(2023-11-23, 11:40 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: Nowadays there is another topic that I avoid like the plague because it also can turn vituperative and is involved with a lot of irrationality and prejudicial beliefs - the Israel/Hamas war. If you want to stay on good terms with family and friends you tread very carefully on these subjects.
Oh all border disputes are a no-go for me in mixed company.
Outside of very small groups (1-4) I try to avoid politics/religion/etc, unless it's something I feel is harmless enough like asking why the laws of physics don't change. That's a good one, in my experience, for getting people to question materialist/physicalist assumptions.
'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
(2023-11-23, 11:33 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: You're right - James' words apparently were "If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white." Same meaning, different animal. Strange how memory works or doesn't quite work right sometime.
Yes, I used to have a website called "White Crows" which expressed my thoughts on these matters but I closed it years ago. There's another one listing lots of literature about the subject here:
https://whitecrowbooks.com/
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