TedM

Until you define what reality is I can't tell if you are distinguishing reality from something that only exists in people's imaginations. If it is something you allow to be 'outside' our imagination, why not allow for a 'God' outside our imaginations too?



Sure, but it is irrelevant to whether God exists or not.

TedM

You are wrong about my motivation. You can be agnostic and still have judgements about God's nature if he did exist. That is how I read your paragraph initially and still do. I think you wrote from the heart, and not from 'speculation'.

There is no elephant. You have only created one in your own mind. My conclusion about your true position is not motivated by a belief in God.

I think we are done now.

spin

You seem to be having difficulty with the notion of speculation.

You've shown yourself not to be a dependable observer. You won't even look at the elephant.

Rubbernecked to the end. Every thread that I remember you have started assumes the elephant. How can you communicate about certain things when you won't deal with the presuppositions involved?? You can't and you don't.

You project your baggage onto others and think that you have dealt with them. You can't deal with anything here until you face the elephant.

Your inability to perceive my "true position" seems to involve your defensive attitude to your religion. You come here (mainly, if not only) to defend it, don't you? You hit on some apologetic that you want to test. You start with one foot nailed to the floor (a step you won't or can't take) and wonder why you don't get anywhere. Your belief in a god suffuses most everything you say. Too bad you won't take the John Nash test.

You were done before you started. But do consider John Nash. He didn't know until he got an independent perspective, just as you won't know without external objectivity.

Juma

Yes, as you can discuss the color of unicorns... You can, but why?

Jaybees

If unicorns are believed in by a major segment of the world and appealed to as a basis for killing other people, then their color, and much more, needs examination.

Perspicuo

This bit of argumentation is the best I've read in a long time. Cheers!

Juma

No. That is, you may want to examine HOW the belief in unicorns work. But there is no need to indulge in an actual argument about the color.

Chili

That may sound good to you be the problem with your idea of reality is that it keeps dying on you, while Ted may have a higher aim that in the beauty of truth he does entertain.

And it does not matter so much if he can rationalize his intimacy with the divine for as long as he does not command them for others to see.

TedM

Not exactly. I don't have any strong beliefs. I do like to test ideas that are more uplifting that those held by agnostics and atheists though. I find those world perspectives highly depressing.

Regarding the issue at hand, although I believe you are categorizing your paragraph as nothing more than simple 'speculation' as a way out of admitting your very strong negativism, I'll grant that you may be speculating more than it appears to me. I probably reacted to your paragraph negatively because I find those kinds of speculations depressing because I've felt them myself in difficult times, which have been more intense in recent months for me.

My 'out' is that I believe that there is a creator and that it is nearly infinitely more intelligent than you or I. Though I have little conviction beyond that, I therefore am comfortable with quoting the scriptures "Who can know the mind of God" and "My ways are higher than your ways". I think both reflect a reasonable position and can reflect hope in the midst of despair when it appears that our lives have no greater purpose other than what we give them.

spin

You don't realize but you're weaseling. The word "strong" here is quite flexible. Every post you start has an obvious religious commitment that hamstrings your thought. Your beliefs are strong enough to be obvious to any rationalist who sees your postings here.

The world perspectives of children are frequently far less depressing as well. But perspective is also flexible. I find the world perspectives of many religionists so conservative that when they get voiced, as in the case of politics, they lead to oppression of sections of the population. That's highly depressing to me.

I'm not seeking a way out of anything here. You foolishly misrepresented what I wrote due to your prior commitments and have sought to wipe the egg off your face in various ways. All you end up with is more smearing.

Reality can be depressing, TedM. Does that mean you should turn your back on it?

I've already indicated that that is no out at all. You have merely trapped yourself in lack of thought. I tell you to take the Nash test and you refuse. Because of that refusal you have no out. You just have no way of knowing that there is a creator, because you lack that independent confirmation of that which you claim to know.

And as parents can have children that are far more intelligent than them, you need to stop making ignorant assumptions about hypothetical creators and their creations.

Your being comfortable is of little concern to your being reasonable or rational. The sty of contentment makes sleepy piglets that don't flex their intelligence. If comfort is your goal you are certainly in the wrong place, so your being here seems to indicate a contradiction in your thought.

Perhaps it is depressing for you to contemplate the elephant in the room. It's better for you to find excuses for not doing so: "Who can know the mind of God" and "My ways are higher than your ways". Slovenly thinking allows you to waddle in the sty of contentment.

You still have the option to take the Nash test.

This is the other use of "think", the one that doesn't require thought. You could have said, "I feel...", "I believe...", "It seems to me...". And the use of "reasonable" isn't related here to cogitation at all. You are using words in a weaselly way, TedM, to suggest things that are counter to reality.

In The Matrix Cypher wants to escape from the ugly reality of life out of the matrix. He would prefer to eat the juicy steak inside the artificial reality of the matrix than to eat the gruel of the real world.

This is a very sad analysis indeed. Extremely wrongheaded, but sad. We are all human beings. We are by animal nature sociable and inquisitive. Yet the society that we live in tends to stifle the inquisitiveness and alienate the individual so that s/he makes a more docile worker/consumer. But the state of alienation requires some sort of cohesion to make up for our initially sociable nature. Religion provides three things: 1) justification for stultification of our natural inquisitiveness, 2) an artificial social context to make up for the deformation of the natural human sociability, and 3) a deferred happiness that provides edification in an otherwise depressing artifice of reality.

I prefer the natural to the artifice. I prefer the rational to the irrational. I prefer to see as much reality as I can.