Darth Dane

I believe you are a romantic at heart, and a poet.

It is a very sweet belief, and I shall not contest it, for it brings tears to my eyes.

I do fantasise, but I know the difference between fantasy and reality.

As do I, I know I can't see unicorns now, but I can fantasize.

I do wonder where the border between Reality and fantasy is, and what this border is?

I wonder if you (s-tb) do. I wonder if you even want to?




DD - Love Spliff

Stephen T-B

Ah, well. I think you've got to the heart of the matter with this: “I do wonder,” you wrote, “where the border between Reality and fantasy is, and what this border is?”

In my mind, the border is clearly delineated.
In my mind reality ends at the point where a thing’s existence stops being detectable by our senses, or by the tools we have devised for detecting a thing’s existence, or is so uncertain that there is no general consensus regarding its existence.

Tuesday is therefore real, and so is belief.
Belief’s reality is such that it can induce people to go to church, pay tithes, stone adulterers, burn heretics, go to war, build hospitals and schools and take Homeopathic medicines.
The things people believe in, however, are not real. If they were, belief would be extinguished by knowledge.

So in my world - but I take it not in yours - there is a sharp distinction between reality and fantasy, and I dare say, it makes my world a lot more boring than yours.
If you drank whisky and lived in Leeds I’d like to spend an evening with you and a bottle of Glen Orde, and we could talk about these things until our speech was slurred and our eyes had glazed over.

Stephen T-B

PS. When I wrote that things people believe in aren't real, I should have added that not being real doesn't necessarily mean they're not true.

Darth Dane

In my mind, the border is clearly delineated.
In my mind reality ends at the point where a thing’s existence stops being detectable by our senses, or by the tools we have devised for detecting a thing’s existence, or is so uncertain that there is no general consensus regarding its existence.

What if a concensus is growing? Like the concensus, among some, that aura's are real, I know there is a lot of charlatans, but no smoke without fire. I have experienced, what I could equate to aura's. If I was alone, I would realize I was probably hallucinating, but behold, the world is inhabited by others who also say they can see this. What am I to believe?


So in my world - but I take it not in yours - there is a sharp distinction between reality and fantasy, and I dare say, it makes my world a lot more boring than yours.
If you drank whisky and lived in Leeds I’d like to spend an evening with you and a bottle of Glen Orde, and we could talk about these things until our speech was slurred and our eyes had glazed over.

I would be honored to have a drink with you

Do you know if I am real? Do you know if I really am from denmark or if I am from sweden? I could tell you a load of lies, and you would behave as if though it was real, but suddenly I tell you the truth, and you are shocked that what you thought was real was fantasy and what was fantasy is real, would that slur your border?



Cheers, have one for me



DD - Love Spliff

Stephen T-B

Auras, to start with:
(I got this wrong before and will probably get it wrong again , but...) a sceptic challenged a psychic, who claimed to be able to detect auras, to give a demonstration of the ability on a live tv show. I think screens were arranged on the set, some of which had someone behind them and some didn’t, and the psychic’s job was to distinguish which was which by viewing the auras, which proved impossible.
I would think anyone with real confidence in the reality of auras would be eager to collect James Randi’s $1m-dollar prize in his Paranormal; Challenge.
There was a thread (at least one, maybe there’s been a lot more) in the Science and Skepticism Forum and it was shown that the human body does indeed emit energy, in the form of heat.
But the question of auras is by-the-by. I am not predisposed to believing in such things; you are, and I think the world would be a dull place if we were all the same.

You asked: “Do you know if I am real? Do you know if I really am from denmark or if I am from sweden? I could tell you a load of lies, and you would behave as if though it was real, but suddenly I tell you the truth, and you are shocked that what you thought was real was fantasy and what was fantasy is real, would that slur your border?”

What I do know, because I have the evidence of it right if front on me, is that someone is sitting at a keyboard and sending text via the internet to this thread in “Elsewhere.” I have no evidence who or where that person is, and actually it doesn’t matter since you are not giving me information of a sort which requires me to know who or where you are, and while I’d certainly be surprised if you are one of my colleagues in this office, or one of my relatives, nothing hangs on your identity or location.
I might believe you are in Denmark, and it is either true or false. Belief, however, only lasts for as long as the real state of affairs is not established for a certainty. Once it is, belief is replaced by knowledge.
My inclination, because of my temperament, psychological make-up (and I don’t know what else) is only to believe in things which I judge (because of my temperament, psychological make-up and I don’t know what else) to be reasonable and probable in the light of my experiences. I try to resist wishful thinking, but in doing so deny myself access to a realm which for some people makes life worth living. I have a prosaic out-look, and I think the clashes here at Infidels are often between folk like me and those who require another dimension to their lives.