Isn't Sky News related to Fox News? Bush must be really losing popularity. LOL.
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Posts by Pole
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Pole
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172
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry inmankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.
different folks have tried different strokes.
you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .
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Pole
(Btw I agree that Thales is a much better eponym for the "rational" side -- actually as opposed to mythology rather than mysticism).
Yes, and the funny thing is that his hydrogenic theory of the origins of the Universe was just as untrue as the mythology. LOL. But I like his epistemology better.
Pole -
172
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry inmankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.
different folks have tried different strokes.
you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .
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Pole
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 -
172
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry inmankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.
different folks have tried different strokes.
you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .
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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 -
172
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry inmankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.
different folks have tried different strokes.
you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .
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Pole
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 -
172
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry inmankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.
different folks have tried different strokes.
you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .
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Pole
zen,
Just because there's a certain amount of arbitary epistemological and ontological consensus among scientists, you can't put science on equal footing with matrix fantasy theories. Why do you get on a Boeing plane and why don't you jump off the cliff? Just because there is quantum mechanics, you can't dicard the good old gravity as nihilistic delusions.
Why do we constatnly confuse scientific models with reality?
Pole -
172
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry inmankind has had a pretty good track record of tackling the problems of life on earth.
different folks have tried different strokes.
you might say that life has been the crucible for testing an idea as to efficacy and the legacy of any idea is how well it worked.. .
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Pole
Supposing a group of online Canadian exJWs had a blind friend who had heard of your friend Ross. How would you verify my existance? Wouldn't you find it kind of strange if he continued to question the veracity of your communal statements?
I suspect you'd come to a point where you'd finally say "well, we don't really need to prove anything. Maybe you'll meet him yourself one day".
How do you see logic working through these various deductions?
Anthropomorphic fallacy. There are basic diffrences between this "analogy" and the situation you are discussing. Such as:
1) There are many blind people Tetra has met or seen briefly in his life. He understands why exactly they would find it difficult to "meet" somebody on a discussion board. He knows exactly what it would take to convince each and every one of them of the existence of the friend. All the parties involved in this situation know exactly what is the nature of the blind person's disability and what it would take to overcome it, so that the person could meet Ross the hypothetical friend. Does Tetra know why he can't meet Jesus? Do you know exactly what it would take for Tetra to meet Jesus? There is no methodology of knowing or not knowing aggreed on.
2) As I understand, you're not simply claiming you have a "friend". The blind person surely has some "friends" too, so why should the blind person question the possibility in principle? In contrast, you are claiming your "friend" is Jesus. Tetra's blind friend has never met 'a Jesus'. You say Jesus has a special relationship with you and he makes your prayers come true. Tetra's friend has all sort of problems with accepting that. Not simply because he has never seen or met this particular friend, but because he has never had contact with any "friends" (If we retain your terminology). At this point this analogy makes no sense and turns out to be totally anthropomorphic. How can he have no friends if he knows Tetra and his buddies? Oh, but Ross is a remote friend. But wait, didn't Tetra and the Canadian ex-jw's use to be remote friends to the blind guy until he finally met them? Anthropomorphic metaphors won't get you anywhere.
Let's not pretend anything divine can be explained in terms of them.
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Arrival vs Coming
by ackack inlooking at the nwt, i notice that matt 24:46 uses the word "arrival".
but in vs 44 where it says you wouldn't know the day or hour, it uses "coming".. this is the same greek word though.
obviously this is an attempt to seperate these two verses, to make them seem like two seperate events.. doesn't this blow away the fds concept?
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Pole
The subtle chronological distinctions which the WT makes between "arrival" and "coming" on the ridiculous "basis" of fixed morphological characteristics of the Greek language are all the more astounding when you think that, according to its fundamentalistic views, this is what Jesus is supposed to have taught... in Aramaic.
True. I've always enjoyed following WTS's endless paranoid morphological derivations of the "original" Greek meanings.
What is equally interesting is: just how good was Mathew's, Luke's Greek if it wasn't their mother tongue (or whoever was supposed to author the gospels). Were they so great linguists as to consciously and precisely encode diachronic, etymological, morphology-based meanings which were supposed to allow the NWT translators living thousands of years later to come up with such brilliant renderings of parousia?
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Is anyone watching the Poland-England match tonight?
by Pole inwhat's your bet?
i'd say england 1:0 poland.. .
(much as i'd like it to be the other way round...) .
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Pole
Blast from the past.
N. Ireland 1 : 0 England
Will Sven go now?
Poland's 5 points ahead of England. England's 2 games to make it up - including a game with the Poles. I hope they draw with Austria (I hope Austria gain confidence after they've drawn with the Azers today). Then, the match at Old Trafford will be fun. We'll be pissing our pants with laughter.
Ok, I hope we will at least qualify as runners up. Despite what the BBC site says it's not certain yet.
Don't bother to post replies - this is an old self-amusement thread.
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There must be an "organization"
by sinis ini have not, nor will go back to "meetings" after finding out how i was spiritually mislead through the years.i have actually found more comfort in doing my own studying.
my wife still goes occassionaly and her sister and brother-in-law just started going back.
so we went over there house the other night and we got into a conversation in which he said they went to the meeting today (sunday).
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Pole
Ask them to show you the word "organization" in the bible. That might be fun. The article they published in the "Questions from Readers" from this Watchtower: *** w81 5/1 pp. 30-31 *** is the most fallacious example of pseudo-linguistic reasoning I have ever seen in my life.
Pole