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No i would not. And the scenario you described is not about religious beliefs. It is about emergency response to a physically threatening situation.
...in short: buy time until professional law enforcement can get there. Is that "talking to him about God and his beliefs?" No it is not. Talking to him about something else to distract him? perhaps.
Apparently you didn't understand (or you refuse to acknowledge) my explanation about using extreme/unrealistic examples just for analytic purpose of getting down to the core principles involved. You've simply dodged the discomfort of having to deal directly with the root principles by focusing instead on one of the infinite variety of possible ways to derail my particular example. Unfortunately, your resources for dodging are infinite here, and my patience is limited, so I will try something different. (My hope is that others here will understand what I was getting at, but if any of you are confused, please let me know and I will try to spell it out more clearly.)
So, Tza, let me turn to a somewhat more real-life-like example. Let's suppose that a particular cult leader believes that God wants all of his true-believers to commit mass suicide on a particular day because a comet is passing near the Earth and God intends for the newly-departed souls of his followers to catch a ride on the comet, which will then take them to heaven. Anyone who does not kill themselves in accordance with the cult leader's divinely-inspired instructions, will be caught in a global nuclear war and die. The cult leader already has hundreds of devoted followers and more are being recruited every day. They are all buying plane tickets to an obscure country that does not have very good law-enforcement resources, so it is unlikely that the authorities will be willing or able to stop the mass suicide. (In fact, maybe the local government is actually rather happy to see a bunch of crazy Americans kill themselves.)
Someone you love just converted to the cult and has purchased a plan ticket. Her flight leaves in a month. She is being strongly encouraged by the cult to stop associating with non-believers, but for the moment your bond with this person is so strong that she still listens to you. She expects you to try to change her mind, and she knows it all sounds crazy to you, but she believes that she has seen a miracle and this miracle has convinced her that God is real and God really wants her to follow the cult leader. She is a well-educated person and she claims that she wants to be a critical thinker.
I think that what I'm trying to get at is so obvious that even you can plainly see it (I want you to say that you would want to try to convince her that the cult leader is not really speaking God's message and that the miracle that she believes she witnessed is not really a sign from God that she should kill herself.)
I already know that you will find some way to avoid dealing directly with the root principle I'm aiming at (i.e., the principle that sometimes it is actually good to try to convince someone that they should change their beliefs about certain attributes of God and/or their beliefs about certain people who claim to speak on God's behalf), but I'm very curious to see how you will do it.
The bolded belies the initial assertion. You simply can't evaluate a unified field theory using assumptions (as opposed to facts) that are not shared BY that theory. It's like discussing line xy in geometry and asking "what about z that is not ON line xy?"
I don't blame you for taking this view, but I should explain not only am I not saying that it makes no sense without a creator, but asking what sense does it make without some kind of creation. This Cosmic field -god had nothing to do with that?
Aside that Mystic (who is using you as a convenient catspaw to belt me with ) has argued first cause here and elsewhere. Well, who or what if not this Cosmic mind God? Nate, I know from the past that there is or was a creator idea in this theory, even if Mystic is saying now that there isn't.
But a change in the theory looks to cause questions. If the god -concept has evolved along with human consciousness, what need is there for this cosmic God at all, especially since Mystic refined (if not amended) the theory from a cosmic field in which humans were immersed to individual mind -sized bits of it to avoid the problem of limited animal awareness?
Think all that through and ask yourself whether the question of whether there ought not to be a Creator of some kind behind all this in order for it to make any sense is not a valid question. That's what I was asking.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 02-01-2018 at 06:21 PM..
I don't blame you for taking this view, but I should explain not only am I not saying that it makes no sense without a creator, but what sense does it make without some kind of creation. This Cosmic field -god had nothing to do with that?
Aside that Mystic (who is using you as a convenient catspaw to belt me with ) has argued first cause here and elsewhere. Well, who or what if not this Cosmic mind God?
And if the god -concept has evolved along with human consciousness, what need is there for this cosmic God at all, especially since Mystic refined (if not amended) the theory from a cosmic field in which humans were immersed to individual mind -sized bits of it to avoid the problem of limited animal awareness.
Think all that through and ask yourself whether the question of whether there ought not to be a Creator of some kind behind all this in order for it to make any sense. That's what I was asking.
Your ability to absolutely misunderstand everything I try to explain to you boggles the mind. You and Tzaph seem to have that in common. Dense does NOT adequately describe it. Creation and Creator are irrelevant. Existence is the only thing we know for sure about God because the existence of our reality is the only thing we know for sure. You want to keep attacking the extant attribute issues about God rather than address the existence issue because the many religious absurdities about God's attributes are so easy to "debunk." The unified field is the unified field and is UNIFIED! I don't know what your issue is with limited animal awareness. You cannot seem to alter your conditioned perspective from the "separate things that are created" to the UNITY that it is. Also, try harder to separate my Synthesis from my BELIEFS. They do NOT address the same issues and are based on different referents, eg. science and the spiritual fossil record.
Your ability too absolutely misunderstand everything I try to explain to you boggles the mind. You and Tzaph seem to have that in common. Dense does NOT adequately describe it. Creation and Creator are irrelevant. Existence is the only thing we know for sure about God because the existence of our reality is the only thing we know for sure. You want to keep attacking the extant attribute issues about God rather than address the existence issue because the many religious absurdities about God's attributes are so easy to "debunk." The unified field is the unified field and is UNIFIED! I don't know what your issue is with limited animal awareness. You cannot seem to alter your conditioned perspective from the "separate things that are created" to the UNITY that it is. Also, try harder to separate my Synthesis from my BELIEFS. They do NOT address the same issues and are based on different referents, eg. science and the spiritual fossil record.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
QED. You cannot abandon your Creator meme and "the usual meaning of God." Sad.Your pride in your lack of knowledge, pompous pretensions of success, and complete inability to comprehend the actual issues under consideration make discourse with you impossible. You tenaciously refuse to parse my Synthesis from my Beliefs pretending they are one and the same. Your disdain for Faith is palpable despite your inability to acknowledge your own. For you, Faith in anything about God is per se, irrational despite the "We do not know" underpinning. Your Faith in the "No God" belief is irrational despite the fact that "We do not know" but you consider it rational because of "the usual meaning of God." You refuse even to TRY to contemplate and engage any other meanings of God. Thanks, Nate. It is quite frustrating to engage with what Arach calls the fundy-mentals on either side.
Well done old mate. The habitual Faith based arrogance, dishonesty and irrationality comes out. Anyone with the ability to think straight - and I am hoping that Nate is one of these as I shall continue with him at least in the hope that he will Suss you in the end - will see that you have tried to wriggle out of and evade or deny evey debunk and have been shown up in every case, and now can only bleat "You don't understand'.
Just for one thing, the wriggling, evasiveness and palpable dishonesty of your suggestion that I can't tell your synthesis from your beliefs. Your synthesis is not your belief? Your cosmic field is not the cosmic consciousness? The Cosmic consciousness is not "God"? You beliefs about the spiritual template and Jesus's sacrifice is not your beliefs all related to that? Nate, if he is able to reason and ask questions ought to be asking that one.
If they are all connected at the hip (and at least in past version of your hypothesis, they were) you are being dishonest in order to create an appearance of a misunderstanding on my part that you can exploit as a pretext for saying I misunderstand it all. Your reference to existence being all we know about evades the fact that you speculated about what we don't know (cosmic origins) in the past as if you did know, and even if you now say that you don't or won't, why should it be wrong of me to ask about it, even if you won't? This is all your habitual cunning and trickery, which Nate will hopefully also come to see though.
P.s Mystic old sparring partner, is Arach saying anything worth reading, at all? I took him off ignore last week for a while and put him back on when it was just the same abusiive squealing repeated in a score of posts.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 02-01-2018 at 06:46 PM..
Well done old mate. The habitual Faith-based arrogance, dishonesty and irrationality comes out. Anyone with the ability to think straight - and I am hoping that Nate is one of these as I shall continue with him at least in the hope that he will Suss you in the end.
Just for one thing, the wriggling, evasiveness and palpable dishonesty of your suggestion that I can't tell your synthesis from your beliefs. Your synthesis is not your belief? Your cosmic field is not the cosmic consciousness? The Cosmic consciousness is not "God"? Your beliefs about the spiritual template and Jesus's sacrifice is not your beliefs all related to that? Nate, if he is able to reason and ask questions ought to be asking that one.
If they are all connected at the hip (and at least in past version of your hypothesis, they were) you are being dishonest in order to create an appearance of a misunderstanding on my part that you can exploit as a pretext for saying I misunderstand it all. This is all you habitual cunning and trickery, which Nate will hopefully also come to see though.i
::Sigh:: My Synthesis is a science-based explanation and extrapolation of the ACTUAL composition of our reality that explains to my intellect what I experienced and how it can possibly be. The Christian narrative and selection of Jesus is based on the match between descriptions of Christ's mind and the consciousness I encountered. The resultant attachment to the Savior narrative is derivative of my attempt to marry my understanding of the Synthesis to the concept that our minds are and have been influenced by God (Cosmic Consciousness) resulting in an evolving spiritual template for understanding God and our relationship to Him. I simply want you to ACTUALLY understand my views, Arq, you can continue with your irrational anti-theism obsession.
Apparently you didn't understand (or you refuse to acknowledge) my explanation about using extreme/unrealistic examples just for analytic purpose of getting down to the core principles involved. . You've simply dodged the discomfort of having to deal directly with the root principles by focusing instead on one of the infinite variety of possible ways to derail my particular example. Unfortunately, your resources for dodging are infinite here, and my patience is limited, so I will try something different. (My hope is that others here will understand what I was getting at, but if any of you are confused, please let me know and I will try to spell it out more clearly.)
So, Tza, let me turn to a somewhat more real-life-like example. Let's suppose that a particular cult leader believes that God wants all of his true-believers to commit mass suicide on a particular day because a comet is passing near the Earth and God intends for the newly-departed souls of his followers to catch a ride on the comet, which will then take them to heaven. Anyone who does not kill themselves in accordance with the cult leader's divinely-inspired instructions, will be caught in a global nuclear war and die. The cult leader already has hundreds of devoted followers and more are being recruited every day. They are all buying plane tickets to an obscure country that does not have very good law-enforcement resources, so it is unlikely that the authorities will be willing or able to stop the mass suicide. (In fact, maybe the local government is actually rather happy to see a bunch of crazy Americans kill themselves.)
Someone you love just converted to the cult and has purchased a plan ticket. Her flight leaves in a month. She is being strongly encouraged by the cult to stop associating with non-believers, but for the moment your bond with this person is so strong that she still listens to you. She expects you to try to change her mind, and she knows it all sounds crazy to you, but she believes that she has seen a miracle and this miracle has convinced her that God is real and God really wants her to follow the cult leader. She is a well-educated person and she claims that she wants to be a critical thinker.
I think that what I'm trying to get at is so obvious that even you can plainly see it (I want you to say that you would want to try to convince her that the cult leader is not really speaking God's message and that the miracle that she believes she witnessed is not really a sign from God that she should kill herself.)
I already know that you will find some way to avoid dealing directly with the root principle I'm aiming at (i.e., the principle that sometimes it is actually good to try to convince someone that they should change their beliefs about certain attributes of God and/or their beliefs about certain people who claim to speak on God's behalf), but I'm very curious to see how you will do it.
I dont see the point in dealing with "extreme/unrealistic examples just for analytic purpose of getting down to the core principles involved."
It has always made more sense to me to deal with actual realistic practical examples when seeking to address core principles.
I am at the core a very rational practical person. That seems to frustate you for some reason. Something frustrates you anyway, is it that you have a script and I am not following it?
Gaylen all I can do is show up and be the person I am. You seem to be losing patience that I am not acting the way you want me to act, how you think I should act.
I will say again there is a huge HUUUUUGE gulf between what you think someone is like (or a group of someones) and what they are actually like. People are diverse to quote the fine quote from Trans.
If someone I loved was in that situation i would let them know how much I love them and that i have serious concerns and worries for their safety and well being. That she is with people who mean her harm and that it would break my heart if anything bad happened to her. That i am there for her and will always be there for her. I'd try to make sure she has a cell phone and that there is money and a plane ticket home for her any time no questions asked.
Have you ever raised children? That is a variation of the talk I have given my children in middle school as teenagers at university and as adults now they are in their 30s. With minor variations it's the same talk I gave them before their trips to Japan, Caracas, Bangalore, Spain, New York.
We never stop loving and worrying about our loved ones and the reality is we do see them walking into situations where harm is likely to befall them: bad crowd in high school, people who drink and do drugs at university, unscrupulous business associates, girlfriends who may be after a big house or a green card, an intimate relationship that may be abusive.
Over and over I tell them my concerns for their safety for their well being and that i am there for them no matter what and i love them no matter what and the most important thing is that they are safe. Wherever they find themselves any where in the country or in the world they can call me any time day or night at home or at work say its a family emergency and I will wire them money and a plane ticket home, no questions asked. And i wont tell their father.
Thats what I'd do. And that's what I have said.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 02-01-2018 at 07:04 PM..
::Sigh:: My Synthesis is a science-based explanation and extrapolation of the ACTUAL composition of our reality that explains to my intellect what I experienced and how it can possibly be. The Christian narrative and selection of Jesus is based on the match between descriptions of Christ's mind and the consciousness I encountered. The resultant attachment to the Savior narrative is derivative of my attempt to marry my understanding of the Synthesis to the concept that our minds are and have been influenced by God (Cosmic Consciousness) resulting in an evolving spiritual template for understanding God and our relationship to Him. I simply want you to ACTUALLY understand my views, Arq, you can continue with your irrational anti-theism obsession.
Good. I hope Nate is reading this, because notwithstanding your habitual patronizing sighs and wriggling semantic evasions, it is clear that your beliefs and your Synthesis are about your beliefs. Specifically about beliefs about God. And don't try to say that science is not about your beliefs. I have already explained that science is nothing to do with it and you had to escape science that was shown to be wrong to a postulated unknown science that you believed in (1)
I hardly need point up your saucy swiping at atheism as 'irrational'. I know why you think (or say) so - because you dismiss science (as a reliable factual basis for the materalist default) and reverse logic, and I will repeat that I understand your hypothesis better than you do. Because you ignore the problems, and try to wriggle out of or evade them when they pointed out.
Keep wriggling, you are just making the hole deeper.
(1) vaguely related to dark matter at one time suggested as the consciousness of god, until that ran into problems - I remember all this even if you choose to forget it.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 02-01-2018 at 07:03 PM..
I am so pleased with the extent to which my thread has provided opportunities for such enlightening discussions. The general tenor and tone have been cordial and positive despite radically different perspectives being engaged. I see genuine and sincere efforts on all sides in trying to understand how each of us deals with such a controversial subject. It has become clear that Tzaph is sincerely approaching the topic from an emotional health and interpersonal perspective that speaks well of her concern for everyone involved. Arq and I exchange repartee and barbs but we are old friends (and adversaries) who basically respect one another but have very different perspectives and understanding of our reality. Unfortunately, my poor communication skills seem to leave us at loggerheads. Gaylen is a true gem of enlightened discourse and explanatory skill. My own views have been "polished" and enriched by reading his posts. Nate is a true practitioner of what I see as the real Gospel of Christ and a welcome addition to the discussions. Thanks to his efforts, I see the Quakers in a completely different light. There are many others I have not mentioned that make this thread so valuable to me. Keep up the discourse. In Christ's love, ~Mystic
...I think that what I'm trying to get at is so obvious that even you can plainly see it (I want you to say that you would want to try to convince her that the cult leader is not really speaking God's message and that the miracle that she believes she witnessed is not really a sign from God that she should kill herself.)
I already know that you will find some way to avoid dealing directly with the root principle I'm aiming at (i.e., the principle that sometimes it is actually good to try to convince someone that they should change their beliefs about certain attributes of God and/or their beliefs about certain people who claim to speak on God's behalf), but I'm very curious to see how you will do it.
Also if someone i loved (or anyone) was talking of committing suicide I would take her very seriously and recognize that she is troubled and seek to get her help to address that through medical and mental health professionals. I would talk to a counselor or help line myself to find out practical guidance on how to reach out to someone who is talking of suicide and how to handle that. If there have been physical threats or someone is in physical danger of harming themself or others then those are always taken seriously by medical and mental health professionals, and by law enforcement and by adult protective services to investigate abuse of vulnerable individuals (abuse can be emotional, financial, physical, neglect).
Is that the time to talk to her about God and her religious beliefs? Again no. My focus would be on getting her to safety first and foremost and then seeking to get her treatment to address what is troubling her to the point of considering suicide.
Good. I hope Nate is reading this, because notwithstanding your habitual patronizing sighs and wriggling semantic evasions, it is clear that your beliefs and your Synthesis are about your beliefs. Specifically about beliefs about God. And don't try to say that science is not about your beliefs. I have already explained that science is nothing to do with it and you had to escape science that was shown to be wrong to a postulated unknown science that you believed in (1)
I hardly need point up your saucy swiping at atheism as 'irrational'. I know why you think (or say) so - because you dismiss science (as a reliable factual basis for the materalist default) and reverse logic, and I will repeat that I understand your hypothesis better than you do. Because you ignore the problems, and try to wriggle out of or evade them when they pointed out.
Keep wriggling, you are just making the hole deeper.
(1) vaguely related to dark matter at one time suggested as the consciousness of god, until that ran into problems - I remember all this even if you choose to forget it.
Just another example of how you fail to understand the point being made and so you recast it into the same narrative you THINK you are countering.
Look again: Mystic said NOTHING about "irrational atheism." nor has he ever to my knowledge characterized atheism as "irrational." What he DID talk about is your irrational anti-theism and there is a world of difference. You simply can't see what your "log" is, as much as you have managed to modify it from where you were when you first appeared here.
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) has argued first cause here and elsewhere. Well, who or what if not this Cosmic mind God? Nate, I know from the past that there is or was a creator idea in this theory, even if Mystic is saying now that there isn't. 
Thanks, Nate. It is quite frustrating to engage with what Arach calls the fundy-mentals on either side.
I hope Nate is reading this, because notwithstanding your habitual patronizing sighs and wriggling semantic evasions, it is clear that your beliefs and your Synthesis are about your beliefs. Specifically about beliefs about God. And don't try to say that science is not about your beliefs. I have already explained that science is nothing to do with it and you had to escape science that was shown to be wrong to a postulated unknown science that you believed in (1) 
Observations
