Adam said: Don't you care at least a little BIT about reality, i.e. what is really REAL? I prefer living MY life based on reality, not just a wishful comforting fantasy that only makes ME feel good. Didn't you learn the lesson of the dangers of chasing after a fantasy while in the JWs?
LT said-
Since my brain is capable of creating my own reality I set a higher priority on manifesting it myself rather than trying to figure out what it (reality) is. God is a not a fantasy, that's just the reality you create for yourself. I personally want nothing to do with it, but you are free to have it.
You ARE aware of the definition of delusion: "a false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence, especially as a symptom of mental illness"?
Hence you've just admitted that creating and supporting delusions is a higher priority to you than determining reality.
So, the answer to my question above (about learning the lesson of the dangers of chasing fantasies which you believe as reality in your own mind) is, "NO", you HAVEN'T learned that lesson.
(You apparently don't understand that as much as you or anyone else wants to BELIEVE God exists, it won't actually happen, right? It's not like in the story of Peter Pan, where a fairy actually dies whenever an adult says fairies don't exist?)
Now you're arguing from an ends-based (teleological) justication, saying "Don't challenge my God belief with facts, and maybe it's possible that it IS a fantasy, but just let me enjoy my fantasy/delusion in peace, because I ENJOY it so...." REALLY? Again: don't you CARE one bit about reality?
You haven't challenged me with THE facts, you have challenged me with YOUR facts. Simply put there is no objective reality.
Have you been reading SBF's posts lately?
There doesn't HAVE to be an objective reality, since fortunately humans agreed that in the absense of KNOWING what things "are", we only have to agree to CONVENTIONS where whatever your perception of a rose may be, I agree that whatever MY perception of the rose may actually be, we both AGREE to call OUR individual perceptions of the rose as a rose.
The REAL fallacy is thinking that there is a being who HAS objective and absolute standards of reality, so if we all only follow HIS wishes, we'll be OK. That's delusional...
What is a fact to you is not necessarily a fact to me. Your fact gathering process has the nasty habbit of missing a lot of them. I must admit, however, that my process is just as flawed.
My fact is that God exists. Your fact is that God doesn't exist.
Speaking of conventions, you might want to check the commonly-accepted definition of the word, 'fact', since you're abusing it, as if you seem to think everybody is entitled to their own facts (you use it as if it's a synomym for 'opinion')? The Moon is verifiably proven and KNOWN to exist as a FACT: in comparison, the claim that God exists is NOT a verifiable FACT, and you are NOT entitled to your own facts.
The problem is believers aren't content to keep their beliefs to themselves, but engage in recruiting others (knocking on doors, etc), forming political organizations/action groups, trying to force their beliefs down MY throat, controlling school curricula for creation science, voting for God-fearing candidates, etc.
You should not return evil for evil, which is exactly what you are doing. You are very correct that it's wrong to force one's reality upon another, because human reality is subjective. Insisting upon others ANY human reality as wholly objective is nothing short of oppression.
For one, I don't find 'evil' to be a particularly useful concept; it's far too simplistic of a concept (the dualistic 'bad/good' concept from Zorasterian beliefs is thought-limiting), and hence it's a "garbage-can" adjective.
But that aside, humans force others to accept commonly-accepted definitions of reality all the time, eg have you not driven on the highway and noted those speed limit signs? Or do you argue with the cop that his idea of the speed limit and yours is just different, so you refuse the speeding ticket?
Have you ever taken a course to learn something? That textbook contains agreed-upon standards which you are expected to learn, where you are tested on your ability to understand and memorize these facts (which MAY change: facts are not set in stone, esp. as the term is used in science). That's not oppression, it's cooperation: it's part of living as a member of a social species which values the ability to accept what the group does, in order to get tasks completed.
There is a difference between our approaches. I can plainly tell you that my reality is MY reality, not yours. You, on the other hand, will claim that your reality is supported by "the facts" and "the evidence." The truth is you can't have reality without facts and evidence. So, everybody's reality is made up of facts and evidences. Yours is no different than mine. In your reality I am just a crazy person who cannot let go of their fears. At best you will pity me. In my reality that's OK, you are free to see the world in the way that you see the world. I see it differently.
Wow, how confusing it must be for you, ironically trapped in the mire of relativism, but chasing after absolutes? The fallacy is thinking that ABSOLUTE standards exist, rather than accepting that they don't.
Yeah, and that's an "appeal to tradition" argument. Take a logic course at your local community college, and learn it's potential flaws.
I didn't appeal to any tradtion, I pointed to my collegues in history.
Proof-positive that you don't know what the "appeal to tradition" logical fallacy is. Educate yourself by taking an 'intro to logic' course at your local community college (or Google the term), because it ALSO is a standard term of art in philosophy (primarily logic/rhetoric), and you're as wrong about that as you were in your misunderstanding of believing the Talmud was the Hebrew OT (aka Tanakh), or not understanding 'yetzer hara' (evil inclination) to mistakenly claim "Noah was evil", etc. You've left a trail of such nonsense in this thread, alone.
Remember Religion is a scientific experiment that has been going on for a very, VERY long time now. I am part of a peer review process that you don't believe exists. You want to package up all their data into the term "tradition" and then toss it over a dam. You don't want to believe that Religion has anything to teach us. That's fine, that's YOUR reality. I see it differently.
Completely and utterly absurd.
Religion MAY HAVE been the best-known science available in the ancient world 3,000 years ago, and it represented the best-available means to explain certain natural phenomena at the time, but science has moved WELL-BEYOND religion since at least Galileo (if not 2,000 yrs before), and anyone who clings to supernatural beliefs and superstition in this day and age is simply arguing AGAINST copious amounts of counter-evidence.
Do yourself a favor and wake up to the 21st century and learn what science is about (the first chapter is a free download):
http://ncse.com/media/evc1
You are claiming that ancient laws are BETTER than NEW laws.
Ancient laws were an artform and based on what was observed. The Torah was designed to create a flourishing peaceful nation that existed among diametrically opposed forces.
Quick! Pop-quiz!
Name ONE OTHER ancient legal code BESIDES the Torah!
And if you CAN manage to name one, I bet you haven't actually read it!
What if you opened up your constitution and it started with a fable, which taught a bunch of timeless moral lessons? I, for one, LIKE that idea of combining art with law. It's amazing and better than anything we have today. I wish MORE people in government thought like the writers of the Torah, I really do.
LOL! So you're against the idea of separation of church and State, then? You probably are just as unaware of your Nation's historical foundation, if you don't know WHY they decided combining theology with politics was a fundamentally BAD IDEA.
So you are throwing the Law of Moses away? That's what happened in the Hebrew Scriptures and King Josiah had to reestablish the law, then he was assassinated by an Egyptian Pharaoh. To the Torah, and the powers behind it, you are just playing a very old game.
Re-read this thread VERY CAREFULLY, if you think the Bible is a fine example of superior morality at play. Slavery? Genocide? You clearly have READ the Bible, if you say that.
(These comments weren't in response to by post, but I'll tackle a few:)
What if God cannot be fully conceived? Given what we've found so far it's likely that God IS inconceivable. I do not believe such a trial could or should exist. We would first need to fully identify the defendent which, so far, can be described as, "that shadowy figure over there who probably doesn't exist".
That argument is an "appeal to ignorance" (look it up as practice).
Because the Torah is just a story, the character cannot be "put on trial."
So, no one can claim that Sauron of Tolkien's LOTR is a bad character and a poor role model to follow, since he's only a character?
Nonsense: the problem is that people BELIEVE in God, and BELIEVE in the concept of God; the problem is NOT that God himself is real and can be put on trial! Your argument is absurd, and deserves dismissal out of hand, just on it's face value, alone.
What can be done is an a moral assessment based on the actions of the character in the story. When doing this one discovers that the character IS righteous, just and faithful. It is ONLY when you have an agenda do you conclude otherwise.
Again, review this thread, if you believe the God character of the Bible is "righteous" as you claim, eg as only ONE example, wiping billions of inhabitants of the Earth for HIS crime of omission of forgetting to declare bloodshed as a sin BEFORE the Flood, only doing so AFTER the Flood (in Genesis 9:5-6, when he delegated Divine Authority to Noah to enforce a system of laws amongst man, which was a common element of OTHER ancient legal codes you haven't bothered to even read which predate the Hebrew Bereshit account (you know it by 'Genesis') by 1,000 yrs, eg Sumerian Flood myth, where the "Kingship descended from Heaven" to reward the hero of the flood story, Gilgamesh, who was tipped off by a God who warned of a coming flood, and who saved animals; he was rewarded for doing so after the Flood).
Adam
