(2020-10-27, 09:36 PM)Kamarling Wrote: I usually have you on ignore but seeing as you have been quiet lately (or I have just not noticed your posts) I'll attempt an answer. And that is: for the same reason your worldview is not a fairy tale to you. Brian has his worldview, I have mine and you have yours. I guess we have all put a lot of thought into why we look at the world that way but I can't prove Brian is wrong. FWIW, I think that both religious and atheist views are pretty hard to justify and I've never seen a convincing argument from either.
Good that you recognize yours is as much a fairy as you state Brian's is.
(2020-10-27, 05:34 PM)Brian Wrote: The problem is sin. The next world is going to get as bad as this one if God lets every Tom, Dick and Harry live forever. The idea that a loving God has to be constantly nice to everybody, no matter what, is like the sickly sweet God that parents traditionally used to tell their children about at bedtime.
Wouldn't this mean that some people cannot change. But isn't their intrinsic nature then also due to God and thus changeable by this Creator?
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(2020-10-27, 10:59 PM)Steve001 Wrote: Good that you recognize yours is as much a fairy as you state Brian's is.
Nope Steve, that doesn't fly. You gotta get in the pool if you want to swim with us (i.e., yours is just as much fairy tale as any other. Its your "faith" even though you bristle when I point this out.)
(2020-10-27, 05:34 PM)Brian Wrote: The problem is sin. The next world is going to get as bad as this one if God lets every Tom, Dick and Harry live forever. The idea that a loving God has to be constantly nice to everybody, no matter what, is like the sickly sweet God that parents traditionally used to tell their children about at bedtime.
Wait. Who's the arbiter of which Tom, Dick, or Harry gets to live forever and which ones don't? By my reading of Christianity there's a whole bunch of not so nice, nasty souls that find eternal life since we're all sinners. Right?
(2020-10-27, 10:59 PM)Steve001 Wrote: Good that you recognize yours is as much a fairy as you state Brian's is.
See, this is why people put you on ignore. At least I was able to admit that it is as impossible to prove my worldview as it is for Brian's or yours but you can't reciprocate can you? What is the point of discussing with someone who refuses to concede anything or attempt to understand another's argument? That is not reason, that is blind faith.
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Freeman Dyson
(2020-10-25, 10:42 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: Will Storr's 'The Heretics'
Robert McLuhan
The man who destroyed skepticism
Mitch Horowitz
There's some political swipes in the article but the core part is about exposing Randi's pseudo-skepticism.
Quote:Scourge of psychics James Randi was no skeptic; our culture is poorer as a result
The Telegraph's Storr wondered what — besides organizing the yearly Vegas conference (discontinued in 2015) — Randi's nonprofit JREF actually does:
Quote:More recently I've begun to wonder about his educational foundation, the JREF, which claims tax exempt status in the US and is partly dependant on public donations. I wondered what actual educative work the organisation — which between 2011 and 2013 had an average revenue of $1.2 million per year — did. Financial documents reveal just $5,100, on average, being spent on grants.
There are some e-books, videos and lesson plans on subjects such as fairies on their website. They organise an annual fan convention. James Randi, over that period, has been paid an average annual salary of $195,000. My requests for details of the educational foundation's educational activities, over the last 12 months, were dodged and then ignored.
The two years that follow, according to public filings, show executive compensation at an average of over $197,000, more than 20% of the Foundation's total yearly revenue. According to a contemporaneous analysis of 100,000 nonprofit CEO salaries, this figure nearly triples the average compensation in JREF's revenue class.
How much money was given to his assistant who committed ID theft is another important question IMO.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
In relation to all the other godly stuff and being in all fairness to what Steve001 said too, we just have to go wherever the evidence takes us. Me personally I think that if people aren't punished in the evidence we find, that's just what we have to live with. I don't really want to have an afterlife beer with Hitler or anything but it is what it is. And yknow if people ain't convinced by what's been put forward yet all power to them, I ain't about to try and take people's beliefs away.
For Randi, I reckon it's distateful to sit around wondering how he felt if he saw the bright lights or anything. Feels like an atheist enjoying the anguish of a man who just lost their religion, is fucked. I reckon all Randi's good work was done in the old days, the bit of good work that he did, but as he got older he just ended up doing what a lot of skeptics do nowdays. Go to event, repeat 20/30/40 year old talking point, get cheque and leave.
(2020-10-27, 11:43 PM)Silence Wrote: Nope Steve, that doesn't fly. You gotta get in the pool if you want to swim with us (i.e., yours is just as much fairy tale as any other. Its your "faith" even though you bristle when I point this out.)
It's good to remember that. Wonder why Steve keeps forgetting.
(2020-10-28, 01:02 AM)Kamarling Wrote: See, this is why people put you on ignore. At least I was able to admit that it is as impossible to prove my worldview as it is for Brian's or yours but you can't reciprocate can you? What is the point of discussing with someone who refuses to concede anything or attempt to understand another's argument? That is not reason, that is blind faith.
Trying to talk to Steve is like trying to deal with a 'shirty' drunk in a nightclub at 2 'o' clock in the morning. I found that to be the case, anyway although I haven't been in such a place for thirty years. I don't mind, though, at least you know what you're getting feedback wise.
(2020-10-27, 11:43 PM)Silence Wrote: Nope Steve, that doesn't fly. You gotta get in the pool if you want to swim with us (i.e., yours is just as much fairy tale as any other. Its your "faith" even though you bristle when I point this out.)
That wasn't the point which was Karmarling's criticism of Brian's point of view but implying his was not.
Anyone is welcome to deconstruct my position as a fairytale. I've yet to see that happen. The majority on this forum believe the Universe is spiritual rather than material is de facto. That's analogous to saying the Universe is only quantum mechanical and not classical. Yet the classical world has not disappeared. I ask how does this spiritual point of view eliminated the world we wake up to everyday?
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