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every time i read these posts that mention they are writing for and speaking to and addressing their "intended audience of the silent lurkers" it brings to mind a great story. one that is taught in yes my religion. a man is sequestered in his room studying his religious books, and reciting aloud as is the custom. He hears shuffling outside his door, and this happens time and time again. So he begins reciting aloud his own thoughts on the texts. He does this week after week, month after month, year after year. He is convinced that he has pupils and disciples and students crowding the hallway, vying for a position where they can hear his words of wisdom. His explanations become ever more grandiose and ever more verbose. The muffled noises outside his door continue. He sees himself as one of the sages of his time. He keeps himself sequestered as befits the status of such a one. Finally decades have passed and he has grown quite old, and he is preparing to depart the world. He feels it is fitting to let his students finally glimpse him, as they have been so faithful and devoted in attending his talks through the door.
So he opens the door to tell them good bye, before passing on to the next world. And he sees the cats who have been scratching the doorpost and wandering the hall.
that's what comes to mind, every time the pontificating preachers here on CD expound for those they imagine yearning and straining to hear their words.
There are people who have had NDE's who say differently.
Why are you right and they are wrong?
Because there is no credible evidence NDEs are legitimate, plenty of evidence some of the claims are invented for money, and no mechanism to explain how spirits see and hear when eyes and ears are physical.
Whereas the many contradictory different religious beliefs is evidence that most of them are inventions, which improves the odds that all of them are.
God never said that bad things would never happen to Christians. And there is evidence of HIM in your own back yard. Do you have children? HE is to lean on when times are bad, and miracles DO happen. No bolt of lightening will come down on you because you curse God, silly man. You aren't dead yet. You will probably be forgiven for all of that, because HE is a just God. However, the rejection will not go well. The saddest thing about this is that if there were no God, nothing would make sense. To live a life on the earth with family and have the emotions we do are just going to go away forever and ever when we die? We will just be "lights out" ? What a sad, horrible perception of the afterlife. Prayers for you.
To be a perpetual slave, for ever kowtowing to a vengeful god, what a sad, horrible perception of the afterlife.
every time i read these posts that mention they are writing for and speaking to and addressing their "intended audience of the silent lurkers" it brings to mind a great story. one that is taught in yes my religion. a man is sequestered in his room studying his religious books, and reciting aloud as is the custom. He hears shuffling outside his door, and this happens time and time again. So he begins reciting aloud his own thoughts on the texts. He does this week after week, month after month, year after year. He is convinced that he has pupils and disciples and students crowding the hallway, vying for a position where they can hear his words of wisdom. His explanations become ever more grandiose and ever more verbose. The muffled noises outside his door continue. He sees himself as one of the sages of his time. He keeps himself sequestered as befits the status of such a one. Finally decades have passed and he has grown quite old, and he is preparing to depart the world. He feels it is fitting to let his students finally glimpse him, as they have been so faithful and devoted in attending his talks through the door.
So he opens the door to tell them good bye, before passing on to the next world. And he sees the cats who have been scratching the doorpost and wandering the hall.
that's what comes to mind, every time the pontificating preachers here on CD expound for those they imagine yearning and straining to hear their words.
Yet we know people DO read posts without taking part. No one is claiming they are yearning and straining to 'hear' the written words, that is just you trying to the wise sage.
The saddest thing about this is that if there were no God, nothing would make sense. To live a life on the earth with family and have the emotions we do are just going to go away forever and ever when we die? We will just be "lights out" ? What a sad, horrible perception of the afterlife. Prayers for you.
God is not a necessary entity to make sense of the world and in fact gets in the way of making sense of it. If god says (and he very much does) in the bible that he is the protector and benefactor of his own, that he blesses the righteous and confounds the wicked, then every time a righteous man is confounded he has to expend substantial energy explaining that away (or perhaps explain away his very standing as righteous) instead of just accepting that good and bad things happen to everyone, that it is not personal or directed -- it is "just the happs". So one tends to be wounded, confused, angry, feeling betrayed, etc., to no good purpose. Or in the alternative they must swallow their natural feelings and give god some sort of excuse for his non-performance, and must accept his blame for themselves.
As to the whole "lights out forever" thing, it is just learned helplessness. You are used to being the star of your own stage drama, with god as the director. You've understood your whole life in that context, so of course you have a failure of imagination about doing it any other way. You can't imagine how precious life is when it is finite. You can't imagine how much better you're motivated to treat others when you understand there are no second chances or do-overs and no eternal elbow room.
The fact I am mortal is actually a great comfort to me. But I do not expect you to understand that. You only know how to be condescending about it.
every time i read these posts that mention they are writing for and speaking to and addressing their "intended audience of the silent lurkers" it brings to mind a great story. one that is taught in yes my religion. a man is sequestered in his room studying his religious books, and reciting aloud as is the custom. He hears shuffling outside his door, and this happens time and time again. So he begins reciting aloud his own thoughts on the texts. He does this week after week, month after month, year after year. He is convinced that he has pupils and disciples and students crowding the hallway, vying for a position where they can hear his words of wisdom. His explanations become ever more grandiose and ever more verbose. The muffled noises outside his door continue. He sees himself as one of the sages of his time. He keeps himself sequestered as befits the status of such a one. Finally decades have passed and he has grown quite old, and he is preparing to depart the world. He feels it is fitting to let his students finally glimpse him, as they have been so faithful and devoted in attending his talks through the door.
So he opens the door to tell them good bye, before passing on to the next world. And he sees the cats who have been scratching the doorpost and wandering the hall.
that's what comes to mind, every time the pontificating preachers here on CD expound for those they imagine yearning and straining to hear their words.
Your story is an excellent analogy. Most times the posts in question are meant to be two-fold in that they hope to dissuade you from posting your thoughts while proselyting their messages and notions, thus the hostility
Your story is an excellent analogy. Most times the posts in question are meant to be two-fold in that they hope to dissuade you from posting your thoughts while proselyting their messages and notions, thus the hostility
You certainly have a lot of psychic insight into people's inner thoughts and motivations. Very impressive! How DO you do it?!
The reality is that I have no illusion that I'll ever dissuade people married to their ideas, to obtain a divorce from them. That is something they have to do for themselves. I certainly did.
Those lurkers, who are a known and studied phenomenon by the way, will tend to be less married to their ideas, and might occasionally take an argument on board as they steer their own course. I admit that is a hope of mine. But it is really just distantly secondary to the main point, which is to not give magical thinking a free pass it has historically enjoyed in the marketplace of ideas. Magical thinking is, in general, engaged in with both pride and gusto, so the idea that people will stop and go, "huh, I never considered that, perhaps I need to re-evaluate my thinking" is pretty unrealistic. On the other hand, it might "dissuade" those who want to come here and have an effortless echo chamber mutual admiration society around their disordered thinking. Discussion is too hard for those folks. That has the side effect of leaving us with the stubbornly dogmatic and authoritarian types, but at least then they are out there making fools of themselves for all to see.
To the point of how one legitimately defines proselytization vs discussion or debate, I think those words have pretty clear definitions and it is intellectually dishonest to equate merely expressing a lack of belief or buy-in to an unsubstantiatable claim with a desire to "proselytize" in the pejorative sense of "ram something down the throat of someone who doesn't want to hear it". Let us suppose that you say, as someone has the habit of doing in the Christianity forum here, that all unbelievers are unbelievers because they are rebellious, stubborn dissemblers. Let us say that I correct that by stating my actual reasons for being an unbeliever, which have nothing to do with being a libertine or misrepresenting anything. Is that proselytization? Then I suppose I am guilty, if that's how you want to use the word in a negative sense. I don't really care if you don't know how to use words accurately. That's not my problem.
every time i read these posts that mention they are writing for and speaking to and addressing their "intended audience of the silent lurkers" it brings to mind a great story. one that is taught in yes my religion. a man is sequestered in his room studying his religious books, and reciting aloud as is the custom. He hears shuffling outside his door, and this happens time and time again. So he begins reciting aloud his own thoughts on the texts. He does this week after week, month after month, year after year. He is convinced that he has pupils and disciples and students crowding the hallway, vying for a position where they can hear his words of wisdom. His explanations become ever more grandiose and ever more verbose. The muffled noises outside his door continue. He sees himself as one of the sages of his time. He keeps himself sequestered as befits the status of such a one. Finally decades have passed and he has grown quite old, and he is preparing to depart the world. He feels it is fitting to let his students finally glimpse him, as they have been so faithful and devoted in attending his talks through the door.
So he opens the door to tell them good bye, before passing on to the next world. And he sees the cats who have been scratching the doorpost and wandering the hall.
that's what comes to mind, every time the pontificating preachers here on CD expound for those they imagine yearning and straining to hear their words.
That is interesting, that he claims to be addressing an imaginary group of people that he assumes exist. And that he isn't writing for the people here, who we know do respond and exist, talking past the people here to his assumed much larger audience and following. All in the name of trying to prove something is a myth.
I have always felt that the graph of the number of people reading your posts is kind of a manipulating thing, because the forum cannot possibly calculate who has taken a moment to actually read any given post. I even know of a user who says he just scrolls right on past mine.
I like the thought of a parent who shares wisdom with a young child, and the child doesn't get it till many years later, sometimes even after the parent is gone. And life experiences bring him to the place of remembering what was shared and maybe even discounted at the time, and the child then gets it. And the word and lesson didn't die with the parent but now lives in the child, in a respectful way.
I remember in the movie "blast from the past" the dad patiently trying to explain baseball to his son in the confines of the bomb shelter. And he couldn't connect all the dots. Then when he gets out and watches a baseball game being played, he shouts out; Now I get it!
That is interesting, that he claims to be addressing an imaginary group of people that he assumes exist.
Again, that is a distant secondary goal, nor is that group imaginary or assumed. Here is an opinion piece discussing the 90-9-1 rule if you care to actually know the facts of the matter:
I'm sure you can follow from there to more detailed analysis on the origins of this rule of thumb. If you want to put in the effort. On the other hand maybe you would rather just take easy pot-shots from the peanut gallery, as others here like to do.
I deconverted in the pre-Internet era. If I had done so in the Internet era, you can bet that my go-to would be to lurk in places like this and consider the arguments, but I would have a hard time admitting to myself at first that my interest was more than merely academic. I would know full well that my authoritarian handlers would consider me guilty of the ultimate sin, the sin of doubt and of listening to unapproved thoughts in the service of those doubts. I try to write the kinds of things that hypothetical "me" would appreciate and find helpful. I probably don't always succeed, but I try. But again ... it is not my primary motivation, either.
Your story is an excellent analogy. Most times the posts in question are meant to be two-fold in that they hope to dissuade you from posting your thoughts while proselyting their messages and notions, thus the hostility
Considering the number of 'why do atheists post here on the R & S forum' questions, you appear to be projecting.
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