Written by: Simian
ah, israel. Just another justification for my thesis that religious belief should be treated the same as any other mental illness. But that's another discussion entirely...
-Mike
Certified Mad Doctor and HoP High Priest of Nutella
A buckuht n a hooze! -Valura
Written by: Sethis
Umm, first point: People often do not believe scientific evidence provided for them. Galileo and the Church etc etc.
Written by: Sethis
Second Point: I'd love to see you try to explain to a tribesman *how* he got up into space. He'd be under the impression that it was magic. Explain all you want about gravity, liquid hydrogen rockets and electricity, but the odds are that he won't have a bloody clue what you're on about. Without some serious education, he won't be able to accept your explanations. The point is, I think that if you took a tribal man up into space he'd either think he was hallucinating, or that you were working some kind of illusion on him.
Written by: Sethis
And please note that I never entered the debate about "Validity". That was Icer
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."
A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.
ture na sig
Written by: quiet
I can't for the life of me see what relevance that fact has to this discussion.
A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.
ture na sig
A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.
ture na sig
It took a while, but once their numbers dropped from 50 down to 8, the other dwarves started to suspect Hungry.
Written by: quiet
lots of anthropologists have argued that lots of them were a bit crazy to begin with. those that heard voices were taken away and fed drugs. some of those who didn't hear voices induced them with drugs anyway. i'm not equating shamanism with craziness, i'm just supposing tha there is some connection.
ture na sig
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
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I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
ture na sig
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: jeff(fake)
Once again we have people stating that an external, objective reality is an illusion. However their day to day actions fail to valididate their stated belief. We all breath in an out and eat and drink (some people claim not to, but they really are just crazy. When people keep an eye on them they quickly starve). We also avoid danger as it comes. In essence all of us believe in the objective reality whether we claim to or not because those of us who didn't were swiftly removed from it by natural selection. You can argue the philosophy all you want, but it is inescapable that your unconcious mind already agrees with me.
Written by: quiet
No, you didn't: you merely dreamt that you did.
Written by: quiet
Trees don't have states of awareness: to have a state of awareness, you need to be conscious, and to be conscious, you need to have a brain. The dependence of mind on body is well-documented.
Written by: quiet
What, it's possible that beer might cause rain? No, it isn't. I'll argue by reductio: if you think that mass belief can make those beliefs come true, then you must think that if everyone believed that the Jews were responsible for 9/11, that might make it true that the Jews were responsible for 9/11. But this conclusion is absurd: hence mass belief cannot make those beliefs come true.
Written by: quiet
A 'basic understanding of relative truth', you say? I *do* have a 'basic understanding of relative truth' - covered, as it happens, by four years of studying analytic philosophy - and in my experience it's the new-age books which completely misunderstand the concept.
After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
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I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It took a while, but once their numbers dropped from 50 down to 8, the other dwarves started to suspect Hungry.
ture na sig
It took a while, but once their numbers dropped from 50 down to 8, the other dwarves started to suspect Hungry.
ture na sig
Written by: Doc Lightning
I agree that it's not a mental illness, I have to say. At least, not by definition. Although then again, one has to wonder how large a belief has to be before it's no longer a "delusion" and then how large before it's no longer a "cult."
A more pointed question, perhaps, is whether religion is a social ailment.
Keep your dream alive
Dreamin is still how the strong survive
Shalom VeAhavah
New Hampshire has a point....
ture na sig
Written by: quiet
Sethis, I don't have to prove that 'reality is real'. Reality is, BY DEFINITION, real.
Written by: quiet
Nope, wrong again: there's a great tradition called 'virtue ethics', which explicitly rejects law-based morality, and can be traced back all the way to Aristotle. Read Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy' if you don't believe me.
After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Keep your dream alive
Dreamin is still how the strong survive
Shalom VeAhavah
New Hampshire has a point....
Written by:
- in my books, that's not a 'relative reality', but rather a belief. what you're saying amounts to this: different cultures hold different beliefs, and sometimes these beliefs make stuff happen - indeed, some are self-fulfilling. now i agree with this absolutely: but it simply shows that what happens is influenced by what people think, and what people think is influenced by their environment.
Keep your dream alive
Dreamin is still how the strong survive
Shalom VeAhavah
New Hampshire has a point....
It took a while, but once their numbers dropped from 50 down to 8, the other dwarves started to suspect Hungry.
Written by: Sethis
Prove that your concept of reality is real, please.
Can't? That's my point. NOW can we stop arguing about this?
"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."