree. BOTH of them are nice."
"Wha...? What do you mean "both of them"?? There is only one house there." I reply.
"No..." you continue "there is a pink one right there(*pointing towards apparently empty lot)!"
Now, in the above, there are several different options:
1)Your eyes are physiologically different than mine which would be confirmed by a routine examination of your eyes as well as me attempting to walk through the "empty lot" and running into a house.
2)You are delusional and seeing things which do not exist. This would be easy enough to show. If no one else is walking AROUND your pink house we can assume that it is not there.
3)You know that no such house exists but for whatever reason, you are being deceptive.
4)You are part of some "other reality" but for some reason interact with THIS reality, even though there is no discerable mechanism by which such a thing should be occuring.
Occam's razor suggests 2) or 3) and rules out 1) and 4).
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For example, I really wish and want for magic to exist. I am a huge fan of fantasy fiction and would love to live in a world of swords and sorcery. It would better enable me to handle negative occurances such a my relatives getting cancer or my own dibetes since I could search for an arcane cure for these conditions when scientific cures are not forthcoming.
SHould I then view sorcery as being probable?
So sorry to hear about these events, my friend. The answer is no as it was stated. But strict materialism/determinism, and swords and sorcerers, are not the only two options.
The point was that wishes/desires have no bearing on reality. If the spiritual does not exist(as appears to be the case) then it is irrational for anyone to conclude otherwise simply because they wish it were so. I was not presenting any false dichomotomy here. My wish for swords and sorcery to be reality is the same as your wish for spirtuality to be actual as far as I can tell.
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It's sort of a "trust in the universe" -- a relinquishment of my ego-understanding as a human being that every force at work around us is readily observable. I personally strongly suspect that not all those forces are as observable as we think, and that it is perhaps arrogant for us to presume we can.
Argh! Someone has once again trotted out the "arrogance" chestnut. I know that you probably were not intending to insult me or any other critical thinkers here but nonetheless, this IS insulting. Let me put it this way: How would YOU react to the following:
People hold onto mystical and karmic views of the universe out of arrogance and egotism. They get so full of themselves, imagining that everything that ever happens in the universe, no matter how bad, is somehow existent for the purpose of bettering the universe, for THEM!
?
Doesn't sound so innocent directed at you does it? I won't even get started on what Einstein had to say about such things(you think I am a skeptic? Einstein was like a "no more Mr. Nice guy" version of me at times!).
It sounds fine to me (except the "FOR THEM" part, that's not accurate assuming you were referring to my beliefs). I happen to think that the Western World is highly arrogant. I also happen to think I am arrogant as well, to a degree I am unaware of. That's because I have both Indian and White blood coursing in my veins, I live with my feet planted firmly in two different worlds and worldviews, and I have a rather negative overall comparative impression of the Western World. I will be the first to admit my own judgments of the Western World are themselves arrogant, but I also happen to believe they are correct, and can trot out reems of examples if you'd like.
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It's sort of a thinking that just because we can't observe something then it may be because of our limitations, rather than thinking that if we can't observe it it doesn't exist.
Big problems with that line of thinking though:
1)This argument suggests that we should beware of gremlins while driving and careful not to step on pixies while hiking through the woods. After all, just because we are so limited in our ability to percieve does nopt mean they don't exist!
2)It does not logically follow that, because we are not able to see every detail of the universe at once, ANYTHING may be possible or even likely. That is akin to saying that since my ability to inspect the automobiles of the world is so limited( I can check out a dozen or so cars every 5 minutes if working fast), there MAY be some street legal cars made entirely of fog!
3)Contrary to popular belief, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence! It is very STRONG evidence indeed! Not "proof" but EVIDENCE! Things which so completely lack evidence for their existence can be ontologically proven to not exist and are, in fact imaginary things.
Yes, I agree with almost everything you say here. It seems perfectly compatible with my own observations. Especially the "not proof" part. But we have to proceed in a reasonable manner lest, as you have argued, we end up sitting on our hands in order to avoid running over those cute little gremlins.
But what is "proof" if not a preponderance of evidence? SO far ALL of the "evidence" falls on the side of materialism and non-spirituality and yet you believe contrary to this!? You go to some lengths to latch onto the "not proof" portion of the above as if it were a lifeline to save the sinking ship of spirituality, while simulataneously ignoring the fact that you are STILL surrounded by water and not "spirit stuff".
Fundementally speaking, what is the difference between the "spiritual reality" and the "lurking grue" or "Invisible Pink Unicorn"?
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Also, dreaming up outrageous examples of charming dragons and making jokes about green cheese is an entirely separate thing than discussing personal experiences and observations.
This is wrong. You are presuming my examples were "outrageous" or "jokes" because you do not believe these things. It is like a Christian saying "Do not compare God(Yahweh) with such silly ideas as "Allah" or "Zeus"!"
Fact is, NO extraordinary claim has a default degree of rationality or silliness compared to any other claims. I did not compare dragons and auras and such because I think dragons are sillier and was trying to make someone else's beliefs seem silly as dragons. To skeptics/rationalists dragons, auras, souls, gods, fairies...all of these are equal. We do not allow personal biases to cloud our objective evaluations of these claims. It may surprise you to know that even today there are a great many believers in dragons(especially amongst wiccans and such).
Perhaps we are both overstating our claims. Are there individuals who believe in Santa Clause (who are not children)? I find your attempts to deny your comparisons between Conan's auras (a term he has selected to refer to a personal experience) to Santa Clause and dragons alike disingenuous and self-defeating.
But you are dodging the obvious fact here. It does not matter HOW MANY believe in a given claim as to it's veracity. Just because only ONE person in the whole world believes in 'X' does NOT, by itself make that belief "sillier" than "auras". All claims must stand on their own evidences/justification and if YOUR beliefs do not have any more justiifcation than Santa Claus or dragons or whatever, it is not because skeptics have pulled a fast one. The reason I do not use, say belief in dark matter as analogous to belief in "auras" is because that would serve no purpose and would not make my point that you guys arbitrarily pick beliefs you adhere to and dismiss other claims despite identical degrees of evidence/rational justification.
If you can present a logical argument that makes "auras" or "spirit" more rational than, say Santa Claus, then please do so! I will never again use Santa to make this point if you can do that!
But still, my point was NOT to make your beliefs seem "silly" by grouping them with beliefs YOU happen to think are silly because you do not think that many believe them.
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The point is that ALL extraordiunary claims are subject to the same demands for evidence and rational justification. Your beliefs and Conan's beliefs do not get a proverbial "free pass" because YOU happen to think some beliefs are silly or less popular than your own.
Totally agreed, but irrelevant. Nobody's looking for a free pass here. That's not the point. The point is comparing Conan's conclusions concerning his personal experience to ridiculous examples that have nothing to do with anyone's personal experiences.
You did it AGAIN! Even while denying you were doing it! You are asking for a "free pass" by stating, without justification, that some claims are by default "ridiculous" while yours are not! Don't you see? IF someone were to claim that, for example, Santa CLaus existed as per the Christmas fables. It would be upon THEM to make their case, would it not? Or else you would regard the claim as "silly" or "ridiculous", correct?
YOUR BELIEFS DO NOT GET A FREE PASS! The claims you guys are making are EVERY BIT as "ridiculous" as Santa CLaus to the objective observer/critical thinker. YOU are obligated to back them up!
Else the only difference I see between Santa Claus and "spiritual realities" is in the number of adults who believe in them. They are equally silly.
IF people were indoctrinated with "Santa belief"(or "Genie-belief" or whatever) from a young age the way we are indoctrinated with spiritual beliefs, you can bet your arse that "Santaism" would be just as widespread. After all, what is the Christian God but a larger version of Santa CLaus?
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if it were not so obvious that the comparisons are not accurate. If an individual has an unusual experience and cares to discuss what it might mean with others and arrive at personal conclusions, then such activity is perfectly legitimate human activity. You choose not to believe his claims of seeing auras, but you are not the one having the experience -- he is.
I do not "choose" to believe or not to believe ANYTHING. When people claim to be experiencing an existential pneomenom such as "auras" or "pink unicorns" or WIND for that matter, there are a few possibilities:
1)The phenomenom exists and can theoretically be demonstrated through science.
2)The phenomenom does NOT exist and the person is believing a faslehood.
The ONLY things which cannot be substantiated through science are imaginary things and delusions.
Already covered much of this above. You left out a third option:
3) Human perception is limited in a way that prevents said human (or the average human) from becoming aware of all phenomena occurring in the universe. Assumptions in favor or against the existence of such extra-sensory phenomena may or my not be accurate, but are not verifiable as existing or not existing either way.
I did not leave out this option. The option is not viable. If humans are unable to verify the existence of a thing then it is indistinguishable form an imaginary thing and there is no point in dwelling on it. I can claim that the reason people think I am masturbating is because their senses are too limited to percieve invisible Angelina all I want but for all intents and purposes, I am still masturbating. Invisible, intangible Angelina's existence os of no more relevance than her non-existence.
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But here is the thing: We are NOT talking about two different "experiences", per se. We are talking about experiences and CLAIMS of experiences. This is not to imply that someone is lying or somesuch nonsense either. There are a plethora of natural explanations for why people regularly believe in patently false things, having mostly to do with human behavior and psychology.
I have never been to Six FLags amusement park. And yet I do not doubt that these parks and the rides therein exist! Now why is that if I am such a (as some have basically said) 'closed-minded skeptic who has to have scientific proof of his full bladder before he can pee!'?
The answer is that amusement parks are not extraordinary claims. We regularly observe such things to exist and understanding basic physics and engineering principles confirms that rollercoasters and such are not doubtful.
But if someone points to apparently empty parking lot and says "Lets go over there and ride that giant FTL rollercoaster with the topless supermodels!" they are making an extraordinary claim because invisible coasters that travel faster than light not only violate physics but are NEVER observed. SO before I agree to go ride that coaster, I will need some extraordinary evidence..
Probablity is a matter of degree. Not so black and white. It is clear from this entire last part of your post that a major part of our disagreement arises from the fact that I am assuming Conan's claim that he sees something surrounding people is true, and you are assuming his claim is false.
More accurately, I am "assuming" that there are better, more plausible explanations for his alleged "experience" than the actual existence of auras. IF his eyes were physiologically different than a normal persons, that would be ONE such explanation(easily verified/falsified). Pattern reognition is another. Deception is yet another. Delusion also one.
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I maintain that making the comparisons you are making appears to be ridicule, whether you recognize it or not.
It is not a matter of my ability to recognise such. It is that you are employing a logical fallacy as a means of evading an undesireable conclusion. It is the same as when anti-skeptics accuse James Randi of being a nefarious scammer and his promise of 1 million ndollars a sham to avoid taking up his challenge. The fact is, they CANNOT adn HAVE not been able to prove their claims by any controlled tests so they attack his character or question his intent.
If I were out to ridicule others, I have a FAR more effective repetoire, trust me. I used to practically make a career out of ridiculing people. Such is not what I am doing here.
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Conan has stated that he observes certain light disturbances around people, and I have already offered one possible natural explanation for that phenomenon.
And I agreed that that was a good hypothesis.
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This claim is therefore not entirely outrageous.
AH...but you are taking this out of context now, as if Conan were simply saying that he was experiencing problems with his vision or somesuch. He qualified his claims a few times adding that there was nothing different or wrong with his eyes and that the appearances of these "auras" WERE just that...AURAS. He did not say or even hint that he was ready to aknowledge misperception/delusion/etc. as being possible. He also said these auras were indicative of an "energy" he could manipulate to heal others.
Clearly his claims were not so innocent as you are painting them now and I am right to be skeptical of them.
This thread is called the "Spirituality thread". Not the "Help! I am seeing strange things!" thread.
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You may repeat that Conan's observations are as probable as green dragons flying through the air, or that your examples are not comparatively outragous, or that Conan's is equally so, and in doing so will lose credibility in the minds of more critical observers.
This has been interesting, USAtheist. Thanks for the lively interchange!
No problem. Thanks for the insults and dodges.
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted September 26, 2005 08:53 PM |
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Hey there USAthiest! I was wondering if you were coming back!
I think congratulations to us both are in order here. Between the two of us, I believe we just achieved the longest post in HC history.
Since it has gotten so long it is incomprehensible to anyone but us and since I am even having trouble ferreting out who said what now, I will simply respond with some closing points.
First, you may continue to choose to believe that people cannot choose to believe a certain thing, but I'm afraid they are going to continue to choose to believe things whether or not you believe they are capable of doing so.
(LOL)
Seriously, though, as I said in my previous post, it is becoming clear that we are talking about two different things. My posts assume Conan is having the experience he is describing, and I move from that assumption to discuss the logic of his conclusions. Your posts assume he is not having the experience and then you move from there to discuss the logic of his conclusions. And we are talking right past one another.
If there's one thing we both know as students of logic, one cannot have a meaninful dialogue unless the original terms and assumptions are agreed. If I were to make the same assumptions (that he did not have the experience) then I would agree to nearly everything you have said with a few diversions.
Let me illustrate exactly why I think we are talking past one another. I believe it was I who first chose the terms "Conan chooses to believe..." etc. etc. etc. You then argued that one cannot "choose" to "believe" simply anything. Once again, though, I did not say that anyone can "choose" to "believe" anything. For instance, I was just standing outside in my back yard in the middle of the day. I could not "choose" to "believe" that it was night time. I could not choose to believe this because there is no evidence whatsoever that this was the case, and there was overwhelming evidence that it was not the case. Just like you cannot "choose" to like tomatoes; you senses will not allow you to do so. So in that sense I agree with your conclusion.
But this was not the set of circumstances from which I was arguing. I was arguing from the standpoint that Conan personally experienced something for himself, (again, I was making the assumption that he had this personal experience,) and based on that assumption he had several options from which to choose. Unlike me, he did have some evidence in that he was witnessing something - a phenomenon of light surrounding objects. Assuming he had this experience, unlike me standing in the direct sunlight. The fact that his experience cannot be verified by others does not undo the fact that he personally experienced it. Unlike me, whereas my observation was completely objectively verifiable, his was not. It is the very lack of objective, independent verifiability that actually forces him to make a choice about what to believe about it.
You, on the other hand, are arguing from the position that he did not have this experience to begin with. This is why your conclusion differs from my own.
One day you may also have a personal experience which you cannot independently, objectively verify. You will then have the choice of deciding to believe either: a) it didn't happen and it was all in your imagination, b) it did happen and there is some rational scientific explanation for it that is simply eluding you at the moment, or c), d), e)... In any event, you will make a choice about what to believe about your experience. (You will also probably confront the unpleasant reality of others claiming you never had the experience to begin with.)
But the fact that you cannot verify it independently outside of yourself does not undo the personal experience, nor does it eliminate your having to make a choice about your conclusion concerning the experience. You will therefore "choose to believe" something about it. This is not only possible, it is inescapable.
At any rate, I was the one who chose the terms "choose to believe" and I am the one who intended the widely accepted definitions of those terms in order to convery these ideas. You cannot now change my intended meaning by claiming they meant something different than I intended. To do so would be to commit the fallacy of Equivocation. Example:
All feathers are light.
Light is the opposite of dark.
Therefore no feathers are dark.
Now granted, this is not a completely on-point example, but it nonetheless generally illustrates you cannot assign new meanings to the the terms I used and insist I meant something other than what I meant without changing the result of my argument. Surely this is as obvious to you as it is to me.
The reason I found your analogies (Santa Claus, pink unicorns and the like) somewhat ridiculous was because I had not realized the extent of our lack of agreement about the assumed premises. I feel these are not sound analogies because they do not illustrate anything about Conan's personal experience. You thought they were sound analogies because they represented the statistical likelihood of his experience to begin with.
Therefore, the entire point of your whole argument is the conclusion that he did or did not have the experience to begin with, when I was assuming he did as one of my premises. So we were arguing at cross purposes.
Third, I did not intend to insult you. I do call it the way I see it when I see someone else being insulted though, and that's what I was doing because I perceived you as insulting someone else.
That aside, you may continue choosing whatever unflattering descriptors for our sundry ideas, beliefs or whatnot, but that will probably change neither our beliefs nor the fact that you are engaging in a rather thinly-veiled attempt at an Argument from Ridicule. You call me a "quarkpot" and my insights "spandrels." I chuckled when I read your post, by the way. I never heard either one of these. Anyway, either one of us can call me and by beliefs by whatever terms we like, but it's the way I see things working. The difference is that I see no need to try and explain them to you because I was once very much like you and I realize that you can't get here from there without the roadmap of aforementioned personal experiences you choose to believe we are not having.
USAthiest, even though you're not my afore-mentioned professor, I cannot tell you how nice it's been having this discussion. He ended up being my first true love, and this has been a very special walk down (distant) memory lane for me. You are very, very much like him, and I thank you for the resurrection of some of my very fondest memories in life.
I really mean that.
[EDIT]
Oh, by the way, aforementioned professor is now a seventy-year-old Buddhist.
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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USAtheist
Hired Hero
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posted September 27, 2005 12:15 AM |
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Hey there USAthiest! I was wondering if you were coming back!
I think congratulations to us both are in order here. Between the two of us, I believe we just achieved the longest post in HC history.
I have never been accused of being "too concise".
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Since it has gotten so long it is incomprehensible to anyone but us and since I am even having trouble ferreting out who said what now, I will simply respond with some closing points.
PArtly my fault I am sure because, in order to reply to your last, italics-ridden post, I had to ferret out all of the italics tags to remove them(it was either that or apply a bunch of closing tags) and I ran into some difficulty in catching them all. The post is fixed now though.
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First, you may continue to choose to believe that people cannot choose to believe a certain thing, but I'm afraid they are going to continue to choose to believe things whether or not you believe they are capable of doing so.
(LOL)
It seems we are talking in circles here. You seem to be inserting a different usage of the word "belief" and my difficulty with this is because it leads to fallacies of equivocation in a debate that hinges on an entirely different usage of the same word.
Therefore I am going to leave this side-debate alone for thte time being.
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Seriously, though, as I said in my previous post, it is becoming clear that we are talking about two different things. My posts assume Conan is having the experience he is describing, and I move from that assumption to discuss the logic of his conclusions. Your posts assume he is not having the experience and then you move from there to discuss the logic of his conclusions. And we are talking right past one another.
AGAIN, I am NOT assuming any such thing. It is incorrect to assume EITHER position that you describe above. SKeptics deal in likelihoods or probabilities(much more so than absolute certainties). In this thread I am assessing the likelihood of his claim(and your own belief-claims). I do this using Occam's razor.
Occam's razor tells us that his claim being "TRUE" is highly UNLIKELY in comparison with other explanations such as :
1)He did not have the experience ast all and is being deceptive.
2)He DID experience a distortion of his vision due to some problem with his eyes.
3)He is delusional.
etc.
I am NOT(please note that word) assuming ANY of the above. Merely aknowledging that ANY of the above are FAR more likely than what Conan is claiming. Also the above are "ordinary", regularly observed/common, mundane explanations. Before we accept his "extraordinary" explanation, we MUST be able to rule out the "ordinary" ones.
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If there's one thing we both know as students of logic, one cannot have a meaninful dialogue unless the original terms and assumptions are agreed. If I were to make the same assumptions (that he did not have the experience) then I would agree to nearly everything you have said with a few diversions.
And you would be wrong to make such an assumption. I do not make such assumptions either.
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(much pertaining to the "choose to believe" debate snipped for reasons alluded to above)
You, on the other hand, are arguing from the position that he did not have this experience to begin with. This is why your conclusion differs from my own.
No, I amk NOT. Ironically, YOU are making the assumption that I assumed such a thing! You are misunderstanding my position.
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One day you may also have a personal experience which you cannot independently, objectively verify.
If that happens I will tip my hat to you...then eat said hat.
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You will then have the choice of deciding to believe either: a) it didn't happen and it was all in your imagination, b) it did happen and there is some rational scientific explanation for it that is simply eluding you at the moment, or c), d), e)... In any event, you will make a choice about what to believe about your experience. (You will also probably confront the unpleasant reality of others claiming you never had the experience to begin with.)
Somewhat breaking my oath to steer clear of this debate about "choosing to believe" here but...
I would make no such choice in teh above and I do not see how you arrive at such a conclusion!? If I experienced something and did not know what I experienced then I would not "believe" ANYTHING about the experience. The experience would remain "Something I could not explain" until such time as new data illuminates things. If I encountered some new data, even FALSE or misinterpreted data, that convicned me that I had experienced something "extraordinary, then that would NOT be me "choosing" to believe. You CANNOT "choose" what you believe. My mind would either believe a thing or not, regardless of my "choice".
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But the fact that you cannot verify it independently outside of yourself does not undo the personal experience, nor does it eliminate your having to make a choice about your conclusion concerning the experience. You will therefore "choose to believe" something about it. This is not only possible, it is inescapable.
It is completely FALSE! Now let's move on shall we...
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At any rate, I was the one who chose the terms "choose to believe" and I am the one who intended the widely accepted definitions of those terms in order to convery these ideas. You cannot now change my intended meaning by claiming they meant something different than I intended. To do so would be to commit the fallacy of Equivocation. Example:
All feathers are light.
Light is the opposite of dark.
Therefore no feathers are dark.
Now granted, this is not a completely on-point example, but it nonetheless generally illustrates you cannot assign new meanings to the the terms I used and insist I meant something other than what I meant without changing the result of my argument. Surely this is as obvious to you as it is to me.
Yes. What is NOT obvious however is why YOU are telling ME this?!? It is like a murderer telling a police detective that he "should be ashamed"!?
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The reason I found your analogies (Santa Claus, pink unicorns and the like) somewhat ridiculous was because I had not realized the extent of our lack of agreement about the assumed premises. I feel these are not sound analogies because they do not illustrate anything about Conan's personal experience.
Irrelevant. The point of the analogies (as with most or nearly ALL analogies) is not to mimmick the exact, superficial details of an event. The point was to illustrate the arbitrary nature of or outright hypocrisy of believing in "auras" and not "elves" or "Santa" or what have you.
"Santa Claus" = ZERO evidence in support of the inference. Several far more likely, ordinary explanations persist to explain "Santa".
"Auras" = ZERO evidence in support of teh inference. Several far more likely, ordinary explanations persist for this claim as well.
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You thought they were sound analogies because they represented the statistical likelihood of his experience to begin with.
Wrong again.
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Therefore, the entire point of your whole argument is the conclusion that he did or did not have the experience to begin with, when I was assuming he did as one of my premises. So we were arguing at cross purposes.
False. You are commitng the strawman fallacy against me.
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Third, I did not intend to insult you. I do call it the way I see it when I see someone else being insulted though, and that's what I was doing because I perceived you as insulting someone else.
Whatever. Not a big deal as I do not believe you are a nasty person by any stretch. But I DO think that people often percieve "insult" from skeptics when this is not at all the case(e.g. You thinking my analogies were attempts at ridicule) and this often leads to nasty exchanges.
Unless someone directly and unmistakable insults me, I stick to attacking arguments, not people.
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That aside, you may continue choosing whatever unflattering descriptors for our sundry ideas,
I did not choose any "unflattering descriptors". I made a logical point which you cannot counter adn now feel angry about the implications(that "auras" are on par with "Santa"). That you feel "Santa" or "Dragons" are "ridiculous" only go to further support the point I made. You obviously do not think that someone comparing one extraordinary claim with a belief in "auras" to be an insult, correct? Why is that?
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... beliefs or whatnot, but that will probably change neither our beliefs nor the fact that you are engaging in a rather thinly-veiled attempt at an Argument from Ridicule.
Again, I have explained how I was not making any such argument from ridicule. You are unable to address my reasoning but you keep repeating this charge adn THAT is bordering on direct insult. Unless you can show that my analogies are invlaid(note: the objects of the analogy("elves", "dragons", "auras") not being entirely descriptively similar is irrelevant) because they do not make the point I intend, you must drop this speculative charge.
If my intent were to ridicule anyone, BELIEVE ME...I can do a LOT better than saying "You're beliefs are like Santa CLaus!".
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You call me a "quarkpot"...
I did no such thing! The quote function is your friend.
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and my insights "spandrels."
Wrong again. I ASKED if your spiritual beliefs were "spandrels".
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The difference is that I see no need to try and explain them to you because I was once very much like you and I realize that you can't get here from there without the roadmap of aforementioned personal experiences you choose to believe we are not having.
You cannot "choose to beliegve" ANYTHING and I have NEVER "chosen to believe" any such thing as you charge above.
The "I was once like you..." is another logical fallacy BTW(a type of argument from authority or argument from (personal)experience). I can truthfully say that I was once a spiritualist/believer and made the same arguemtns you made but it will do nothing for this debate. WHat is telling is that, for all of your spiritually inclined points you have attempted, you have had to abandon logic and skepticism/critical thinking in order to make them.
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USAthiest, even though you're not my afore-mentioned professor, I cannot tell you how nice it's been having this discussion. He ended up being my first true love, and this has been a very special walk down (distant) memory lane for me. You are very, very much like him, and I thank you for the resurrection of some of my very fondest memories in life.
I really mean that.
[EDIT]
Oh, by the way, aforementioned professor is now a seventy-year-old Buddhist.
Yeah I get that all the time...the "You remind me of a 70-year old buddhist." thing. Must be the leather jacket or the "Misfits" t-shirt.
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"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." - Voltaire
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Conan
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 27, 2005 03:18 AM |
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[offtopic]US Atheist,
I've sent you some Instant Messages ... did you not get them or are you ignoring me? [/offtopic]
I'll delete this post when I get an answer.
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Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service.... us. - Star Trek TNG
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Peacemaker
Honorable
Supreme Hero
Peacemaker = double entendre
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posted September 27, 2005 05:31 PM |
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Hey there USAthiest --
Once again the written word can be misleading. I did not feel angry.
And once again, thanks. This was fun.
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I have menopause and a handgun. Any questions?
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