HAS A CUCKOO LAID AN EGG IN YOUR BRAIN? (Ideas: whose are they?)

by Terry 63 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

Terry

the foundation of all thoughts is not experience, some are sort of built into us from whatever makes us human...

Prove it. This is mystical philosophy.
example, we have an inner template of beauty which automatically causes us to see some as beautiful and others as ugly without any thought on our part
This is Plato and his theory of forms.
Helen Keller was born blind and mute from birth. She struggled like a mere animal until the intervention of a courageous teacher (through indefatigable effort) demonstrated time and again that THIS means THIS. (A hand-sign placed in her hand for shape MEANT or SIGNIFIED an object or word or deed.)
Once she "got it" ; the synthetic relationship between the sign and its referent her actual learning as a human began at once. Keller wrote profoundly years later after mastering Braille methods of reading and writing. If you will take the time to read her words and thoughts and ideas you will immediately notice PLATO WAS WRONG. We are not born with a template at all.
Incidentally, beauty, a sense of what it is for us, comes from what we value. Our values are informed by our ability to appraise according to a standard. We are NOT BORN with any standard of beauty. We develop its slowly by observing, listening, acting/reacting to things in our enviornment. That beauty is subjective is obvious. Were beauty an IDEAL it would be the same for all of us.
T.
Terry

So, the average JW is cuckoo.

The door to door work is the flying from nest to nest to lay eggs!
They are virulent!!
T
Terry

3.Each person has their own reality; what is true for one person isn't true for another.

I question that this cannot be so. If there were only one reality, easily pervieved by rational people, then there would be agreement among those people. All arguement, fighting, competition would cease among them. One reality, one way, one objective

DEFINE REALITY:
That which IS (exists) whether anybody is around to observe/detect it. A table is a table even when we leave the room. The table can be perceived by a human mind only insofar as the mind of the person has taken the trouble to include details of what TABLE means in their thought process.
Meaning what?
One person sees merely a "table".
Another sees a "card table"
Another person sees a "beige formica card table."
Another person sees a "$27 beige folding formica top card table made by Eureka Mfg."
Get it? The better informed the person's mind; the more details will be included in the definition under the concept of TABLE.
You are confusing people's accuracy and standard of thinking with OBJECTS which exist apart from their mind.
Reality is NOT SHAPED by our description of it. That is subjective imagination which plays that trick.
A blind taste test among many people will not change a 1957 Chateau Mouton into ginger ale just because some hick from Palookaville tastes it! The wine maven who has taken the trouble of learning what wines are all about will correctly identify (place his concept on a 1:1 platform of identification) with the actual wine and its source.
Don't you see the difference? The hoax of relativism comes from confusing precision of thinking about reality with the reality itself. People who understand how math works are able to manipulate numbers for their benefit. A person ignorant of math sees gibberish. You prove a math problem by applying it to the reality it corresponds to: actual quantities of things that exist. Practical math is practical because it works.
Terry
BrendaCloutier

So, the average JW is cuckoo.

The door to door work is the flying from nest to nest to lay eggs!
They are virulent!!
T

That analogy works for me.... I do understand what you're getting at.
I've worked hard at developing my own belief system. I have had my beliefs challenged here on JWD and have torn most of them apart and examined them, tossing the ones that truly no longer apply, and keeping the ones that work for me, or that I happen to like, for whatever the reason.
Interestingly, to me anyway, is that many of the beliefs I have come to through my own excersize and experience, have a "following" that I was unaware of! They have a name, or a label.
I choose to not join a following of the beliefs I have because I don't want to subtly, or accidently take on developed mythos that may surround them that I haven't developed on my own. I'll do my own research, thank you. Although I have from time to time had some good discussions and debates with those who believe similarly. Additional challenge to my belief structure which I have no problems with.
This has developed in direct opposition to my JWism upbringing.
Terry

I've worked hard at developing my own belief system. I have had my beliefs challenged here on JWD and have torn most of them apart and examined them, tossing the ones that truly no longer apply, and keeping the ones that work for me, or that I happen to like, for whatever the reason.
Interestingly, to me anyway, is that many of the beliefs I have come to through my own excersize and experience, have a "following" that I was unaware of! They have a name, or a label.
I choose to not join a following of the beliefs I have because I don't want to subtly, or accidently take on developed mythos that may surround them that I haven't developed on my own. I'll do my own research, thank you. Although I have from time to time had some good discussions and debates with those who believe similarly. Additional challenge to my belief structure which I have no problems with.
This has developed in direct opposition to my JWism upbringing.

You are the bright and shining example of what it means to be an INDIVIDUAL.
I applaud you.
I too find it funny when I come to a conclusion about something after much toil and study only to find the way was blazed before me by other thinkers.
On the one hand this is infuriating; but, in the long run, what we learn ourselves for ourselves has a sold foundation of labor behind it and is better by far than just taking a suit off the rack and expecting it to fit like a tailored one.
For me, it was reading a wide variety of people.
Each time I studied anything I get a stack of books PRO and a stack of books CON and see what was left when the dust settled.
Further, once I find an author without an ideological agenda I plunge in a read their other works.
I LOVE KAREN ARMSTRONG!
Terry
MegaDude

Terry,
If you love Karen Armstrong you would like her book "Begining the World." It's the story of her life after she stopped being a nun. You can't buy it in stores but it is at the Ft. Worth Public Library. The parallels between her exit from the claustrophic religious atmosphere of the Catholic nunnery and the JWs is striking.
BrendaCloutier

I too find it funny when I come to a conclusion about something after much toil and study only to find the way was blazed before me by other thinkers.
On the one hand this is infuriating; but, in the long run, what we learn ourselves for ourselves has a sold foundation of labor behind it and is better by far than just taking a suit off the rack and expecting it to fit like a tailored one.

Even though I just developed a mousetrap with a great deal of effort and engineering, it is so very similar to one already on the market which I was unaware of! But mine has this tiny difference that I prefer over the marketed product.
Unfortunately, my eyes don't focus well at times, and my brain doesn't process as well these days.... so I limit much of my non-fiction reading and analysis.
zen nudist

Helen Keller was born blind and mute from birth. She struggled like a mere animal until the intervention of a courageous teacher (through indefatigable effort) demonstrated time and again that THIS means THIS. (A hand-sign placed in her hand for shape MEANT or SIGNIFIED an object or word or deed.)

incorrect, she was born perfectly normal, she became blind and mute due to a childhood disease and she was able to connect to symbols from a sudden realization of something she vaguely remembered prior to this.
Incidentally, beauty, a sense of what it is for us, comes from what we value. Our values are informed by our ability to appraise according to a standard. We are NOT BORN with any standard of beauty. We develop its slowly by observing, listening, acting/reacting to things in our enviornment. That beauty is subjective is obvious. Were beauty an IDEAL it would be the same for all of us.
also incorrect, Omni Mag circa 1989 did a research study on beauty and found it was universally built into us and was defined by proportion and symmetry, other follow up studies have confirmed this.
http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/
Terry

incorrect, she was born perfectly normal, she became blind and mute due to a childhood disease and she was able to connect to symbols from a sudden realization of something she vaguely remembered prior to this.
Incidentally, beauty, a sense of what it is for us, comes from what we value. Our values are informed by our ability to appraise according to a standard. We are NOT BORN with any standard of beauty. We develop its slowly by observing, listening, acting/reacting to things in our enviornment. That beauty is subjective is obvious. Were beauty an IDEAL it would be the same for all of us.
also incorrect, Omni Mag circa 1989 did a research study on beauty and found it was universally built into us and was defined by proportion and symmetry, other follow up studies have confirmed this.

Yes, about Keller---correct; not from birth, however, her CONCEPT FORMATION was not automatic from birth and that was the essential point I was raising. She was an animal until she was GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND definitions of concepts by her teacher Annie.
They were not innate.
As far as OMNI MAGAZINE "finding" that beauty is "built in" I have to wonder admiringly at the parameters of such a study since it finds no correlations in human society historically.
Did all society build alike with the same number systems, proportions and aesthetics? No. Why not? It was "wired in" from birth" wasn't it? No, it wasn't.
The Greek philosophers developed proportion as an aesthetic relating to numbers and not so the other lands and peoples of old.
Take a look at the concept of PI, as an example. This is a relationship between the circumference of a circle and the distance across its center point. Yet, The Egyptians had one description, the Greeks another and the Hebrews (from God himself) had it as simply 3.0!!
No sense of beauty of proportion or symmetry is evident at all which would PERFORCE appear as a natural logical happening if the OMNI magazine article presented the view accurately.
bebu

BEWARE THE MAN WHO TELLS YOU :
1.You can't "know" anything. (Although he seems to "know" that, doesn't he?)
2.You can't rely on logic because it is manmade and imprecise. (And uses logic to present that view)
3.Each person has their own reality; what is true for one person isn't true for another. (This relativism is taught in University Philosophy classess and disables the thinking of whole generations of students).
4.You can't define this or that.

Nicely put! A good thread.
bebu

HAS A CUCKOO LAID AN EGG IN YOUR BRAIN? (Ideas: whose are they?)

Share this