by Terry 172 Replies latest jw friends
Terry,
Thanks for your reply. I disagree with almost every single line of it, I was about responding but I felt it won't help and I give up. I understand that, by your standards, this means I don't love you. By mine it is not necessarily so.
In my first post on this thread I have tried to point out the main reasons why I think your reasoning is flawed. You might think it over sometime. If not, never mind.
Take care.
Tetra:
i love how you and Pole are having a debate that should have been between you and i.
There are more around this discussion table than just you and I. Pole and I continued the conversation whilst you went to the privvy
my goodness gracious. so that leaves me with a two in three chance of winning? or have i already won by living my life like it's the only one, and not working for some future reward?
If your aim is "non-existance" after death, then you've got a one in three chance of being right (assuming each option is weighted equally).
As for me, I'm not working for a future reward...
probability? remember, that if in the large majority of circumstances the economic explanation is the most realistic one, then is not the atheist's chances of being right higher than the theist's?
No, because I'm not working at it
plus, LT, it's just a bloody lack of belief. if god were as loving and wise as people make him out to be, then should he exist, and be the administrator of an afterlife, then he most likely will reward me for using my brain instead of my heart. after all, he would have been the one to bless me with said. if he is so immature to punish me for disbelief in the face of nil evidence, then i would prefer destruction or hanging with satan in hell.
What are you gonna say if He presents you with evidence that you decided to overlook? Aren't you using mystical thinking to cover your bases?
so, LT's wager isn't so sturdy then? i'm enjoying life, i only answer to myself, and would most likely be rewarded by god anyways. i'm not saying you don't enjoy life. i'm sure you enjoy coming here and chapping my ass. :)
Other than REALLY enjoying chapping your ass as much as you like chapping mine, I would suggest to you that I totally enjoy life and only answer to myself also. Judge thyself... and to thine own self be true.
are you listening to yourself? or is that the problem?
To "admit" I could be wrong would be to fly in the face of the data my senses and rational mind received.
by your logic, i could say that i should not admit the possiblity of error in atheism because of the lack of evidence for the existence of god. that is practically the definition of arrogance, hence my assumtion that you are not admitting you could be wrong out of respect for your friend. to say otherwise would be an insult to you.
Again, I'm afraid I don't see the logic in your statement. You aren't presenting a logical chain of events. I'm not talking from a position of absence of data, and having faith that none will turn up. I'm speaking from a position of having received positive data, on a regular basis, over a period of time. There's little "faith" required, in the sense that you would define it.
If you want to admit error in your position, feel free. Having examined my own senses I can only come to the conclusion that I'm as sane now as I've ever been. Sure, I can't preclude the possibility, but you should be encouraging me to get help, if that were the case. On that front I should tell you taht I've spent six hours in the company of five consultant psychiatrists, a mental health nurse and a couple of other Mental Health Service Managers, today. Strangely enough they didn't comment on any aberrant behaviour...
You claim you have no data, and on that basis you have reached the conclusions you've stated. Why shouldn't I respect that? I do respect that.
and then again, you also leave out the problem of explaining why he appears to you, and not others, like me.
As for any claims I make, they are not unique, neither in my part of the world nor yours. Maybe He already knows that whatever evidence you were presented with you would only wish away Regardless of the reasons, people choose their friends for whatever reason they choose their friends. Why should we decry another for their choices, just because they wont play ball with us?
but then we have been over this before. but i hope you see why i assume you do not admit, quite simply really (it's not a big deal), that you could be wrong, is out of politness to the deity that visits you.
No, I'm afraid I don't. Twisted logic doesn't convince me that I need to "admit" anything about which my senses tell me otherwise. Should I also "admit" that grass is blue and the sky is green, just to satisfy your criteria of "respect"?
you've never disrespected me. but you disrespect the process of debate by refusal to admit that you could be wrong. you know as well as i, that neither of our positions can be proven or disproven conclusively.
On the contrary, I've remained consistant. It's a bit like Scottish law, where there are verdicts of guilty, not guilty, and not proven. For me the case about God is proven, for you it is not proven. Since you can't prove a negative, the other option won't exist until we've explored the whole universe and associated dimensions and come up void.
ergo my admission, and reliance on probability. is that not an honest course of action? does that not illuminate my motives? is that not a rational thing to do?
Your honesty isn't in question. Neither should mine be.
let me go a step further. you asked me if we are falsifiable. i will admit that there is a small chance that you and i do not exist respectively. it's small, but it's there.
And at that point we veer completely into philosophy and mental masturbation. Cognito ergo sum. We also come right back to the crux of my argument, that being that for ME both you and Jesus exist. I'm afraid I have too much self-respect to sugggest that either of you don't exist. Of course you could be entirely right, and everyone could be a figment of my imagination, but therein lays the path to true madness and one which is not rational to follow. Are you heading down the mystical route that Terry so deplores?
i would still be remiss to worship him, since he doesn't seem to be doing anythingthing about the canadian seal slaughter. and harp seals have no reward of an afterlife even though while on earth he shared a common ancestor with them.
Ok, so that came out of field left. How does that strengthen your argument about my sanity or lack thereof, or about falsifiable people/theories/data?
Terry:
I meant to add that Didier has offered you another way of thinking that would appear to fly in the face of rational thought, but also doesn't necessitate a deity. How about using Fatalism as the third "way of thinking?
Does he really know what it would take to overcome his blind friend's scepticism?
Come on, LT. In reality Tetra would always know how to prove the existence of Ross (see above). I was assuming you were using real-life examples to explain supernatural ones.
:In the extreme example I used, it would take meeting the source of the conversation, which in this scenario might be an unlikely event due to the distances involved. It would be more likely that I would go visiting than his blind friend.
If you stretch the real example so extremely, then it may become unrealistic. What distances would make the journey unrealistic? At that point you may be explaining the supernatural in terms of the supernatural (or at least the unrealistic).
:So too in the case with Jesus. I know of no magic formula that will make him appear. The wind blows where it will. He appears to be even more of a free agent than I am
OK. I have other problems with why the wind blows here and not there, but that's irrelevant.
Let's elaborate, shall we, since you seem to want to avoid the analogy by twisting it?
* The blind friend has never been given a dime, or any slack in life. Tetra lays the claim that this friend Ross gives
him stuff.
* The blind friend has never travelled anywhere, and questions even Tetra's recent claims on that score, but he has too
much "respect" to say so to his face. Nonetheless, he's not so silent when it comes to claims about this mythical "Ross".
* The blind man has heard stories of travelling Scots before, and the similarities are far too similar to the Ross-myth,
therefore it must be lies.
* Apparently this "Holy Book" called the Internet, that he can't verify, also contains elaborate stories about breasts and pictures and fluff. Therefore all that is contained in that tome must be an elaborate hoax.
* Parsimony tells him that since he can't prove it, the greater likelihood is that the story is false.
* etc., etc., etc.
First of all, I'm maybe twisting it, but that's because you didn't provide enough detail in the first version of your analogy to make it fool-proof. That's the problem with all analogies. In fact they're just complex metaphors and not simply analogies.
I can only repeat what I said above: you are specifying the situation so much that it becomes unrealistic.
To cut the long story, here is how Tetra can prove the existence of Ross which destroys your analogy: buy him an airplane ticket take him by his hand and introduce to Ross. How does any of the detailed conditions you have specified above exclude that? Of course you can now say that the blind person cannot travel, but the thing is that there may be a million other blind people who only differ from this blind person in being able to travel. So again - we have many other ontological situations which are literally analogous to the blind person's situation and not only metaphorically analogous.
Tetra still has a simple way of convincing the blind guy that Ross exists if the guy hasn't travelled before but has met other unknown people. On the other hand Ross has no way of convincing (even by way of analogy) others of the existence of (the one and only of his ontological class) Jesus to Tetra.
To sum it up: Tetra can convince the blind guy either directly or through literal (and not metaphoric) analogy. In practice almost all analogies are metaphoric, but some are more so than others in any case.
Cheers,
Pole
Narkissos,
I agree with much of what you say on the presence of neo-platonism among scientists. Some of them make no mistery of it. But how about this distinction between "mysticism" and "non-mysticism" (I can't say realism though):
Why is Thales of Miletus conventionally considered to be one of the first if not the first philosopher in the European tradition? (That's what my philosophy handbooks say at least). What makes him so different from all that had gone before him? . By Thales of Miletus I mean the ideal type of the guy with the writings that his name stands for rather than the real person.
Pole
Pole:
But the whole point is that I don't care if it convinces you or not. All I'm doing is presenting a perspective. Is the focus of my story the blind man, Tetra, or "Ross"? What is the moral? That Jesus exists (you surely know that I don't push my beliefs), or that it's possible for someone to dismiss data (any data, not just "mystical" stuff) that doesn't fit their worldview?
Sometimes there are reasons why a person can appear to be completely rational and dismissive of "mystical" thinking. However, if they haven't walked a mile in those shoes, how can they judge?
I'll freely make a confession - I've never been an atheist. I can't walk in those shoes. Hence I don't judge.
I have had a "mystical" mindset as per Terry's definition, when I was a JW. My mindset isn't based on such flimsy "beliefs" these days. I lay claim to enjoy Mysticism, but I wouldn't define it in the terms Terry seems to suggest.
LT,
lol, this is precious.
What are you gonna say if He presents you with evidence that you decided to overlook? ; Aren't you using mystical thinking to cover your bases?
no. like i have said before, it would be the rule of economy of explanation. jesus appears to me on several occasions. instead of jumping to the conclusion that he is real, and the things that he is telling me that only i would know [], are a result of it really being jesus, i would seek medical attention since it would be the parsimonious course of action. natural questions would be: why would christ appear to me, and not to my neighbor? why will he not conclusively prove to me and james randi that it is truly Him? etc etc.
Judge thyself... and to thine own self be true.
well, i'm not being sarcastic when i say that you are one of the coolest xians i have ever known.
To "admit" I could be wrong would be to fly in the face of the data my senses and rational mind ;received.
repitition for emphasis? let's re-word the sentence to help you understand the way i am seeing it:
"To "admit" I could be wrong would be to fly in the face of the possible experience my 5 senses and _______ mind received."
Again, I'm afraid I don't see the logic in your statement. ; You aren't presenting a logical chain of events.&
and having faith that none will turn up.
how is analyzing the track record, and then making an educated guess about the probability of data turning up, even remotely close to "faith"? and you say i twist logic!
Should I also "admit" that grass is blue and the sky is green, just to satisfy your criteria of "respect"?
if the sky were green, and the grass blue, then yes, i would.
and everyone could be a figment of my imagination, but therein lays the path to true madness and one which is not rational to follow.
LOL. you are too much. this is exactly what Pole is trying to show you. i could independently verify your existence. i cannot, however, independently verify the existence of jesus. you are not independently verifying the existence of jesus, and it can't be because he doesn't want to be verified. he loves us, and wants us all to be saved, doesn't he? you could be a millionaire in the meantime, by collecting james randi's million dollar reward. trust me LT, no matter how much i like you, if there were a million dollar reward that i could collect by independently verifying your existence, i'm sorry, but i would do it.
Ok, so that came out of field left. ; How does that strengthen your argument about my sanity or lack thereof, or about falsifiable people/theories/data?
okay. it was tongue in cheek. i should have added a . but even so, it's an argument from suffering. why would a loving guy like jesus sit by and let people (and seals) suffer. i ask you, because you claim to personally know him. i would love to know his thoughts on the matter, and i have to say, it would be one of the first things i would ask him.
i regret that the discussion has strayed into the realm of your personal life. for this i apologize. i just want to know, if you have talked with jesus about these topics? what has he said about suffering? what has he said about people like me who have a lack of belief because of a lack of evidence? i don't mean to be rude. and i'm not being disingenuous when i say that the answers, should they be better than the ones in the NT, could change my life.
respectfully,
TS
LT,
:But the whole point is that I don't care if it convinces you or not. All I'm doing is presenting a perspective. Is the focus of my story the blind man, Tetra, or "Ross"? What is the moral? That Jesus exists (you surely know that I don't push my beliefs), or that it's possible for someone to dismiss data (any data, not just "mystical" stuff) that doesn't fit their worldview?
I know. I appreciate your perspective and I find it enriching to discuss it. In no way was I trying to make you convince that your belief doesn't work for you. I only discussed the analogy to show how it doesn't work for me.
:I have had a "mystical" mindset as per Terry's definition, when I was a JW. My mindset isn't based on such flimsy "beliefs" these days. I lay claim to enjoy Mysticism, but I wouldn't define it in the terms Terry seems to suggest.
Believe it or not but I enjoy mysticism too. The most fulfilling moments of my life are mystical. It's a huge part of life. I just don't assign the "Jesus" label to mystical things happening to me.
I would make a distinction for my everyday purposes:
1) There is macro-mysticism:
In fact all we know is mystical as long as we are unable to explain how exactly the brain, the mind and consciousness work. And that may never happen. The very question of how they work may be flawed.
2) There is micro-mysticism. That happens when my purpose-specific epistemology is totally out of keeping with my the epistemology of my survival instincts and sensory skills. Or it may happen when the methodology of knowing is not provided or is obviously tautological when it doesn't have to be so.
I bow to the power of macro-mysticism but refuse to accept micro-mysticism whenever it bothers me.
I'm probably talking h***hit now, so I'd better get some sleep now. Boy, it's been a long day.
Pole
Terry:
The broadest categories possible for life strategies pretty much comes down to:
Only the two, huh?
1.Rational (using the mind and reasoning on the basis of non-contradictory facts determined by testing).
I wonder why you omit "contradictory" facts, from the "both" state, but nontheless I'm broadly with ya.
2.Mystical (relying on an imaginary source of authority whose power cannot be demonstrated; only asserted).
If it's "imaginary" then why would they use it as an authority? Unless it has some kind of substance no-one in their right mind is going to cede authority to such a source, surely?
What's wrong with an individual having their own experience, even if subjective and un-provable to another human-being? Why do we all have to have the same experiences to agree? Can't we extrapolate? Why does that HAVE to be based outwith the bounds of the rational?
Damn, when I started reading this thread I thought it would answer everything.
Pole:
1) There is macro-mysticism:
In fact all we know is mystical as long as we are unable to explain how exactly the brain, the mind and consciousness work. And that may never happen. The very question of how they work may be flawed.
Ok. I need to break down your second comment, however:
2) There is micro-mysticism. That happens when my purpose-specific epistemology is totally out of keeping with my the epistemology of my survival instincts and sensory skills.
I agree that this one isn't rational. However, throwing ourselves in front of a bus for a loved one isn't entirely rational, either
Or it may happen when the methodology of knowing is not provided or is obviously tautological when it doesn't have to be so.
Not everything HAS or HAS NOT to be so, surely? Sometimes a step into the unknown can be an adventure
I bow to the power of macro-mysticism but refuse to accept micro-mysticism whenever it bothers me.
Good for you. Not only do I have no right to denigrate that perspective, neither do I desire to do so. Sleep well
