Belief
POSTED BY: christhecynic
UPDATED: Sunday, July 23, 2006 00:26
VIEWED: 4595
PAGE 4 of 5
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Ah, Feline Philosophy at it's finest.
You do realize that belief blinds as much as it awakens, and thus most folks who believe in one thing or another will not understand a word you speak on this ?
I understand only because I have no faith, no Faith, and believe in nothing at all in such a fashion.
But I am not an Atheist.
(solve THAT riddle, and there will be cookies.)
There's belief, there's Belief, and then there's what you believe in, or believe to be true.
-Frem
you are the letter e
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ctc.....If you haven't looked outside, but believe the sky is clear. Your answer to the question, "Do you believe there are clouds outside" would be "no". In your mind the word outside makes you think of your immediate surroundings. Your answer to the question "Do you believe there are no clouds outside" does not have to be "no"...If you use the same definition of outside, "yes" works perfectly. Only if you believe "outside" to mean further than in the first question, would your answer also have to be "no".
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Quote:
Originally posted by kaneman:
ctc.....If you haven't looked outside, but believe the sky is clear. Your answer to the question, "Do you believe there are clouds outside" would be "no". In your mind the word outside makes you think of your immediate surroundings. Your answer to the question "Do you believe there are no clouds outside" does not have to be "no"...If you use the same definition of outside, "yes" works perfectly. Only if you believe "outside" to mean further than in the first question, would your answer also have to be "no".
I was going to type that so that no one could say what you just said, but then I thought no one would say it anyway and if I did people would just get annoyed at adding conditions that seemed to be superfluous.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Oddsbodskins:
the discussion/debate/argument/bitchfest wasn't started on the premise that god is a special case, but to discuss whether or not there is a differance between believing you don't know, and believing it's not so.
Apparently you can't discuss that without god coming into it. I said it had nothing to do with god in the first post, and brought up god only to explain what was making me bring up the question. God was back in the fray by post number three.
-
The idea that god was a special case was brought up by HKCAVALIER.
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oh i know, it just seems a bit futile, as discussions go, when the differant parties are coming from utterly unreconcilable points of view. one PoV can't be accurate if the other is, and vice versa 
there now, managed to sum up my load of ramble in a sentence.
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Since my entire post jsut disappeared i'll start with you last statement and try to make it quicker.
Quote:
I don't appreciate your opening remarks, or your straw manning of my statements,
I didn't try to, I obviously missinterperted them though. When you said that there were people at a feild and one said there was a sheep I assumed you were saying that the person who was standing there being told there was a sheep could not hear the sheep breathing, see the prints of the sheep (which would be there even on the driest ground while the sheep was standing in those prints even if they did not remain when the sheep moved), see the grass/crop/dirt in the field moving under the influence of the sheep or it's breath or even the results of the air displacement caused by an animal which is "standing still", or see, hear, or otherwise experiance any other secondary signs of the sheep.
If you were saying that the person could experiance these things then I have a very simple response to your analogy. The person would be well within logic and reason to say that there was no sheep there, however likelwise out of his mind if he said there was nothing there but air. Paranioa might cause one to claim there was a "sheep faking aperatus" there but simple observation would indicate that there was something.
If you were saying that the person could not experiance those things, which is what I thought you were saying, then that is evidence against the sheep because even if one assumed there were something other than empty air there observation would have proven that the something was neither a sheep nor sheep-like.
However why I said it didn't apply has to do with the core of this:
"I love how you accuse me of bringing things up with no relevance when all I've done is use a similar analogy too many of the ones you've used throughout."
What you mean by similar is lost on me. I brought up the cat for the simple, and stated, reason that you have no reason to believe one way or the other. You have reason to disbelieve an invisible sheep based solely on what you know about sheep. I also brought it up because you can't check. The cat is in a place which you can not go to and even if you could any results would be inconclusive. (I could have simply borrowed a cat for your visit. Or, if you found that there were no signs of a cat I could have sent the cat out while we cleaned removing all hair, urine, feces, phermones, and so on.)
In other words the basis for the analogy was simple:
Like god you have no evidence to base it on one way or the other.
Like god you can not go where it was said to be.
Like god you can not make observations about it.
Like god it is not against itself by definition. (That is I didn't claim it was an invisible cat, or a flying cat, or anything else that would have to somehow go against the defintion of what a cat is.)
I figure you're going to say that what I have to say from here on out is wrong, but I would appreciate greatky it if you told me exactly what is wrong in detail because this is what I understood you to be saying.
Your analogy was:
Unlike god you have evidence to base it on (knowledge of sheeps and how they interact with their enviroment combined with observations of the field that you are currently at which would be impossible to aviod making assuming you are a normal human with functioning senses.)
Unlike god you ARE where it is said to be.
Unlike god you ARE already making observations about it.
Unlike god it is against itself by defintion.
So how were the two similar? And how is the sheep related?
Or were you talking about the cloud analogy which went something like this:
I am not where I can observe the clouds.
I have no evidence to base the existance or non-existance of clouds on (because I have not previously observed the clouds).
Clouds are not remotly unheard of so it is possible that there are clouds.
So then your sheep thing would be like it because it said:
Unlike the clouds I am where I can observe the she
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Quote:
Well, it’s good to see that some things stay consistent. It looks like the Will Hung look-a-like is as overblown and bigheaded as ever. The god given mind of a limey never ceases to amaze me.
Shut up River, if I want the opinion of an ignorant crazed moron I'll go to the nut house where you belong.
Haven't you got a thread to start telling people your going to take all those pills and vodka, really you will honest, not just infantile attention grabing!
Though it's good to see you actually have the 'courage' to use your real login now rather than making one up.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Quote:
My friend I can't even conclusive prove that you exist to you unless we take certain things on faith first. I certainly can't prove that I exist to someone other than myself, and considering that it is rather absurd to ask me to prove that what I believe in is true.
You're not related to Shirley McClain by any chance, are you ?
Quote:On that one piece of info alone, no. But if others share in the experience,and 'something' can be objectively measured, via instrumentation, then that leaves far less room for doubt than your position indicates.
Like Citizen is so happy to point out, just because you can experiance something through your senses doesn't mean that it is there.
Quote:I personally tried to keep the 'prove God ' angle out of my replies. I have my own views, as do you, and am not interested in turning anyone, or even explaining myself. I didn't start this thread.
The problem with people saying, "Prove god," is that god is an axiom. The reason it is an axiom is because it can not be proved or disproved.
Quote:God could simply do ONE thing, and that would suffice. But some folks will dismiss anyhting out of hand, simply because it's too much to ask for them to change their world view. They're too stubborn, or stupid, to imagine .... something they couldn't imagine before. It's down right scary for some, I imagine. So they don't acknowledge it.
You could try proof by exhaustion, having god do every single possible thing, describe every single possible thing that could be seen or known, but it wouldn't work
Quote:
I wasn't trying to be ungreatful, it's just that with anything you care about, pet or person, someone saying that they're sorry doesn't really mean much. It is nice to know that someone cares, and I thank you for that.
I suppose we say ' sorry ' for a lack of anything else to say. I've felt strange saying it in the past, and I know for damn sure it doesn't help matters when folks told me they were sorry for MY loss. We've all have, or will, feel the pangs of losing that which we care greatly about. Even a close friend, despite all their caring and intent, can't feel the emptiness you feel inside. It's good that they care, but didn't they care for your feelings already? Isn't that what makes them a friend regardless of your current situation?
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:Quote:On that one piece of info alone, no. But if others share in the experience,and 'something' can be objectively measured, via instrumentation, then that leaves far less room for doubt than your position indicates.
Like Citizen is so happy to point out, just because you can experiance something through your senses doesn't mean that it is there.
Not really, delusions can build on each other, there are recorded cases of people believing in one delusion because another delusion told them it was real.
Obviously the only way you can learn that someone else shared the experiance is if they tell you, which is simply something you base on your five failible senses, the person could be a false themselves, it's happened to people before. Another thing that has happened is people have remembered events that never occured, conversations that never took place. Even if the confirming person is real you have no way to know that the confirmation is.
And for the intrumentation you've got a similar problem, even if we skip over the question of how you know it is real (people have believed themselves to be in high-tech labs when they were near nothing of the sort) we have the problem of how do you find out what results it gives. Well there are only two ways I know of, one is to see them yourself, in which case you're back to the problem of your senses, the other is to have someone else tell you, a person/conversation which might not even exist outside of your mind.
When you take it all into account it's easy to understand why some people have break downs the first time their senses fail them. It's also easy to understand why some don't, there comes a point when you have to say, "It is possible that I'm in a mental institute or a coma right now and nothing I'm sensing is real, but that doesn't really change anything."
After all whether the pain comes from an imaginary stubbed toe or a real one it still hurts, so there is a point where it isn't worth worrying about it.
But it doesn't change the effect it has on proof, since you can't prove that what you see and hear is real you've got to take at least some of it (like say the people and instruments you get your confirmation from) on faith. Just another axiom.
Quote:Quote:I personally tried to keep the 'prove God ' angle out of my replies.
The problem with people saying, "Prove god," is that god is an axiom. The reason it is an axiom is because it can not be proved or disproved.
Since people already brought god back into and I've heard things like, "If you really believe in what you hold as true, then you can objectively show me, or anyone else, that your belief is based in fact. If you can't do that, then I have nothing left to either confirm or deny your view on the matter, and am released from any obligation to accept it a priori," on the subject of god I jumped to the wrong conclusion, I'm sorry.
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CTC, If I believe the cat exists, it exists in my perception of it's existence, and therefore it's existence is subjective, and not worth getting clawed over.
Some of my best cats are existing right now Chrisisall
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