Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The problematic subtext in claiming THE TRUE is it casts other views opinions beliefs as false wrong incorrect. That is dogmatic through and through. It leaves no room for other views and adamantly insists that other views opinions beliefs are wrong.
The problematic subtext in claiming THE TRUE is it casts other views opinions beliefs as false wrong incorrect. That is dogmatic through and through. It leaves no room for other views and adamantly insists that other views opinions beliefs are wrong.
When it comes to personal experiences, no one else's views or opinions about them have any validity whatsoever. To the experiencer, ONLY his or her opinions about the experiences are TRUE, period. That has nothing to do with dogmatism. It is experiential. I experienced the true nature of God directly and personally, there is no room for opinion or debate. Any claims that God has a different nature than the one I experienced are simply wrong.
Holding opinions views beliefs is not dogmatic. However, the adamant insistence that other views opinions beliefs are wrong is dogmatic. The supremacy and superiority and condescension and denigration of other views opinions beliefs is dogmatic.
When the opinions, views or beliefs are about someone's personal experiences, ONLY the experiencer's opinions, views, or beliefs have any validity, PERIOD! Anyone else's can be wrong and it has nothing to do with dogmatism. Your presumptive arrogance in deigning to educate us on obvious and general knowledge is just further evidence of rigid dogmatism and extraordinary hubris.
What you call nitpicking is an attempt to prevent the widespread rejection of the Jesus narrative as deliberately fabricated fiction having no basis at all in fact as so many of your cohorts do, Arq. The difference is important, not trivial.
Then perhaps rather than moaning about what is "fiction" and not - and pretending fiction was not common in those days when Homer would disagree - you might do what most historians actually do. Which is evidence that the events claimed to have happened in a give text actually did.
Since you can not do that however - you moan that people use a word that emotionally triggers you. Fiction. As a deflection from the patently obvious fact you have not a shred of evidence for the events in question.
As others have pointed out though - it is not all that relevant. The messages these fairy tales hold stand perfectly well without the assumption any of it actually happened. It might trigger you that people see no evidence the stories ever actually happened - but if the message of the stories is what is important then being triggered by that fact is pretty poor form.
I think a lot of the messages in the stories are poor ones. But some are good ones. For example you cling to the one of him going willingly to his death still loving his attackers and killers and executors. Yea - that is a good message. Not a unique one though by far. But it remains a good message regardless of how fact or how fiction the tale itself happens to be.
It is NOT trivial, irrelevant and evasive. There is a huge difference between the recording of an actual person and events by primitive, ignorant, and superstitious ancients prone to embellishment and hyperbole and deliberate fiction based entirely on imagination. You proffer the latter because you are "peddling your own Pet Theory."
Plus we have the New Testament minus the gospels, Acts and 2 Peter.
That is 20 works (with 7 or 8 forged) that do not mention a historical Jesus, and one that may mention a brother. Why do the earlier texts not mention any teachings of Jesus, but only rely on revelation of a heavenly being revealed in OT scripture?
When it comes to personal experiences, no one else's views or opinions about them have any validity whatsoever. To the experiencer, ONLY his or her opinions about the experiences are TRUE, period. That has nothing to do with dogmatism. It is experiential. I experienced the true nature of God directly and personally, there is no room for opinion or debate. Any claims that God has a different nature than the one I experienced are simply wrong.
There it is in a nutshell. The inability to accept or even grasp that people have different experiences different views different opinions different beliefs than yours.
What is dogmatic is your adamant insistence that people who have different views and opinions and beliefs than yours are wrong. The flawed logic is that the only valid views and opinions are yours.
Your inability to grasp this and grant to others that which you demand for yourself is staggering.
You do the same thing with knowledge. There are areas of knowledge you do not understand. You seem incapable of accepting that others know and understand stuff which you do not. Rather than simply saying you disagree you adamantly insist they are wrong and it is nonsense.
Can you not hear the difference between "many paths to God" and "any way other than yours is wrong"
Can you not hear how problematic it is to claim rhat anyone who knows or believes or experiences things you do not is wrong?
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 11-30-2018 at 04:45 AM..
The proof of the pudding is in what the experience inspires in the one who has it. I haven't seen anything inspirational from you and others who claim such experience.
The proof of the pudding is in what the experience inspires in the one who has it. I haven't seen anything inspirational from you and others who claim such experience.
That is why (one of the many reasons) so many people find MPDs disdain problematic.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 11-30-2018 at 05:07 AM..
When it comes to personal experiences, no one else's views or opinions about them have any validity whatsoever. To the experiencer, ONLY his or her opinions about the experiences are TRUE, period. That has nothing to do with dogmatism. It is experiential. I experienced the true nature of God directly and personally, there is no room for opinion or debate. Any claims that God has a different nature than the one I experienced are simply wrong.
Here, I think, you are giving Tza and others a lot of good ammunition. Certainly you are the ultimate and absolute authority concerning the phenomenological (qualitative/subjective) aspects of your experience. You are in an absolutely unique position regarding those aspects. But the instant you cross the line from epistemology (i.e., the direct given-ness of your experience - "1st-person singular") to an ontological interpretation ofyour experience, you unavoidably enter the realm of intersubjective experience (i.e., "1st-person plural" or "we" rather than just "I"). To insist, without any hint of self-reflective humility, that your ontological interpretation is absolutely correct is, for all practical purposes, a sort of dogmatism in the sense that Tza is trying to convey. This ontological interpretation may very well be the best interpretation for you in the context of your own life, but in the realm of intersubjectively constituted reality, it could still be, in some profound sense, the wrong interpretation for many other people.
Personally, I suspect that a truly objective reality probably exists, but I am not at all convinced that "it" (whatever it is) always implies "absolutely true" answers to any questions that involve any sort of interpretation. I would say that if there are absolutely true statements, a good candidate for one of them would be this: Absolutely every ontological interpretation is an unavoidably epistemological type of event and, as such, it falls under the scope of intersubjectivity (as opposed to "absolute objectivity" - whatever that might mean).
We are all (almost necessarily, due to logical issues related to self-reference) blind to some (perhaps even most) of the factors that constitute our experiences and our interpretive processes, and I can pretty much guarantee that most of these "hidden" factors are fundamentally social in nature. Basically, there is no "I" that is not, in some profoundly important sense, a "we". From my perspective, when you express absolute confidence in your ontological interpretation, you belie a certain "dogmatic" resistance to self-reflectively recognizing the limits of what you can be justifiably certain about.
I feel absolutely positive that Kate Mulgrew gave me a hug so, by implication, I feel absolutely positive that anyone who claims she didn't give me a hug is plain and simply wrong. And yet, oddly enough, cognitively, as a self-reflective philosopher, I recognize that I could, indeed, be wrong, despite my feelings of virtually absolute confidence. And therein lies the foot in the door for debate over the probability of my ontological interpretation being true. Despite my feelings of confidence, I've left the door open to the possibility that logical/empirical considerations could still potentially convince me to change my mind. If I am, in fact, delusional about the "Kate" incident, I've left a glint of hope for discovering this about myself via careful consideration of the evidence and arguments offered by others.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
