This is incontrovertible proof that God is evil. God does not live by his own golden

[Ninae]

I think I articulated it quite clearly. But apparantly Willow thinks the board becomes pointless to post on if we have a few threads like that.

I think there has to be room for both aggressive debates and peaceful discussion of things of mutual interest. It's not like they're mutually exclusive. It's just starting discussions on spiritual topics that are derailed into debates I'm so tired of.

 

[swilow]

My issue is that you're trying to turn this thread into another one that you control. You have your threads, can't the rest of us have some too?

The atmosphere you want is unwelcoming but I can take a hint. Apparently spirituality is not up for dissection. To me, that certainly does make a discussion board pointless.

Anyway, this is the same debate that we've had and I capitulated by reducing my input here which is what you wanted and what I was told to do. For me, this section is something uninteresting now.

 

[Ninae]

I've always been up for a debate, and it's not like I've decided I'm too sensitive for that now all of a sudden. I just don't feel like spending my energy like that anymore.

I feel like I've had enough debates, or won enough debates. It's like I'm satiated and I don't feel as attracted to ego games like that any more. Besides, what does it matter if you win a little victory like that over the Internet?

Not much, and it's a far greater victory if you manage to share something that can make a positive difference in someone's life. And then you've at least done something selfless. Well, that's how I see it.

 

[Shrooms00087]

Are you sure that declaring God is evil isn't a projection of guilt that society isn't what you want? When a spider bites you, you don't blame God, you blame the spider. In such the same way, our mortality is nothing but an anxiety of immortality so we project onto God all these supernatural powers of cures and heaven. Maybe God gave us this life and that's it. Can you be an atheist while retaining God and be grateful for the wonders of this one gift?

 

[swilow]

I'm not sure life is a gift...

 

[Shrooms00087]

You started with nothing and gained something else. Gift.

 

[swilow]

Gift implies giver though.

 

[Shrooms00087]

Right and that doesn't mean that God isn't an Abyss of the Other's desires just being projected onto "Him" but it does say that at one time he created everything and that beyond that the giver and the gift are separate realities. There may be a God and there may be no afterlife. I know I'm callous when I consider how much I take for granted. There's a quote from Diogenes "You accept figs that are painted, but reject the normal ones". So much is spent in reflection to what happens after and before that you take for granted the one true empirical miraculous gift that is This Reality.

 

[iridescentblack]

Now this thread is just going in circles.

 

[Shrooms00087]

Yeah..It's about God.

 

[drug_mentor]

exactly.

the point is that describing light with a wavelength of ~475nm as 'blue' is fine - a lot of other people will generally get it if you talk about 'blue'. but the definition 'blue' only corresponds to the subjective experience of light with a wavelength of ~475nm...

tl;dr light comes in specific wavelengths but which wavelengths correspond to which 'color' depends entirely on the eyes of whoever or whatever happens to be doing the the viewing.

alasdair

I thought you meant something along these lines. I am familiar with the facts you mention and I largely agree with your interpretation of them. When I initially responded to you I was taking the claim of yours which I quoted ("in a very real sense colors aren't colors until they're seen") as an intended counterexample to Ninae's claim ("A blind person could say "There are no colours that I can see". That doesn't mean there aren't any colours"), but once what you meant is fleshed out I think it is clear that it does not actually work as a relevant counterexample. If you did not intend the claim as a counterexample to what Ninae said then that is my mistake.

The experience is not the same as the actual physical phenomena though. EM radiation of a certain wavelength may be seen as 'blue' to different eyes and brains and 'red' to others. The thing we call 'red' is different to the thing that causes the phenomena. Some animals don't see certain colours at all, like humans who don't see infra-red or ultraviolet or microwaves or radio waves or anything beyond the visible spectrum (which means 'the spectrum visible to humans').

I don't disagree with you, my point is simply that if red is a certain perceptual experience then red is red, it just isn't any particular EM radiation wavelength. There is a large difference between saying EM radiation wavelengths ≠ colour and saying that colour ≠ colour, the former is intelligible (and probably correct), the latter is a violation of basic logic. The only way the latter statement could be true is if one is equivocating on the meaning of the word colour so that the first instance of the word has a different referent than the second instance of the word.

For humans, it is right to say that certain wavelengths=certain experienced colour. To say that this wavelength is also red to non-humans is anthropocentric and distinctly untrue (not saying that you are saying this, just that its a possible implication). Something being absolute should probably be absolute outside of the human realm, shouldn't it?

I don't think it is right to say that for humans certain wavelengths = certain experienced colour, though it is right to say that for humans certain wavelengths viewed in the right circumstances cause certain colour experiences. For the moment I am assuming I don't need to elucidate the differences between identity relations and causal relations, and it will suffice to say that they are very different kinds of relations.

 

[Ninae]

I think Plato's cave is a good analogy for this. In the allegory of the cave, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and people who really do see the truth.

 

[drug_mentor]

The quote on your meme is not from Plato, according to multiple sources which turn up when googling the phrase.

Plato was a rationalist, while it is correct in a sense to identify empiricism as Plato's target in his allegory of the cave, the view being advanced by Plato is that ultimate truths are apprehended through reason. Personally, I think this conclusion is at least as hostile to faith based thinking as it is to empiricism.

 

[Ninae]

Well, I think that's as much attention as this thread deserves.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. I just gave some examples of how what you can perceive with your senses doesn't have to correspond with reality. If you just want to explain that away in any way you can, that's not my problem.

But by that logic nothing in the world objectively exists unless someone can sense it. So someone who can't taste or feel food or water wouldn't starve or thirst to death. You can see for yourself how that doesn't work.

 

[herbavore]

So much is spent in reflection to what happens after and before that you take for granted the one true empirical miraculous gift that is This Reality.

This made me think of a time when a therapist said to me, "You are choosing to stay in your intellect because it is too scary to remain in your heart. You are embroiling yourself in many questions--'what could I have done differently?', 'what is the nature of addiction?', 'what is death?', 'how could I have changed my son's trajectory?'. Nothing wrong with the questions per se, if you are actually out to learn something; but plenty wrong with them if you are just using them to avoid the one true fact: He is gone and that loss is immensely painful." He was right. I stopped running from that place and I am better for it I think. Now, it is a part of such a deep appreciation for life that it sometimes still astounds me. Just stand outside on the earth for one minute and actually open your eyes to what is around you, shut them to the escapist films playing endlessly in your head. All your pain and all your joys can lead you to this same place of communion with what is right here right now. It will, you will, never be this moment again. The temptation to abstract it is with existential questions is overwhelming because we are almost (but not quite!) incapable of comprehending the sight of such complex and intricate beauty.

 

[swilow]

^to ninae- You are arguing against reductionism by reducing it to absurdity. I'm not all sure drug mentor or anyone else is saying that sense data is not real. It is. Its just that the senses also rquire a brain for processing this data before its meaningful.

 

[Ninae]

Yes, and in the same way that something can be real even if it's not perceived through the senses, there can be higher spiritual realities most of us still haven't developed the senses to conceive of. Or that was the simple point I was trying to make.

 

[swilow]

That's true. The heart of epistemology. But, as I said, the unreliability of our senses don't mean that anything goes. We can still detect things that we don't have senses for, by inference.

 

[alasdairm]

But by that logic nothing in the world objectively exists unless someone can sense it.

sure. it's possible.

the idea of whether there is such a thing as objective reality has been the subject of philosophical discussion for a long time.

alasdair

 

[Xorkoth]

^^ By trying to shut down swilow, you're being hypocritical on your own statement: "why can't there room for both kinds of people". No one is preventing you from expressing your views, swilow isn't, but anytime someone (especially him for some reason) disagrees with you, you take it personally and lash out in return. Someone disagreeing with you is not an attack against you.

You mentioned your other thread and not wanting it derailed, and in that case I think it's valid because you're just using it as a place to drop quotes from Jesus. And I believe we did stop derailing it. But in general threads in this forum are open to debate/discussion. It's unrealistic to think that any thread in which you start talking about god or spirituality, no one should be able to disagree with your assertions or bring up other points contrary to the existence of god or whatever. In the discussion of spirituality, skepticism is a valid place to debate from. I mean you didn't even start this thread, the path the discussion takes is not up to you. If Gnostic Bishop has a problem with it, I'd be open to hearing it and maybe trying to steer it more in the direction he intended.

I do have to kind of agree with swilow's use of the term "'enlightened' spiritual bullies" a few posts up. There's this holier-than-thou attitude expressed by some who are aggressively pushing their enlightenment on here and who are clearly looking down on those who aren't as "enlightened". To me, that's about as clear a sign as you can get that a person is stuck in an ego trap that looks like enlightenment. An enlightened person doesn't feel the need to have a competition about it, nor do they feel threatened when someone disagrees with them.

Anyway that's just how I feel about the exchange that just happened here. I think we should get back to the topic at hand and get away from the bickering and attacks. But disagree all you want, there are as many opinions on things as there are humans.