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No, old son. That is just your excuse. The problem is Faith, where you make claims that are based on Faith and then, when others have good reason to decline to buy into them, you have been known to imply that they are too stupid to understand. This isn't professorial manner but what Faith -based thinking has done to you.
That is unfair, Arq. I have an enormous amount of knowledge that I have accumulated over the decades that most of the people here, including my most vociferous detractors like you, do NOT have. When I point that out because they seem not able to grasp the implications in extant knowledge and the inferences that I use to extrapolate my hypotheses, that is NOT talking down to anyone. It is simply pointing out the facts of the situation. It has nothing to do with being stupid and everything to do with lacking sufficient knowledge. When I have engaged those who professed more knowledge on the intricate details and explicated the basis for my inferences they inevitably withdraw. It appears they were drawn here under false impressions and ignorant beliefs about my level of knowledge and my views that were inevitably dispelled. In your mind, you chose to infer that I was sussed, but I was NEVER the one who withdrew or ceased explication. YOU are the only one who is arrogant enough in your lack of knowledge to THINK I have been sussed. It is very annoying.
Quote:
No old non -atheist professor; you can rely on me to whip away away your cover -ups and explain exactly what you are avoiding telling them.
If I sometimes damn you with the faint praise of having an ingenious theory and a lot of certificates, you can count that as an unexpected bonus.
To discredit my views, you overwhelmingly use my BELIEFS as reflected in my ultimate conclusions from the extrapolations in my hypotheses NOT my knowledge of science and reality. It is the theistic conclusions that I believe confirm my experiences and my choice to associate them with a religion (Christianity) that form the REAL basis for your constant criticism and derision. But my version of Christianity is not remotely like the purely magical and faith-based versions that you find so easy to refute.
'fair' as I used it meant 'a lot of it' and when applied to two (or more) people disagreeing on what both claim to be Inspired truth through faith, discredits both their claims.
No, old son. That is just your excuse. The problem is Faith, where you make claims that are based onFaith and then, when others have good reason to decline to buy into them, you have been known to imply that they are too stupid to understand. This isn't professorial manner but what Faith -based thinking has done to you.
.
Mystic is very logical and methodical. More than anyone on the boards perhaps. He is not fanciful and he does not embellish.
"Faith based thinking" the phrase you use sounds shallow and dismissive. Also contradictory.
Faith addresses what we are NOT able to directly grasp or understand with our mind. If we could then thought would be enough we wouldn't need Faith.
Faith and thinking do however go hand in hand. Neither are static. They complement each other and in using one we strengthen the other. You don't see it that way because your idea of what Faith is, is not what it is at all.
Faith operates like an axiom. We apply it and in doing so we understand things that we did not previously understand. This brings us to more questions . Again we apply Faith another axiom and these harder questions now are understood. By applying Faith (like we do axioms) we understand more. We get smarter. You see it as a wasteland dead end plateau. Actually Faith is an elevator that we use to advance to more levels of learning. Which never stop.
Those who dismiss faith, as you do in this post, don't understand how it works. That's ok. You dont have to. You also don't understand the role of the Divine in people's life it's value it's power it's preciousness. It's not the superficial thing you think it is. You're kind of parked in a cul de sac because those are all things you don't value and don't believe exist and are "really something else".
They aren't. Like any of us who have had an experience like that it is life changing and changes the entire course of our life and we spend the rest of our life seeking to understand it.
It's not words it's not interpretation it's not beliefs it's not oh let me tell you what it really was. It's not knowledge or thought or ideas.
It is direct experience that can not be conveyed to others adequately to anyone else at all but is a touchstone that is a deep powerful profound well to draw from forevermore
So to say "the problem wirh faith based thinking" and try to apply it to mystic just falls apart. It does not apply to mystic. He is very thorough and he investigates and delves very deeply into study and learning and research. He did it as a professor. He did it with his martial arts and biofeedback. And after his experience he continues to use that same thorough approach.
His experience was authentic . He could never in a million years have made it up. Nor would he have wanted to. No atheist would ever cook that up Or subject himself to being associated with "those people." We still see that in him and that's ok. He's not a fake. He's not embellishing. He experienced the real deal.
You are never going to get what he is trying to convey because your framework of what is valid does not allow. It simply does not compute and you dismiss it out of hand....with "mystics thinking is flawed" and "it was really something else"
Plus you dismiss him because you simply can not accept that an atheist (and a really smart one at that) could have an authentic experience of the Divine.
Mystic is very logical and methodical. More than anyone on the boards perhaps. He is not fanciful and he does not embellish.
"Faith based thinking" the phrase you use sounds shallow and dismissive. Also contradictory.
Faith addresses what we are NOT able to directly grasp or understand with our mind. If we could then thought would be enough we wouldn't need Faith.
Faith and thinking do however go hand in hand. Neither are static. They complement each other and in using one we strengthen the other. You don't see it that way because your idea of what Faith is, is not what it is at all.
Faith operates like an axiom. We apply it and in doing so we understand things that we did not previously understand. This brings us to more questions . Again we apply Faith another axiom and these harder questions now are understood. By applying Faith (like we do axioms) we understand more. We get smarter. You see it as a wasteland dead end plateau. Actually Faith is an elevator that we use to advance to more levels of learning. Which never stop.
Those who dismiss faith, as you do in this post, don't understand how it works. That's ok. You dont have to. You also don't understand the role of the Divine in people's life it's value it's power it's preciousness. It's not the superficial thing you think it is. You're kind of parked in a cul de sac because those are all things you don't value and don't believe exist and are "really something else".
They aren't. Like any of us who have had an experience like that it is life changing and changes the entire course of our life and we spend the rest of our life seeking to understand it.
It's not words it's not interpretation it's not beliefs it's not oh let me tell you what it really was. It's not knowledge or thought or ideas.
It is direct experience that can not be conveyed to others adequately to anyone else at all but is a touchstone that is a deep powerful profound well to draw from forevermore
So to say "the problem wirh faith based thinking" and try to apply it to mystic just falls apart. It does not apply to mystic. He is very thorough and he investigates and delves very deeply into study and learning and research. He did it as a professor. He did it with his martial arts and biofeedback. And after his experience he continues to use that same thorough approach.
His experience was authentic . He could never in a million years have made it up. Nor would he have wanted to. No atheist would ever cook that up Or subject himself to being associated with "those people." We still see that in him and that's ok. He's not a fake. He's not embellishing. He experienced the real deal.
You are never going to get what he is trying to convey because your framework of what is valid does not allow. It simply does not compute and you dismiss it out of hand....with "mystics thinking is flawed" and "it was really something else"
Plus you dismiss him because you simply can not accept that an atheist (and a really smart one at that) could have an authentic experience of the Divine.
Thank you so much, Tzaph. Those who have NOT experienced the Divine simply cannot accept that anyone else actually has. Perhaps they feel unfairly left out or some other issue. But I know in my heart of hearts that no one is left out. It is impossible. Thanks again Tzaph, God bless you in Christ's love.
Despite your claims to a mass of knowledge, the fact is that it is never going to be any use in validating your faith -claims because they are all skewed from the start -science, logic, even comparative religion - to serve your beliefs. These have all been quite simply shown up and to protest is getting you nowhere. Nor does Tzaph's support for a sort of "Love as cosmic Entity validates me" worldview
That is not unfair - it has been shown to be the case again and again. And you do this to yourself by consistently trying to peddle to us the same product that has been shown not worth buying. Of course you will get support from those who also bought the product and so will praise it even if it is rubbish. But those of us who know better will not be told we don't Understand. We understand very well.
It is you being unfair because we don't say you are wrong. Just that the rationale put forward does not make it right. Nor does it rubbish the rationale of biology, materialistic default and the burden of proof. Even if our argument was no better than yours, that would not make your repeated dismissal and deprecation of it justified. But it is better than yours as it uses real science - not a mysterious unknown science for which all that we use is merely a signpost, it takes the validated data of science as evidence, not toss it on the scrapheap on the pretext that we can't explain everything down to the last nano -particle. We use the mental tools of logic, not throw them in the bin because they will not give you the result you want.
And over all this the usual and perfectly obvious bog-basic false start of A priori godfaith has buggered all your certificates from the start and we know this. To keep claiming you are right (even with equally foggy thinkers as supportive echo) and play the misunderstood martyr (especially after all the crap you have dished out in the past) is just a hoot. When will you get it? We have seen how the trick (1) works. To keep telling us it's real magic just makes us laugh.
(1) one of the best example of the trick was your 'The universe - but what actually IS iT??' (and don't say you didn't pull that one because you did). It was meaningless at the time, but we now know it was a real question -begger based on a priori godfaith.
"It's the universe'
'but what Is that?'
'It is what it is - the Universe.'
'But what actually IS IT??"
Question expecting (or demanding) the answer "Something More than just the material/physical - Aka God".
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-23-2017 at 05:31 AM..
I have an enormous amount of knowledge that I have accumulated over the decades that most of the people here...do NOT have.
As someone who has studied and contemplated philosophy and science for 40+ years, I know how hard it can be to condense and simplify, for the sake of readable posts in this forum, some of the incredibly subtle and complex ideas that are floating around. Even at my best, I end up with post so long that most people probably don't really read them. And just as people tend to lose track of my arguments and/or fail to really get them in the first place, I have to admit that I cannot, at this moment, bring to the forefront of my mind exactly what your best evidence and rational arguments for Christianity consist of. You and I are nearly on the same page concerning most things that you might use to defend a loose Cosmic Mind type of theism, but I have so-far failed to heuristically grasp the specifically Christian aspects, aside from your Christian-mystical experiences.
In other words, I'm wondering if your evidence/reason-based arguments actually apply to the specifically Christian aspects, or do they just apply to the most basic notion of theism-in-general? Aside from your direct mystical insight, what evidence/arguments do you offer to say that the physical human being Jesus is in some sense a savior or divine presence on Earth? That's the part of the picture I have forgotten or, perhaps, never got in the first place.
And since it is me who is asking, you might also have to pinpoint what, exactly, distinguished Jesus from the rest of humanity. (Again, based on evidence/reason other than the Bible says so). I say this because, given my "self-as-an-Aristotelian universal" thesis, it seems (at first blush) that any argument that could convince me that Jesus was divine would also serve to convince me that we are all essentially divine in whatever way Jesus was (because, aside from the-Bible-says-so I have no basis for distinguishing Jesus from the rest of humanity - aside from him seemingly bring a wise fellow who saw a bunch of foolishness in the OT and decided to focus on the core concepts of love and compassion - a trait that is shared by many human beings, though certainly not most).
Bottom line: Assuming we were to become convinced of the general theistic premise, why should we follow the historical Christian narrative, rather than going back to first-principles and assembling an essentially new narrative based on plausible interpretations of current science and logic?
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 06-23-2017 at 07:08 AM..
Despite your claims to a mass of knowledge, the fact is that it is never going to be any use in validating your faith -claims because they are all skewed from the start -science, logic, even comparative religion - to serve your beliefs. These have all been quite simply shown up and to protest is getting you nowhere. Nor does Tzaph's support for a sort of "Love as cosmic Entity validates me" worldview
That is not unfair - it has been shown to be the case again and again. And you do this to yourself by consistently trying to peddle to us the same product that has been shown not worth buying. Of course you will get support from those who also bought the product and so will praise it even if it is rubbish. But those of us who know better will not be told we don't Understand. We understand very well.
It is you being unfair because we don't say you are wrong. Just that the rationale put forward does not make it right. Nor does it rubbish the rationale of biology, materialistic default and the burden of proof. Even if our argument was no better than yours, that would not make your repeated dismissal and deprecation of it justified. But it is better than yours as it uses real science - not a mysterious unknown science for which all that we use is merely a signpost, it takes the validated data of science as evidence, not toss it on the scrapheap on the pretext that we can't explain everything down to the last nano -particle. We use the mental tools of logic, not throw them in the bin because they will not give you the result you want.
And over all this the usual and perfectly obvious bog-basic false start of A priori godfaith has buggered all your certificates from the start and we know this. To keep claiming you are right (even with equally foggy thinkers as supportive echo) and play the misunderstood martyr (especially after all the crap you have dished out in the past) is just a hoot. When will you get it? We have seen how the trick (1) works. To keep telling us it's real magic just makes us laugh.
(1) one of the best example of the trick was your 'The universe - but what actually IS iT??' (and don't say you didn't pull that one because you did). It was meaningless at the time, but we now know it was a real question -begger based on a priori godfaith.
"It's the universe'
'but what Is that?'
'It is what it is - the Universe.'
'But what actually IS IT??"
Question expecting (or demanding) the answer "Something More than just the material/physical - Aka God".
No one is saying that logic and science are wrong.
Just that they are not enough.
Your way makes sense to you trans and no one is trying to change your way.
You value "must be validated by science". Others know the many ways that is limiting.
Hear the difference between wrong and limited. Science explains some things but not other things.
Your values and commandments "articles of fairh" are logic science material default and burden of proof. It is how you navigate life. Those are fine for you and ironclad.
They don't address a lot of stuff though. You are fine with saying science does not know. I agree. Science does not know. Thats why it's limited.
"biology" is grand.
Science does biology trans does biology.
Trans does not do spirit. Science does not do spirit.
Your ironclad commandments and articles of fairh do not permit you to do spirit. Thou shalt not.
There is something more than biology. Science is slowly but surely getting there. It's fine Trans it really is.
You dont like magic but the very same magic once science finally gets around to "explaining it" you're fine with. Nothing has changed just the word for it.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 06-23-2017 at 08:08 AM..
(good post)....
In other words, I'm wondering if your evidence/reason-based arguments actually apply to the specifically Christian aspects, or do they just apply to the most basic notion of theism-in-general? ....
And since it is me who is asking, you might also have to pinpoint what, exactly, distinguished Jesus from the rest of humanity. (Again, based on evidence/reason other than the Bible says so). I say this because, given my "self-as-an-Aristotelian universal" thesis, it seems (at first blush) that any argument that could convince me that Jesus was divine would also serve to convince me that we are all essentially divine.....
Bottom line: Assuming we were to become convinced of the general theistic premise, why should we follow the historical Christian narrative, rather than going back to first-principles and assembling an essentially new narrative based on plausible interpretations of current science and logic?
Excellent questions and not to take anything away from Mystic I would like to start you thinking about what YOU consider the "specifically Christian aspects" and whether those "aspects" are anything Mystic considers necessary or even important. Divinity of Jesus, for instance... conventional (Nicene Creed) concepts are probelematic at best.
Excellent questions and not to take anything away from Mystic I would like to start you thinking about what YOU consider the "specifically Christian aspects" and whether those "aspects" are anything Mystic considers necessary or even important. Divinity of Jesus, for instance... conventional (Nicene Creed) concepts are probelematic at best.
Good point. I'm specifically concerned with anything relating to the specialness of Jesus, aside from some historical quirks (such that he could have just been an otherwise ordinary guy who happened to be at the right place, at the right time with a message that caught the attention of some people and snowballed from there).
Specialness could include, just for a few examples:
- Working miracles
- Being conceived via virgin birth
- Being in some sense the "son of God" (i.e., other than all of us as "children of God.")
- Rising from the dead (in a literal sense - not just being in a coma and mistaken for dead, etc.)
- Ascending to heaven and being worthy of being prayed to - such that these prayers are substantially different than praying to any random god, or goddess, or saint, or the sun, or the moon, or the Earth, or a really old tree...
As someone who has studied and contemplated philosophy and science for 40+ years, I know how hard it can be to condense and simplify, for the sake of readable posts in this forum, some of the incredibly subtle and complex ideas that are floating around. Even at my best, I end up with post so long that most people probably don't really read them. And just as people tend to lose track of my arguments and/or fail to really get them in the first place, I have to admit that I cannot, at this moment, bring to the forefront of my mind exactly what your best evidence and rational arguments for Christianity consist of. You and I are nearly on the same page concerning most things that you might use to defend a loose Cosmic Mind type of theism, but I have so-far failed to heuristically grasp the specifically Christian aspects, aside from your Christian-mystical experiences.
In other words, I'm wondering if your evidence/reason-based arguments actually apply to the specifically Christian aspects, or do they just apply to the most basic notion of theism-in-general? Aside from your direct mystical insight, what evidence/arguments do you offer to say that the physical human being Jesus is in some sense a savior or divine presence on Earth? That's the part of the picture I have forgotten or, perhaps, never got in the first place.
And since it is me who is asking, you might also have to pinpoint what, exactly, distinguished Jesus from the rest of humanity. (Again, based on evidence/reason other than the Bible says so). I say this because, given my "self-as-an-Aristotelian universal" thesis, it seems (at first blush) that any argument that could convince me that Jesus was divine would also serve to convince me that we are all essentially divine in whatever way Jesus was (because, aside from the-Bible-says-so I have no basis for distinguishing Jesus from the rest of humanity - aside from him seemingly bring a wise fellow who saw a bunch of foolishness in the OT and decided to focus on the core concepts of love and compassion - a trait that is shared by many human beings, though certainly not most).
Bottom line: Assuming we were to become convinced of the general theistic premise, why should we follow the historical Christian narrative, rather than going back to first-principles and assembling an essentially new narrative based on plausible interpretations of current science and logic?
yes, we are
that is correct
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 06-23-2017 at 11:00 AM..
profound =
the person pointing at the sun is not the sun
a little more profound =
if the person pointing at the sun is the sun
then we are all the sun
G*d is all of them, and flowing through you:
the giver, the recipient, the gift
the lover, the beloved, and the love
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