MENTAL EVOLUTIONfrom turning Christian in early 1971 to the present |
After I turned Christian, my thoughts were jumbled and irrational, because rationality was the enemy of my faith. It remained like that until I started learning critical thinking from Christian apologists.
year | profound wisdom |
---|---|
1972 | He who is not grounded in the Word shall be floored in the fellowship. |
1974 | Some truth is not worth the price of understanding it. |
1977 | Formality for the sake of appearance is hypocritical. Formality for the sake of obedience is not. |
1978 | Is there a place in the Kingdom of God where questions don't exist? Would I be allowed to live there? Would I like it if I did |
1978 | I would rather die with unrealistic ideals than survive in a meaningless reality. But to go on living with unrealistic ideals is intolerable. |
1982 | The Kingdom of God is built out of the ambitions of forgiven thieves. |
1982 | The most blatant of all liars is he who believes his lie to be for the glory of God. |
1985 | The pretense of knowing God. Is life worth so great a lie? Or is life doomed without it? |
1986 | Nothing produces spiritual changes faster than the anticipation of death. |
1986 | Spiritual growth is fastest in an atmosphere of uncertainty. |
1987 | Bullshit is anesthetic. Without that anesthetic, the horror of reality is unbearable. |
1987 | Spiritual maturity is getting your priorities straight and keeping them straight under pressure. |
1987 | Better to adopt those values which will ultimately lead to satisfaction, and allow yourself enough hypocrisy to live with them, than to adopt those values which will ultimately lead to torment, and adhere to them with perfect integrity. |
1987 | Christians love to admit they are sinners, but hate to admit they are selfish. |
1987 | Requirements of God must take precedence over requirements of personal integrity. Otherwise intelligent beings would annihilate each other over conflicting ideologies. |
1987 | Better to be in God's will and unhealthy, than to be out of God's will and healthy. |
1987 | If you act in accordance with what you believe, you will find out if what you believe is true. If you don't act in accordance with what you believe, you may go thru your entire life believing lies and never know it. |
1987 | When God chooses to communicate, any idiot can understand Him. When God is not communicating, many idiots will put words in His mouth. |
1987 | The only religious act I can perform without hypocrisy is service. |
1988 | PRIME OBJECTIVE: to find out from personal experience: 1. that God pays off on His promises. 2. that life is worthwhile within the perimeter of His rules. |
1988 | Submitting to the lordship of Christ is like submitting to brainwashing. Truth, reality, and sanity are being redefined. |
1988 | The only way universal peace can be established is by voluntarily submitting to whatever government has the most legitimate claim to supremacy. |
1988 | Most scripture was never designed to guide the spiritually minded, but to restrain the carnally minded. |
1989 | You don't read a billboard with a microscope. |
1989 | Nothing is so obvious that it can't be ignored for the sake of sound theology. |
1989 | Life is not worth living in the kingdom of any god who doesn't make life worth living. |
1990 | Being right is not enough. No matter how obviously correct I am, people will ignore the truth of what I say unless they see benefit in it for themselves. |
1990 | Are they truly seeking answers? Or are they just reciting ritualized questions for the sake of religious catharsis? |
1990 | They said, "you can't out-give God." Bullshit! God can be out-given by anyone who is fool enough to try. |
1992 | Tip to rescuers: A few people stay rescued after you rescue them. Most just keep coming back for more rescuing. |
1992 | I can live with a God who is a benevolent liar. But I can't live with a God who is an honest slave driver. |
1992 | If you have to become what you hate in order to get what you want, even if you get it, you paid too much. |
1993 | If you "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness," be careful. There is no marker at the point of no return. |
1994 | Anyone who thinks submitting to a spiritually tyrannical God will save your soul doesn't know soul from Shinola. |
1994 | Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." The bastard never told us the examined life isn't worth anything either. |
1994 | Consistency is a hobgoblin only to small minds. |
1994 | A change of spiritual location is often accompanied by illness. |
1994 | Apparently God can live with all manner of repentant scum, but can't tolerate honest disagreement on matters of principle. |
1995 | Christianity is submitting to voluntary slavery for the goal of a satisfaction that may not exist, but sure as hell doen't exist anywhere else. |
1995 | When one is logically forced to conclude something intuitively unacceptable, one must either conclude that a premise is incorrect or abandon common sense. |
1995 | God has a long established tradition of doing what He's never done before. |
1995 | There is no such thing as liberty and justice for all. Liberty for all means some are deprived of justice. Justice for all means some are deprived of liberty. |
1995 | It's more honorable to go to hell with integrity than go to heaven without it. |
1996 | Thought happens. |
1996 | If I can't talk straight and make it in life - fuck life. |
1996 | The purpose of theory is to explain experience, not to force a reinterpretation of it. |
1996 | Don't ask me who I'm voting for, when I don't even know if I'm voting for God. |
1996 | Familiarity breeds contempt only when at least one of the parties is worthy of it. |
1996 | I'd rather be a happy dog than an unhappy god. |
1996 | Mercy is a counterbalance to law, not to justice. Mercy is necessary to achieve justice, only because law is imperfect. When justice is perfect, mercy is unjust. |
1997 | Talking straight attracts the people I want to attract, and repels the people I want to repel. |
1997 | Truth seekers always clarify issues. Salesmen & lawyers clarify when they are right, and obscure when they are wrong. Politicians & theologians always obscure, because anything they say that's clear can be used against them later. Professional philosophers complicate issues in order to expand simple statements into books. |
1997 | What is a man profited if he gains the whole kingdom of God and loses his integrity? |
1997 | I was at a Unity meeting. They sang, "Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me." I thought, "Let truth prevail if it kills every one of us." |
1997 | No matter how obviously right I am, people rarely agree with me. But they often end up saying the same things I say, as though they thought of it. |
1998 | I fear God, but not as much as I fear the possibility that God may be unjust. An unjust God is not worth fearing, even if He roasts you in hell forever. |
1998 | Spiritual pride is an unavoidable consequence of the knowledge that you are doing your best. If you're not proud, you could be doing better, and you know it. (But if you are proud, it may be for dumb reasons.) |
1998 | Admitting evil, no matter how dishonorable, is more honorable than masking evil. |
1998 | Any God salesman is probably a liar. Even if he is honest, his God is probably a liar. But you either trust God, and risk being cheated, or make the best of nihilism. |
1998 | The only pleasure that doesn't cost more than it's worth is food - unless you're fat. |
1998 | Faith is not the substance of anything. It is the simple decision to gamble. It is identified in what is bet on, and measured in how much is risked. |
1998 | How typical of Biblical inerrantists to deny the existence of common sense, non-statistical probability, and burden of proof! Do they plan to spend eternity evading the obvious in favor of conclusions logically forced from their fear based premises? How I do hate living in a world where such people are the most logical company I can find! |
1998 | The church encourages Christians to lie. e.g. to sing words they don't mean, to claim knowledge they don't have, to pretend to think what they don't think, to express emotions they don't feel, and to justify it all under the banner of attitude. Yet somehow God seems to prefer their lies to my loveless honesty. |
1998 | "I can't possibly be making a bad argument, because I've stated many that I'm opposed to bad arguments." (This is satire, in case you haven't figured it out.) |
1998 | If eternal damnation were just, why would God create a world full of creatures who all think it's unjust except for a minority of those who believe Him? Why would He create us with values which are in conflict with His own? |
1998 | Theists are likely to be more honest than atheists in business because theists fear God. Theists are likely to be dishonest about their experience of God for the same reason. |
1998 | Science is neutral. It takes a religion to oppose a religion. |
1998 | Exceptions don't prove rules. Exceptions prove exceptions. |
1998 | When appearance conflicts with revelation, I can choose to trust revelation, but I cannot help thinking that appearance is probably correct. |
1998 | EGOCENTRIC GOLDEN RULE: Behave in a manner that makes you worthy of the life you want. If there's justice, you'll get it. If not, nothing matters anyway. |
1998 | Despair is better than futile hope. Why? - because it kills you quicker. |
1998 | No one can be trusted to tell you the truth about God - no man, no institution, no book, not even what appears to be God Himself. You either find out by personal experience, or remain ignorant. |
1998 | I cannot be what I think God wants me to be. I can fake it, but I can't be it. I think God wants me to fake it. And I'm refusing without apology. I will not build my eternal life on a lie - not even a God-authorized lie. |
1998 | There appears to be a serious conflict between the God who created my concept of good & evil and the God who reveals Himself to me. If no actual conflict exists, I pray for correction. If the conflict is real, I choose the former God. |
1998 | Truth is nobody's primary value. Worthwhile life is everybody's primary value. Truth matters only in so much as it is necessary to get to worthwhile life and stay there. Let anyone who claims to love truth acknowledge that this is truth. |
1998 | Seeking truth is different from defending what you believe to be true. |
1998 | He who loves lies. He who doesn't lie doesn't love. God is no exception. |
1998 | Faith is probability judgment distorted by emotion. Faith at its best is inductive reasoning based on data selected by emotion. Faith at its worst is assumption based on emotion. Faith is training wheels for those who haven't figured it out. Faith is a promise not to change your mind no matter how much more you learn. Faith is a condom for horny minds who fear catching nihilism. |
1998 | If a principle you assert belies a principle by which you operate, you are either asserting an untruth, or behaving hypocritically or both. |
1999 | There are no divinely authorized lies. But there is a divinely authorized church which authorizes lies. |
1999 | Where truth is terrifying, the pursuit of truth is social exile. Truth ceases to be frightening when one realizes that fearing it is stupid. |
1999 | Eternal damnation is no reason to fear an unjust God. But fear of eternal damnation is the greatest blessing a world of criminals could ask for. |
1999 | A just God would never punish anyone for what he believes or fails to believe, but neither would He allow into a community committed to justice anyone who is not committed to justice. |
1999 | If you seek a righteous God, then act in a manner worthy of a righteous God.
Only those who are willing to defy an unrighteous God are worthy of a righteous God. [Oct. 2010: I now believe the second statement to be wrong.] |
1999 | The God of an inerrant Bible cannot possibly exist, because he inspired the appearance of errors, but is not the author of confusion. |
1999 | When the truth or falsity of any given proposition is discernible by personal experience, the contradictory testimony of other people, no matter how great their number or credentials, is irrelevant. |
2000 | The only necessary trinity: Creator - middle management - us |
2000 | The Kingdom of God is like a sausage. If you want to partake of it, don't ask how it was made. |
2001 | What kind of God would program noble values into a person, and then bully him into sycophancy? |
2002 | Only an evil god would allow his creation's good & evil evaluator to become corrupt and then judge him by an uncorrupted standard. A righteous god would judge his creature by the creature's standard, and change that standard if he doesn't like it. |
2002 | KNOWLEDGE: that faculty by which a mind accepts the existence of truth, and its own ability to distinguish it from non truth. |
2002 | Humility is not a virtue. It is a social expedient to facilitate solicitation. |
2002 | Believe the lies that feed you? I prefer to starve. |
2002 | The God you serve is the God you deserve. |
2002 | The most popular compensation for lack of integrity is a good attitude. I don't do attitudes; I do ethics. |
2002 | Emotional attachment to the truth or falsity of any proposition hinders ones judgment of the truth or falsity of that proposition. |
2002 | Optimism and pessimism are both deviations from realism. And realism is the only ism that's realistic. |
2002 | Truth seekers never complicate issues. If in any dispute, you find that you are introducing unnecessary complications, you are not seeking the truth in that issue. |
2002 | Knowledge of truth is frightening. If you don't desire it more than you fear it, there is no reason to pursue it. |
2002 | Context according to inerrantists: You have to look at enough of the context to allow enough ambiguity of the passage in question to permit the possibility of the desired interpretation. |
2003 | No matter how stupid their faith is, if you kick the props out from under it without offering something better in its place, you're just a child molester. |
2003 | Part of being a good philosopher is refraining from the pretense of knowing more than you know. But if you do that, you will never get a job teaching philosophy - in my opinion. |
2003 | The main distinction between a truth seeker and a religionist is that when a particular truth cannot be known, nor statistical probability ascertained, a truth seeker will choose common sense probability, and a religionist will choose to err on the side of perceived safety. |
2003 | Nothing is so clear that a good philosopher can't find a way to misunderstand it. If I speak clearly enough for anyone with common sense to understand me, they will object to some vagueness or ambiguity in my terms. If I define my terms and speak precisely, it will be so tedious that no normal person could understand me, much less a philosopher. |
2003 | Philosophy is the effort to discover truth. It is achieved by applying critical thinking to personal experience. The effort to figure out what other philosophers are saying is philosophy only if it is an effort to figure out if they are right, which is achieved by critical thinking. The effort to be conversant in the opinions of philosophers is meta-philosophy. |
2003 | If you have to pretend to be what you're not in order to sustain a relationship, it is only a matter of time before that relationship costs more than it is worth. Relationship with God is no exception. |
2003 | It is evil to create evil. If you create free will beings, some of them will become evil. The only way to create free will beings without becoming evil is to influence them such that the good they do outweighs the evil. Such influence will necessarily be in the form of reward & punishment. |
2003 | Logic cannot tell you that logic is reliable, because logic tells you that circular reasoning is unreliable. You need common sense to tell you logic is reliable. |
2003 | Any fool uses logic when it leads to conclusions he likes. A rational person submits to logic when it leads to conclusions he doesn't like. |
2003 | Communication about objective reality is possible only within that set of parameters on which the communicants agree. |
2003 | Personal beings are all by nature frustrated. They want more than they have. The Supreme Being is no exception. |
2003 | There are some things so obvious that only a fool or a philosopher can fail to see them. |
2003 | The right to do any particular thing implies the right to do anything that is necessary in order to do that thing. But it does not imply the right to do similar things, greater things, or even lesser things. |
2003 | I was conversing with my ass this morning. Once again it reminded me that despite my lofty ideals, I am still basically a digestive tube. |
2003 | "Sinner saved by grace" is a decent way to begin an eternal life. But no God would finance it, and no sentient creature would want to remain in it very long. Christianity may have been designed by God to be intellectually repugnant, so that intellectuals would outgrow it. |
2003 | Principles necessarily come into conflict unless prioritized. Even then they sometimes produce unjust results unless tempered by an outside factor such as common sense. |
2003 | There are some who measure faith by the stupidity of the belief rather than the amount invested in it. |
2003 | A person who is offended by the non-threatening content of another person's honest expression deserves to be offended. |
2003 | Any truth, no matter how obvious, is easily obscured by one whose world view is threatened by it. |
2004 | I have never liked being alone. But if I must be alone, I prefer to be alone by myself. |
2004 | I? Swallow a camels? But look how many gnats I've strained! |
2004 | The fact that your worldview gives you a knowledge claiming license does not imply that you actually know what your worldview allows you to claim to know. |
2004 | A philosopher's best friend is his most competent opponent. |
2004 | There ought to be a connection between "is" and "ought", but there isn't. |
2004 | If your quality of life is better than you deserve, you will adjust to it either by losing your undeserved benefits, or losing your taste for justice. |
2004 | The vagueness of a category's boundaries does not negate its existence. Vagueness merely raises a question as to the inclusion or exclusion of some things as members. |
2004 | When the truth or falsity of a given proposition cannot be known, and there is insufficient data to judge probabilities, and you must act as though it is true or false, then its truth or falsity can only be judged pragmatically, and therefore should be judged pragmatically. |
2004 | The truth or falsity of any given proposition is: 1. totally independent of the purpose for which it is said. 2. unaffected by the consequences of saying it, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant those consequences may be. 3. irrelevant to those whose decisions would remain the same either way. |
2005 | The God who created you is at least as wise as you are. If you find yourself worshipping a God who is not as wise as you are, assume not that you should dumb down to accommodate Him, but rather that you should wise up. |
2005 | To have faith in a proposition is to abandon the effort to seek the truth of that proposition. |
2005 | The truth or falsity of any declarative statement remains unaffected by the purpose for which it is made. |
2005 | When God Himself appears to be challenging your theological premises, He may be trying to correct them, and He may be testing your resolve. You don't know which. The Bible tells us to hold fast to what we have been taught. I say it is better to admit what you honestly believe, pray for correction, and see what happens. |
2005 | BELIEF is an ambiguous term. It can mean: 1. Judgment of probability (an involuntary mental act) 2. commitment or trust (a voluntary act of will). |
2005 | Nothing is so epistemologically inescapable that it cannot be overruled by emotion. |
2005 | Faith in any lie is better than nihilism, but only until its falsity is exposed. Faith in an exposed lie is worse than nihilism. |
2006 | I really enjoy doing righteous stuff that doesn't cost me anything. |
2006 | The best literary criticism is not necessarily the harshest, but it is almost always the most irritating. |
2006 | I hate being a Christian like I hate being a Republican. In both cases, they are just the least disgusting of the available options. |
2007 | There are two kinds of people in the world - those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. If you deny that there are two kinds of people in the world, you may be rational. But if you deny that people can be divided into two categories, you're wrong. |
2007 | We all act in our own self interest. Our only moral differences are in what we believe to be in our best interest, and the amount of delay we are willing to tolerate before gratification. |
2007 | Love and loyalty are often euphemisms for an exchange of unjust favors. |
2007 | I can become a good person simply by choosing to. But to remain a good person without becoming a sanctimonious asshole is beyond my ability. |
2007 | I can be tortured into the pretense of loving my torturer. But until then, I am resolved to talk straight and take what comes of it. I have yet to see a God I love. |
2007 | About 3 decades ago, I adopted a policy of, "talk straight and take what comes of it." If I had not adopted that policy I never could have written Abram. Now that I've written it, I don't intend to abandon that policy in order to sell it. |
2007 | Abram: Saying something that people don't yet know they need to hear. I'm trying to sell a cure to people who don't know they're diseased. It's hard to persuade people to take a step toward sanity when they think they're already sane. |
2007 | In politics, when you find all the parties disgusting, you can always register as an independent. In religion, I have not found God to be so accommodating. For this reason alone, I'm Christian. |
2007 | I'd rather be sanctimonious than unethical. I've found no third alternative. |
2007 | For all I know, there may be people living today who like Shakespeare. But I am certain that there are people who pretend to like Shakespeare just to impress other people who pretend to like Shakespeare. |
2007 | If you think you probably should do X, then you necessarily should do X, even if the end result of X shows that you should not have done X. Epistemological "should" is unrelated to ontological "should". |
2007 | Failure to do a sufficient amount of good deeds makes you feel evil. Doing a sufficient amount of good deeds makes you feel righteous. Exceeding that amount makes you feel stupid. |
2007 | My regret at offending those who don't deserve it is generally outweighed by the joy of offending those who do. |
2007 | Switched from Republican to independent. I just wish God offered such an option. |
2007 | I'm a Goldwater Christian: I'd rather be right than saved. |
2007 | The 2 basic choices of sentient life are nihilism or non-nihilism. Morally conscious persons prefer non-nihilism, which requires faith in a particular explanation of how it is the case. But once a morally conscious person figures out that non-nihilism is the only sensible bet, no faith is required to bet on it and all of its pre-requisites - primarily a just God. Faith in a particular explanation is epistemologically unnecessary, but so far, I've found it spiritually necessary. i.e. Refraining from commitment causes unacceptable stress. |
2007 | Allying with a faction requires either a lot of moral certitude or a lot of self interest. |
2007 | Faith in any particular thing should be a theory to be tested, not a lifetime commitment to be clung to regardless of its consequences. |
2007 | Rules don't bend. People bend in order to break them without calling it what it is. |
2007 | Religion at its best is a search for the least stupid alternative to nihilism. |
2007 | Never put anything in your shirt pocket that will cause you distress if it falls out when you lean over to flush a toilet. |
2007 | There is an important difference between truth seekers and lie exposers. Truth seekers look for truth. Lie exposers look for lies. |
2007 | Truth seekers, question lovers, and argument lovers are all separate categories. When they overlap, it is only coincidental. |
2007 | It's not easy to overcome one's fear of an evil God, and still maintain proper respect for the God with whom one must deal. |
2007 | No need to argue. Just get right, stay right, keep saying right stuff, and wait till people catch on. |
2008 | A less correct theory that you can relate to is often more beneficial than a more correct theory that you can't relate to. |
2008 | A man once told me he was trying to understand my position. But our discourse revealed that he was just trying to fit it into a category he already understood, even after it was shown to be outside those categories. |
2008 | Any creature that is going to be rewarded or punished for its behavior has an inalienable right to have its behavior corrected if it asks for correction. |
2008 | The kind of men who say, "all men are pigs," actually are pigs who try to justify being pigs by saying all men are like them. |
2008 | Proven existence of a pattern does not prove it continues beyond where it is proven to exist. |
2008 | If I did everything I should do before starting, I could never start. |
2008 | I will not be bound by the childish concept of God required by my ancestors, or by any of the adolescent attempts to upgrade that childish concept. My Creator designed me to think, and I will think without apology. But there remains that invisible line, the other side of which is error, and some errors are costly. I need correction from outside. I assume that asking God for such correction is sufficient. It appears to have worked so far. |
2008 | Possibly I'm prejudiced, but it appears that among all the Semites, the Jews are the only ones with a sense of humor. |
2008 | If doing good does not ultimately benefit the doer of it, there is ultimately no reason to do it. |
2008 | Justice is, and should be, dependent on economics. No person, community, or nation should be required to grant any individual more justice than it is worth to those who pay for the legal system that provides it. |
2008 | Nothing screws up a person's sense of justice more than faith in an unjust God. |
2008 | The worst thing about being perfectly correct is that by the time the world figures it out, you'll probably be dead. |
2008 | Most people start out as truth-seekers. But they drop out one by one as they see what it's going to cost them. |
2008 | People who want to know truth can learn to figure out anything figureoutable. People who don't want to know truth cannot be forced to recognize even the most obvious elements of it. |
2008 | No one would ever be disillusioned if lying bastards didn't fill them full of illusions in the first place. |
2008 | Nothing is more expensive than integrity - mine, not theirs. |
2008 | If you desire a better deal than you deserve, then you deserve to live in a world full of people who desire a better deal than they deserve. |
2008 | Scripture is necessary to tell us that there is historical evidence of a God. But faith in that God does not imply faith in scripture as the inspired Word of that God. |
2008 | Existence is ontologically more important than justice, because justice needs existence in order to exist. Justice is axiologically more important than existence, because existence without justice is worse than non-existence. |
2008 | Sincere believers in God must learn to interpret scripture such that they are not obligated to do the evil things scripture appears to be telling them to do. |
2008 | I don't talk about the Quran much because there are too many fools who react irrationally when the Quran is talked about rationally. Any Muslim who reacts irrationally to that statement proves it. |
2008 | I don't care what you think unless I think you can help me think more correctly - or unless I think you have the sense to let me help you think more correctly. That means I don't care what most people think. |
2008 | Conservatives confuse tradition with ethics and law with justice. This causes liberals to put equality above ethics and love above justice. |
2008 | I can live without love a lot easier than I can live without justice. |
2008 | "Seek, and you will find," is necessarily true. "Seek X, and you will find X," is not necessarily true. |
2008 | My message is anti-bullshit. And I can't find anyone to help me sell it except professional bullshitters. They keep offering me advice on how to be a better whore. |
2008 | You can't know more than your epistemology allows you to know. The best epistemology allows you to know all that is knowable without allowing you to think you know anything you don't know. |
2008 | August 18: Jesus has just told me to shift my focus from correctness to cooperative effort with other Christians. This will be interesting because other Christians are so terribly incorrect. |
2008 | I can't make anyone more correct, but I can help them become as correct as they want to be. Of course, if they are already as correct as they want to be, there's no point in talking. |
2008 | Wrong beliefs are challenged by circumstances more often than correct beliefs are challenged. Stupid beliefs are challenged by other people more often than intelligent beliefs are challenged. |
2008 | There are no levels of honesty. There are, however, levels of dishonesty. |
2008 | The only requirements for human knowledge to exist, and logic to be reliable are a Supreme Being in whose mind knowledge & logic reside, and that this Being is either identical to or in agreement with the God who created mankind, and that the God who created mankind jumpstarted the connection between brain cells and knowledge. |
2008 | Two kinds of people are worth my social time: those who can teach me something, and those whom I can teach something. |
2008 | There's a big difference between knowing truth and learning to parrot authority figures. Most people learn to parrot authority figures, and pass it off as knowing truth. Truth is known by applying critical thinking to personal experience. |
2008 | Blacks are the new Jews. Hispanics are the new blacks. Women are the new men. How come white men are still the assholes? |
2008 | If you want truthiness, nothing feels truthier than Gospel Truth. If you want truth, forget about how it feels. |
2008 | I would rather deserve good things and not have them, than have good things and not deserve them. |
2008 | All emotions and emotion based mindsets impair probability judgment. Emotion based mindsets include: optimism & pessimism, faith & cynicism. |
2008 | You cannot be liked and right in the land of the wrong. |
2008 | There are people who know how to talk integrity, but don't recognize it when they see it. I can only hope I'm not one of them. |
2008 | Evidence of a possibility doesn't imply evidence of a probability. |
2008 | It doesn't matter what the meaning of life is. We can't possibly know it, so we have to place a bet. I choose to bet on justice, not because it appears to exist, but because life is disgusting without it. |
2008 | Prov. 14:12 There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. My response: If, in order to live, a man must abandon what seems right, what good is living? But I admit that the best philosophical position may not be in one's best interest. |
2008 | Don't read between the lines until you've read the lines. |
2008 | An ideal world can exist only in the realm of idea. Even God can't make one in extension. |
2008 | All other things being equal, it is moral to kill one person in order to save two people. Morality is subject to arithmetic. |
2009 | Humor is an alternate way of looking at what would otherwise be stupid, tragic, or disgusting. |
2009 | If I read something about God, I won't know if it's true until I verify it by experience. So I might as well just experiment. If I read some convoluted reasoning, I won't know if it's true until I figure it out. So I might as well just figure stuff out. |
2009 | Relationship with God starts with religion. But it doesn't stay there. |
2009 | Tell them what they want to hear, and you get rich. Tell them what they need to hear, and you get ignored. |
2009 | Under a just system, worthwhile life is possible only for just people. Under an unjust system, worthwhile life is possible only for unjust people. |
2009 | When a paradigm makes no logical sense, there's a wrong premise, either in the paradigm or in my mind. |
2009 | When two descriptions or definitions differ only in precision, the more precise is the more accurate. But precision itself does not imply accuracy. |
2009 | When failure to make sense is the point of the joke, and the joke is funny, you are not far from nihilism. |
2009 | Statements exist that are perfectly clear and obviously true. But no statement is so clear or obvious that it cannot be challenged by someone who wants to challenge it. Such people will surely challenge any defense of that statement, and are likely to do so ad nauseam. |
2009 | Failure to be believed is no reason to quit speaking the truth. But it is sufficient reason to abandon a stupid audience. |
2009 | Truth seekers pursue conclusions. Truth avoiders pursue tangents. |
2009 | If you'd rather be safe than right, you're neither. |
2009 | I don't need to know what a person deserves in order to know that I want him to get what he deserves. |
2009 | A Christian friend once asked, "Why are Christians stupid?" I propose it's because God designed Christianity for stupid people, knowing that the smart people would figure it out. |
2009 | Philosophy has been hijacked by theorists, and must be taken back by truth seekers who just figure out what's true and don't need to justify it with a theory. |
2009 | No person, including me, cares intrinsically about truth and/or justice. We all care about getting what we want. Those of us who care about truth and/or justice care about it extrinsically, because we believe we can't ultimately get what we want apart from the confines of truth and justice. |
2009 | Good & evil are not hard to figure out once you decide to figure them out rather than let other people tell you what they are. Good & evil exist subjectively and objectively. Subjective good is pleasure; subjective evil is displeasure. Objective good is disserved pleasure and disserved displeasure. Objective evil is undisserved pleasure and undisserved displeasure. What is disserved is that quantity of pleasure or displeasure that one expected to cause by his willful actions. |
2009 | I do not believe scripture (Bible or otherwise) to be inspired by any deity in the sense that everything in it is true, or that the directives are applicable to all generations following those to whom the books were written. I do, however, believe scripture (at least most of the Bible) to be inspired by the God to whom mankind is accountable in the sense that the directives were applicable to the generation to whom the books were written, and to a limited and/or diminishing sense applicable to succeeding generations. I also believe scripture (at least the Bible) to be inspired in the sense that God inspired men to leave a record of their efforts to understand and communicate with God, so that succeeding generations can learn from the successes and failures of their predecessors. I think this position is not only more philosophically and pragmatically defensible, but also more scripturally defensible. |
2009 | An author may not mean what he says. But he damn well says what he says. And what he says means something, whether the author meant it or not. |
2009 | Once you admit that you don't believe bullshit, being classified as an atheist comes with the territory. |
2009 | If you accept gifts from an unethical person, it's only a matter of time before he asks you to do something unethical in return. |
2009 | Without justice, love keeps things alive that would be better off dead. Without love, justice cannot sustain life. |
2009 | It has been my experience that "seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" leads to a disgusting quality of life, with little in return but the promise of doing well on Judgment Day. But then I haven't asked for much more than to do well on Judgment Day. |
2009 | If a creator (Supreme Being or otherwise) does not provide worthwhile life to those members of his creation who prove worthy of it, then that creator is evil. Proving worthy of worthwhile life does not imply never erring. It implies trying not to err, and trying to correct errors made. |
2009 | If God provides revelation, and doesn't make it look like revelation, He can't expect people to believe it was revelation. And He can't rightly punish a person for disbelieving that it was revelation. But a person can rightly be held accountable for obeying what he believes to be revelation. Divine revelation is relative to individuals. Any statement or set of statements is divine revelation if believing it would cause a person to conform more closely to God's will. The same statement or set of statements ceases to be divine revelation when believing it no longer has that effect. |
2009 | Most people have a disgusting habit of calling things what they are not. This is to be expected when they are selling stuff. But sometimes it's just to muddle issues. |
2009 | Indiscriminate correction of errors can itself become a moral error, because often people's errors are all that keeps them out of nihilism. |
2009 | A truth seeker is always on the edge of nihilism. All that keeps him from falling over that edge is an assumed connection with an assumed personal Creator who is assumed to be good. |
2009 | Some pain is necessary. Some pain is beneficial. And some pain is there to tell you you're doing something wrong. Only experimentation can teach you which is which. |
2009 | Any time you say, "X is possible," you risk being accused of saying, "X is true." If you say you believe X is true, you risk being accused of saying you know X is true. |
2009 | If you don't understand what I mean, I may have said it wrong. But if I said it right, and you don't understand it, you're not listening. |
2009 | A righteous God may require you to lie to the Gestapo, but He will never require you to lie to Him. |
2009 | If God loves sycophancy more than integrity, I don't want God's love. |
2009 | Morally correct behavior can't be overdone. But some particular morally correct actions may be done to such an extent that they are no longer morally correct. And some morally correct principles may be overdone or applied in such a way that is not morally correct. |
2009 | The purpose of law is to achieve justice. It doesn't always succeed. When law fails to achieve justice, one of the few people in a position to do something about it is a juror. A juror should strive for justice even if he has to violate law. |
2009 | The Golden Rule can be overdone. I prefer that people talk straight with me without regard for ego. Most people don't like me to do that with them. |
2009 | The stupidest part of a human being is ego. All of its efforts to feel superior become counter-productive when you realize that only a low self-esteemer would do that sort of thing. |
2009 | Never accept the necessity of illusion. Or if you must, then strive to need less of it. |
2009 | If you're blatantly right, the religious establishment will generally admit it - after you and everyone who called you a heretic are quite dead. |
2009 | In general, accuracy is more important than clarity, and clarity is more important than precision. But a less accurate paradigm that you can understand is often more beneficial than a more accurate paradigm that you can't understand. |
2009 | There appears to be a great difference between what is true and what I want to be true. But there is no conflict between what is true and what I want to be true, only because I choose to keep those categories separate - despite social pressure to let them merge. |
2009 | I would rather live in a dangerous place and enjoy living, than live in a safe place and not enjoy living. But I don't need danger to enjoy living. I do, however, need some things I don't have presently. |
2009 | Yes, I'm self righteous. I wish everybody were self-righteous - as long as they're righteous. |
2009 | The concept of infinity implies logical conclusions that violate the law of excluded middle. |
2009 | Some physical phenomena can't be explained without either violating the law of excluded middle, or conceding that no physical thing is what it appears to be. |
2009 | There's real morality and bullshit morality. Real morality excludes those actions which adversely affect the ratio of pleasure to displeasure in the universe. Bullshit morality excludes those actions which offend the prevailing power structure. |
2009 | I no longer care about liking people and being liked by them. I care only about helping people and being helped by them. This feels like dangerous ground. I may be going too far. I will experiment with it and find out. |
2009 | The fact that you can imagine a category doesn't mean you can imagine anything in it. A category exists called paradoxes. The category of paradoxes includes all and only those things which are irrational. Some imaginary things exist in the category of paradoxes, e.g. irrational numbers. It cannot be known if any non-imaginary thing exists in the category of paradoxes, because anything non-imaginary that appears to be a paradox may be a rational thing interpreted incorrectly. |
2009 | It is always better to help (i.e. improve) a person than to be liked by him. But some people won't let you help them unless they like you. Though a principle may be clearly correct, the application of it may require trial and error. |
2009 | Hell is a place where people reproduce in order to outpopulate their enemies. |
2009 | Intelligent company may not make you more intelligent, but rational company will make you more rational. Conversely, irrational company will make you more irrational. |
2009 | Complexity is often a euphemism for inconsistency. |
2009 | I know that I know some things. But I don't know how I know anything, because I don't know the mechanism by which stuff is known. |
2009 | I think thoughts beyond my pay grade, because my Creator designed me to think them. I owe Him no apology for them. |
2009 | When the odds appear to be in your favor, bet as much as you can afford to lose. When the odds appear to be against you, don't bet any more than you must. But when there is only one chance of winning, bet all you have on it regardless of odds. |
2009 | Heaven and hell are places to meet others of your own kind. |
2009 | Any community of people will evolve sub-communities whom the majority would be better off without. |
2009 | When I speak normally and say things they don't want to hear, they either misunderstand or ask for greater precision. When I speak with enough precision to eliminate all ambiguity, they accuse me of double-talk. |
2009 | Better to be a servant in a just world than a king in an unjust world. |
2009 | Justice exists as an abstract concept. General rules exist that tell us how to achieve justice. But any set of rules, followed to the letter, will produce some cases of injustice. |
2009 | I don't give a damn how I'm remembered in this world. I care how I do in the next one. |
2009 | I'm arrogant. I became arrogant when I learned critical thinking. And though I try not to express myself any more arrogantly than necessary, I would rather be blatantly arrogant, than humble but misleading. |
2009 | Fuck ego. Mine as well as yours. It's the basest of all motivators, it's socially destructive, and it hinders truth seeking. Ego is an enemy of correctness. |
2009 | If the quality of your eternal life depends on believing things that appear improbable, then the creator of the system is evil. |
2009 | You can read books all your life, and never know if you've been told the truth. Do one experiment, and you know more than you knew before you did it. |
2009 | The suppression of justice by tradition rarely lasts long once it is recognized as such. |
2009 | If you find truth insulting, you deserve to be insulted. |
2009 | Errors warrant correction, however unpleasant it needs to be in order to correct. But the only behavior that warrants punishment is failure to do what one believes he should do. |
2009 | Survival of the fittest does not imply survival of those people who believe truth. It implies survival of those who believe whatever is most conducive to survival. |
2009 | Don't allow yourself to want something that you probably won't get unless you pretend to be what you're not. |
2009 | Duty is a socially imposed concept that is linked to morality only in some particular instances. No one is morally obligated to acknowledge duty as binding. |
2009 | After you have pushed the envelope so far that it no longer envelops anything, you must either make another envelope or accept nihilism. |
2009 | If you do what the Bible tells you to do, you will eventually acquire enough personal experiences that those experiences will be more reliable than anything the Bible tells you. |
2009 | The moral purpose of law may be to achieve justice, but the effective purpose is to benefit legislators. Only when legislators see justice as beneficial to them will they make just laws. |
2009 | Just as objects are attracted together, so are soul/spirits. The difference is medium vs. message. Objects are attracted by physical forces: magnetism, gravity - the medium. Souls are attracted by intellectual understanding of experienced reality - the message. Bodies of scripture are soul-magnets. |
2010 | A question is epistemologically unanswerable if it is illogical, unclear, or based on a false premise. Refusal to answer a question for any other reason is emotionally motivated. |
2010 | Reality can't be taught. It must be figured out. You can help a person figure out only those parts he wants to figure out. |
2010 | A spiritual error can cost years or even decades of wasted time. |
2010 | DO NOT CARE about arguing well! Care about being right. |
2010 | God designed our recognition of math, logic, probability, justice, and ethics. Though this recognition may be eclipsed by social programming and/or emotional greed, God would not design us to think one way, and then tell us to think contrary to it. If a conflict exists between what we are designed to think, and what God appears to be telling us to think, we can't be mistaken about what we are designed to think, unless we have allowed social programming and/or emotional greed to eclipse it. Otherwise we must be mistaken about what God is telling us to think. God may, however, tell us to do something we don't want to do, even though He designed us not to want to do it. |
2010 | Talking about a question doesn't mean you've answered it. |
2010 | My dreams have proven that I am basically an immoral being coerced into moral behavior by fear of punishment. I'm not ashamed of this fact, because I've no reason to think anyone else is a bit better. |
2010 | I can be coerced into behaving other than I now behave. But I can't be coerced into thinking other than I now think. That requires either new data, or a change in my processing ability. |
2010 | To have the option to terminate existence, or not to have it: that is the question. |
2010 | A thing cannot precede (logically or temporally) the parts of which it is made. Therefore the Supreme Being either has no parts, or is not made of His parts. It should not be hard to figure out that the latter is correct. |
2010 | A perfect worldview cannot be recognized as perfect by a finite mind. Any worldview held by a finite mind is necessarily imperfect. The best a finite mind can do is to adopt that worldview which appears to have the least amount of epistemological defects. This worldview will not necessarily be the most comfortable, or even life-supportive, because life may in fact ultimately cost more than it is worth. Worthwhile life, if it exits, can be found and sustained only by continuing to adopt that worldview which appears to be the least epistemologically defective. The least epistemologically defective worldview should be adopted even if it kills you. |
2010 | Living an ideology is not the same as living as a salesman for an ideology. There will be times when a salesman will have to either fake the manifestation of the ideology he is selling or lie about its benefits. |
2010 | I've never liked being alone. I just like it better than stupid company. And I've gotten terribly used to it. |
2010 | To deny the existence or efficacy of a category that is part of your own operating system is an error -- specifically a hypocritical error. |
2010 | If the principles by which you judge the truth of scripture are more lenient than the principles by which you judge the truth of other ancient literature, you're not looking for truth; you're looking for faith. |
2010 | Truth seekers are people who want to push the cutting edge of their understanding of reality. Truth seekers are not faith seekers. But truth seekers don't object to faith where truth can't be known, and faith offers pragmatic benefits. |
2010 | A finite mind can only tolerate a certain amount of truth at any given time. But that amount will increase if, when you are able to tolerate more, you try to find it. |
2010 | "That which should be" is an imaginary state of affairs that resides only in a mind. If there is no objective mind, there is no objective "should". |
2010 | Recognition of truth happens one step at a time. If you tell someone something that is perfectly true, but more than one step ahead of what he already knows, he won't recognize it as true. Better to find out what he already knows, and help him figure out the next step. |
2010 | I could never make sense of the Bible until I figured out that it doesn't make sense. Then it all made sense. |
2010 | All willful activity is an effort to get what you want. All social activity is an effort to get other people to do what you want. The only social system that will not ultimately self-destruct is one in which the participants want justice. |
2010 | Romulans vs. klingons, predators vs. aliens, vampires vs. lycans, republicans vs. democrats. Good vs. evil at least made some sense. Evil vs. evil is not interesting. |
2010 | Humility should not be used as a general guiding principle. It causes people who are right to defer or apologize to people who are wrong. Ethically, a person who thinks he is right should not defer or apologize to a person whom he believes to be wrong even when that person has clobbering power. Also, if a person places value on humility, every time he says something humble, it is more likely to be a lie than if he did not value humility. |
2010 | Saying things more precisely helps you understand truth and reality more correctly. But speaking with maximum precision is not always expedient for communication. |
2010 | Faith in the power of God (any version of God) to do miracles does not imply faith that any particular miracle attributed to that God actually happened - unless of course that God is defined as the God who did that particular miracle - which is possible for some versions of God, but not necessary for any version of God - unless that miracle necessarily happened in order for present reality to exist. |
2010 | Seymour was quite proud of his vision, having never seen what he was missing. |
2010 | If any two parts of a theory or worldview are inconsistent, that theory or worldview is necessarily incorrect. |
2010 | Emotions are incorrigibly greedy. Nothing can be done about it. You can't repent of it. It's pointless to apologize for it, and stupid to be ashamed of it, because we are all designed that way. The best you can do is to refrain from acting on emotions when doing so appears to be stupid or immoral. |
2010 | In a just system: 1. every person gets what he deserves, and is able to act so as to deserve enough of what he wants that if he gets it, he will want to exist. 2. unjust people may exist, but when they get caught, they will be appropriately punished. 3. all unjust people will get caught, but some may avoid capture for a long time. 4. the effort to catch and punish unjust people will cost the public no more than the majority is willing to pay for. |
2010 | Once a unit of matter can be made to feel pain, it can be coerced to do anything it is able to do. |
2010 | I'm not trying to be understood by the most people. I'm trying to be understood by the most rational people. |
2010 | You always know what you want to do, unless you want to do what you should do, and you don't know what you should do, in which case you don't know what you want to do. |
2010 | A logical possibility does not require evidence. It requires lack of contrary proof. |
2010 | Jesus said many stupid things because those things communicated effectively to his ignorant audience. That fact does not require him to say the same stupid things to us. Nor does it require us to feign ignorance, much less stupidity, in order to submit to him. |
2010 | ignorance: not having data unintelligence: not being able to process data negligence: having data, being able to process it, and failing to stupidity: having data, processing it, and not acting accordingly |
2010 | If God wanted you to believe stupid stuff, He would have made you stupid. |
2010 | Illegitimate concepts exist: e.g. square circle. Impossible hypotheticals exist: e.g. illogical universe. The existence of people who propose illegitimate concepts does not make those concepts legitimate. The existence of people who propose impossible hypotheticals does not make those hypotheticals possible. |
2010 | Evil creators may exist. An evil creator is one who does one or more of the following: 1. compels a member of his creation to exist after that creature desires not to exist, and:
a. that creature has done nothing deserving of punishment
2. promises reward for doing things deserving of reward, and does not pay upor b. that creature has already been justly punished for infractions of justice unless that creator adequately compensates that creature for undeserved grief, such that the creature becomes grateful for the sum total of its existence up to that point Any non-omnipotent emotional being has motivation to be evil. Only the Supreme Being can possibly be omnipotent, but He is not necessarily omnipotent. It is possible that our creator is not identical to the Supreme Being. Though our creator programmed knowledge of good & evil into us, he may still be evil. |
2010 | Unpleasant thoughts can be blocked temporarily by faith in pleasant hypotheses. But unpleasant thoughts keep returning until they are worked thru and resolved. Once a thought is resolved, the pleasant hypothesis is shown to be true, false, or irrelevant. Therefore faith in it becomes obsolete. Though faith is necessary to keep minds out of depression and nihilism, it is a stop-gap measure at best, and should not be cultivated as a way of life. Figuring out truth should be a way of life. If truth does not support sentient life, then sentient life is stupid to try to preserve itself. "The just shall live by faith" only until they figure out that justice is necessary to worthwhile life whether faith - in justice or anything else - exists or not. |
2010 | If your reasons for faith are themselves faith-based, then you have no reason for faith. You only have faith, however decorated it may be with circular reasoning. |
2010 | Arrogance can be either voluntary action or an involuntary self-opinion. As self-opinion, arrogance is an unavoidable side effect of: 1. understanding critical thinking in a world full of people who don't. 2. knowing what you're talking about. Arrogant speech is justified when its benefit to its target audience exceeds its annoyance to its coincidental audience. |
2010 | Christian bibliolatry is a theological error, the existence of which necessitates a counter-error, which is provided by Islam. |
2010 | Creeds pressure people into pretending to believe things they don't believe in order to be accepted by a community who appears to believe them, and/or by a God who appears to require belief in them. Creeds also cause people to believe that the pretense of believing things they don't believe will eventually cause true belief. |
2010 | If there is an afterlife, and it is managed justly, there are 2 kinds of wealth not lost at death: deserved reward for good works and eternal knowledge, such as math, logic, and spiritual matters. |
2010 | Getting to your destination as quickly as possible in the physical world is helped by surpassing those ahead of you. In the spiritual world, the effort to surpass those ahead of you causes delay. |
2010 | I have no confidence in my own political opinions, because they are all borne from other people's testimony. Most other people are liars. Even when they think they are telling the truth, they are likely to be wrong, or missing relevant parts of the issue. I prefer to focus on that truth which I can figure out or discover by experiment. |
2010 | Justice is not hard to figure out, once you abandon the idea that God is necessarily just. |
2010 | Justice (that which is deserved) is consistent with grace (unmerited favor) if and only if those who ask for grace are made to live in community with others of their own kind, until they get sick of it, and ask for what they deserve, so that they might live among others who want only what they deserve. |
2010 | Civic duty is subordinate to moral duty. This does not imply that all civic duty is moral. Moral duty may require disobedience to civic duty. |
2010 | Emotions are so stupid that they try to make you act contrary to their own best interests. |
2010 | A creature is able to deserve reward or punishment if, and only if, it has free will and knowledge of good and evil. |
2010 | A God who compels the existence of creatures that don't want to exist and don't deserve punishment is an evil God. |
2010 | If you think a personal God exists, you may be insane. But if a personal God doesn't exist, nihilism is true, and it doesn't matter if you're insane. |
2010 | The fact that I believe in God and Jesus does not mean I believe in Christian bullshit. |
2010 | If heaven is accessible only by children and gullible people, then if it exists, its inhabitants are probably being cheated. |
2010 | Critical thinking is composed of six parts: 1. understanding of logic
2. term/concept distinction 3. disambiguation of terms 4. identification of concepts and categories 5. recognition of the three categorical relationships: separation, intersection, hierarchy
6. recognition of proper categorization of concepts
Assuming that a person has no intellectual defects, his chief obstacle to learning and applying critical thinking is emotion, i.e. emotional preference for the truth or falsity of a particular statement. |
2010 | Probability judgment is more likely to be correct when it is made without emotion or willful choice. |
2010 | Telling a person to get his head out of his ass does not make him more likely to do so. |
2010 | Trying to conduct a philosophical discussion with people on this planet is like playing chess with someone who acknowledges no obligation to either make a legal move or admit defeat. |
2010 | Truth insults no one who doesn't deserve it. |
2010 | In most fields of study, he who has read the most understands the most. In philosophy, he who has read the most may intimidate, but he who understands critical thinking the best understands reality the best, and can be most helpful. |
2010 | If you must ignore truth in order to satisfy your emotions, it is only a matter of time before that satisfaction ends up costing your emotions more than it was worth. |
2010 | That which is beneficial for the human race is not necessarily that which is beneficial for any subset of it. |
2010 | That which is ultimately beneficial is not necessarily that which is immediately beneficial. |
2010 | The only moral principle universally applicable to any sentient creature is that he should always do what he thinks he should do. If other universal principles exist, they cannot be known, much less articulated, by anyone but the Supreme Being. Moral principles generally applicable to persons and communities exist, and can be known and articulated, but always carry exceptions to the rule. |
2010 | There exists a set of statements that is universally true. That set begins with math & logic, but extends beyond math & logic. Some of those statements may be unknowable. It is beneficial to any sentient being to know as many of those statements as possible, because all of his knowledge rests on those statements. Next after math & logic follows an elucidation of the types of knowledge. |
2010 | Mental conversion is not the moment when probability judgment changes. It's the moment when that change overcomes emotional resistance. |
2010 | The ostensive purpose of sacrament, ritual, and liturgy is to serve as physical illustrations of spiritual realities. It cannot be known if these acts have any real spiritual benefit. But they definitely have emotional benefit to some people, in that they offer trivial and easily obeyed directives to those who want to feel God-compliant, while ignoring God's more important and costly directives, such as those that interfere with one's pursuit of happiness. |
2010 | I'm pursuing happiness as fast as I can - just not in this life. |
2010 | There is a big difference between a question-lover and a truth-seeker. If you just like asking questions, say so, and I'll quit trying to answer them for you. |
2010 | A question-lover is, at best, a fledgling truth-seeker. If, after finding some truth, a question-lover refuses to graduate, he becomes a phony truth-seeker. |
2010 | Intuition is not categorically opposed to reason. The degree to which intuition has proven reliable is the degree to which it is rational to rely on it. |
2010 | Figure out what can be done, and quit trying to do what can't be done. Care about only those things that end in results you care about, and are affected by being cared about. |
2010 | They ask me, "Whose side are you on?" Answer: "The side of truth and justice, to the best of my ability." |
2010 | Minds are finite. They can handle only a finite amount of truth. Even if that amount is constantly increasing, it is forever finite. Minds stuck in bodies can handle even less truth. The learning process causes stress, which if overdone, damages bodies. |
2010 | Even if I fade into oblivion, my thoughts will re-emerge, simply because they are more reasonable than those of tradition. |
2010 | Honest self-expression is evil, if and only if, it influences people to do more evil than good. |
2010 | Any set of beliefs which shows visible benefits to believers will attract hypocrites who pretend to believe them and don't. |
2010 | You don't need one bit of faith to bet your soul on a righteous God once you figure out that the only alternative is nihilism. |
2010 | If you are forgiven as you forgive others, it doesn't take a genius to see that the way to beat the system is to cheat more than you are cheated. Paul's attempted rebuttal (Rom 6) is an emotional statement of how things should be ideally. It does not refute the logic of system manipulators. Considering all the monks and clergy who have ever lived, surely some of them must have seen this. Yet I see no record of it. That frightens me. |
2010 | If you believe in God and Jesus, but don't believe everything the Bible tells you to believe, I can help you. If you have a satisfactory system that allows you to believe everything the Bible tells you to believe, then ignore me. |
2010 | The Nuclear Age cannot afford any religion that promises reward for killing people who do not believe in that religion. |
2010 | I don't like being a spiritual hermit, but it's better than conforming to a pathological society. |
2010 | Truths can be learned in the wrong order, and thereby cause confusion. Remember this when God refuses to answer your question, and when people fail to see your obvious correctness. |
2010 | The purpose of scripture is to get people connected up with God. It must be simplistic because people are ignorant. It must be assuring because people are frightened. It must promise condemnation of disbelievers, because if your scripture is correct, disagreeing scripture must be incorrect. After scripture has accomplished the connection, it has no further spiritual value. All subsequent spiritual progress comes from personal interrelationship with God. Scripture then becomes the refuge of those who want justification of ignorance and reassurance of safety without further spiritual maturation. |
2010 | The scripturalists' hidden creed behind their stated creeds:
|
2010 | You owe God no apology for being what he made you. |
2010 | It is not possible to create a creature in a state of deserving punishment. If it were possible, only an evil creator would do it. |
2010 | Every community has the right to define itself - as long as the terms of its definition don't violate the rules of the greater community of which it is a part. |
2010 | Integrity and community are necessarily in tension. Every point by which a community is defined is a point at which integrity will require some persons to depart from it. |
2010 | Absolutists don't hate relativists. We just hate contented relativists. We really enjoy watching relativists try to make sense apart from an absolute. |
2010 | All worldviews contain blank spots caused by lack of data. Those blank spots are rightly called "mysteries". But if known data conflicts with your worldview, that conflict is no mystery. It means your worldview is wrong. |
2010 | When social status in a community depends on commitment to the community's ideology, zealots rule, regardless of merit. |
2010 | I assert that there is no such thing as an irrational possibility, but I can't prove it. |
2010 | Truth is indifferent to life. Some truth supports life. Some truth kills. An indiscriminate truth seeker is dangerous to himself and others. An indiscriminate truth publisher even more so. |
2010 | When a truth seeker over-doses on truth, but still hasn't found the truth he needs, his only choices are faith or nihilism - the same choices he had when he started. |
2010 | You think it's morally good to save the life of a starving child, even when that child is likely to grow up and produce more starving children. That's stupid, and you all know it. But you pretend not to know it because the Bible tells you to. And you think the Bible is the Word of God. If the "Word of God" exists at all, it's what God tells you to do now, not what he tells someone else to do, much less what he told other people to do 2,000 years ago. |
2010 | If it eats, it shits. Minds are no exception. |
2010 | When life imitates art, both get stupider. |
2010 | When confronted with any proposition, an epistemologically based mind asks, "Is this statement true (or probably true)?" An axiologically based mind asks, "Should I believe this statement is true (or probably true)?" My mind is epistemologically based. I think epistemology is the only correct or even "good" base for a mind. Therefore I think my mind should be epistemologically based. But it has not led to worthwhile life. Therefore I must admit that I may be somehow wrong. |
2010 | If another Reformation is coming, it won't be from people who pretend the Bible doesn't say what it obviously says. It will be from people who admit they see what they see, and think what they think, and reject any authority that tells them otherwise. Just like the protestants short circuited the pope by going directly to the Bible, the next wave will short circuit the Bible by going directly to Jesus. |
2010 | You can cover up what you are with lies, but you can't repair it with lies. Lies will change you, but that change will not be healthy. |
2010 | Amenities serve little purpose but to generate the illusion of obligation to return the supposed courtesy. |
2010 | Even if you can't tell it like it is, you can at least admit it appears to be what it appears to be – at least as much as you can get away with without getting punished for it. If you don't do at least that much, you have no right to claim any integrity at all. I wish I could say more. |
2011 | Any given law is good if and only if the justice caused by it exceeds the injustice caused by it. Any law may be good for a time (year, century, millennium, etc.) and then turn bad. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Loving people muddles your thinking – especially your priorities. I'm glad I love nothing but truth and justice. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The world is made a better place by the fact of certain people being offended in certain ways. I try to commit such offense whenever convenient. I think the good caused by this effort outweighs the harm caused by occasionally going over the line. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Faith is not the only alternative to nihilism. The simple decision to bet on the possibility most likely to offer worthwhile life doesn't take a bit of faith, and it provides a firm foundation on which to operate, without any false knowledge claims. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Santa Claus teaches children an important lesson – you can't trust your parents to tell you the truth about reality. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Perfect justice may be impossible to achieve, even for God. But the effort to approximate justice within the confines of one's budget is perfectly realistic for any sentient being or community. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I have a dream today. I have a dream that I will one day live in a world where the truth of statements will not be judged by the credentials of their conveyor but by the correctness of their content. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I don't know for sure that miracles don't exist, or that none ever happened, or will happen. I don't even know that I've never witnessed one. I only know that I don't remember seeing any event that could not be explained otherwise. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | There are many people in the world – mostly old men – who truly want their lives to be worth something, but have failed in that effort. So they come up with theories of how the world or the nation might be saved if everyone would but listen to them. I greatly fear becoming one of these old farts – or possibly having already become so. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | A mortal creature cannot be tortured forever, and can therefore choose martyrdom. An immortal creature can be tortured forever, cannot choose martyrdom, and therefore can be coerced into doing anything its creator wants, including lying to mortal creatures in order to sell them immortality. |
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2011 | A living being having infinite power can do anything it wants to do. Only an evil being wants to cause undeserved displeasure. Therefore a living being who causes undeserved displeasure is either evil or does not have infinite power. |
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2011 | Committees don't produce the best ideas. They produce the ideas least objected to. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | When truth is overwhelming, confusion is protective. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Most people don't have a coherent worldview. They have disassociated pieces of worldviews. Once a person sees the necessity of a coherent worldview, he works toward a stable worldview. A stable worldview is emotionally acceptable and lacks unignorable epistemological inconsistencies. Epistemologically stable worldviews exist on incremental levels rather than on a continuous gradient. e.g. Aristotelian, Newtonian, Einstinian. Once a person is forced to acknowledge an error in a stable worldview, the whole thing collapses, leaving him in crisis until he is able to either adjust to agnosticism or work his way up to the next stable plane. This is unpleasant and time consuming, which is why people are so resistant to acknowledging even the most glaring error in a comfortable worldview. Faith is useful as a safety net to keep a person out of nihilism while his worldview is either not yet formed or under reconstruction. When faith is allowed to be a component part of a worldview, it will continually conflict with epistemology until that worldview is abandoned, or until epistemology is thoroughly subordinated to faith. Only a worldview gambling on a just afterlife, while admitting ignorance of its existence can keep a person out of nihilism without faith. |
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2011 | After four decades of talking straight, I can testify that integrity feels great. I love integrity. It bothers me, however, that I may never know if it has been worth all the nooky I missed. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Problem of the one and the many: Either I don't understand this problem, or it's a bogus problem created either to sell a bogus solution, or just to sell books on the problem. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The existence of wrong people is no reason not to say right stuff. The existence of improbable theories is no reason not to say probable stuff is probable. |
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2011 | The effort to be right will not only make you righter than you would have been otherwise, but if pursued it will make you righter than anyone on this planet who doesn't also pursue it. There is amazingly little competition. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I'll sell truth if I can think of a way to sell it. But if I can't sell it, I'll still state it to the best of my ability, even knowing that it won't sell, just to have it on record that I stated it. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | A person seeking truth has no reason to care about the opinions of those who aren't. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The world is benefitted by both vigilantism and laws against vigilantism. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Humility coming from me feels either phony or sarcastic or both. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Ego masturbation feels the same as integrity when engaged in it, but they can be distinguished in retrospect – I hope. Ego masturbation stops working once you catch yourself doing it. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If you make up your own term definitions, don't be surprised when nobody speaks your language. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Paul said, "Be followers of me, as I am of Christ." I say, "Be followers of Christ, as you think Christ wants you to follow him." |
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2011 | Do not fear your own mind. Your Creator designed you to identify truth, whether or not that truth makes your Creator look good. Fear your Creator only if you are willfully disobeying him. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | For some people, the right to resist the coercive force of truth is more important than accepting or even identifying truth. Exercising this right is detrimental to one's epistemology. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Neither monism nor dualism can be proven or disproven. Dualism carries a vast array of arguments, none of them conclusive. Monism carries no arguments. It simply declares itself, and then either reiterates the same declaration or shuts up. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If God is just, he will give you what you deserve whether you believe in him or not. If God is not just, he will screw you over, unless you happen to be a competent enough sycophant to get on his good side. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I care what Plato thinks is true, because his thoughts are milestones in the evolution of truth seeking. I care what you think is true only if you are seeking truth. But I don't care what you think Plato thinks, because that is tangential to truth seeking. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | There is a serious difference between understanding something and knowing how to talk like you understand it well enough to fool anyone who understands it less. I despise people who do the latter, and hope to never become one of them. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | You have the right to throw off the shackles of logic. But you will be smarter if you let them bind you. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If you are designed by a creator, then you think what you are designed to think, and you owe him no apology for thinking what you think. But if you pretend to think what you don't think, because you don't like where those thoughts take you, then you deserve punishment. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The way to get what you ultimately want is to do what you think you should do, even when it doesn't get you what you presently want. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If you're able to understand something, and don't understand it, then you've chosen not to understand it, in order to preserve the apparent benefits of ignorance. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | There is no way to compel a chronic point-misser to get the point. Once I recognize a person as such, I simply quit talking to him. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | All minds are finite. They all have areas where they are looking for more truth, and areas where they've got all they can handle. A truth seeker in a social situation will look for either people who know something he wants to know, or those areas where people are looking for more truth. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Truth will keep biting you in the ass until you accept it. So you might as well turn around and confront it, and either eat it or be eaten by it. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Unless you have found rationality to be always reliable, it is irrational to assume it's always reliable. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I refuse to use the term miracle, because I've never seen an adequate definition of it. But unless it is taken to mean doing the impossible, I cannot rule it out. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Worship is something that unrestrained egos require of other egos when they have the power to require it. Certainly the Supreme Being would have no use for it. Nor would any deity unless he were in competition with other deities, which doesn't happen in monotheism. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Voluntarily divulging information may be rude even if true. But answering a question truthfully is not rude. Any questioner who is offended by a straight answer deserves to be offended. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | A truth seeker is open minded until he has found truth, and closed minded afterward. It is the closed minded non-truth seekers who are the assholes. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The best philosophy doesn't come from reading philosophy. It comes from experimenting and critical thinking. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | When I talk straight, I sound like a pompous ass, because I am one. This is no reason to not talk straight. I wish I lived in a world where everyone talked straight, regardless of how it sounds. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | An emperor of India named Asoka ruled c.265-232BCE. Early in his reign he conquered the neighboring state of Kalinga. 100,000 Kalingans died, 150,000 were driven from their homes; more died from disease and starvation afterward. Asoka felt so bad about it that he turned Buddhist, a little known sect at the time. Asoka then became one of the most moral rulers the planet has seen. He built hospitals and herb gardens, forbade killing animals for sport, encouraged education of women, in opposition to the Brahmin aristocracy. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Justice includes compensation to those who have received undeserved displeasure, and punishment to those who willfully cause undeserved displeasure. When a deserver of pleasure receives pleasure, that's justice. When he receives more than he deserves, that's beneficence. Beneficence is granting undeserved pleasure. Beneficence is good only when it occurs after justice has been achieved, and only if the beneficiary proves deserving. A beneficiary proves deserving only when he pays the beneficence back, or pays it forward. |
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2011 | Logical precision can cost more tedium than it's worth – value, in this sense being determined by a person employing logic for the purpose of understanding and/or communicating a concept or concepts – the greatest value being the clearest understanding of, or communication of the concept or concepts in question, and tedium being a negative emotional reaction to a perceived excess of data, which can, in fact, diminish the understanding of, or communication of, that concept or those concepts. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | All scripture is sanctioned by God, and is profitable as a record of both good ideas often made obsolete by better ones, and bad ideas worthy of note lest they be revived. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I will not bore God by stupidly repeating the mistakes of my predecessors. If I must make mistakes, they will be fresh ones. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The stupidest of people are those who fear to get beyond bullshit, because they don't know if there's anything on the other side. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Everyone is primarily a happiness seeker. Truth seekers are the ones who think truth is necessary in order to sustain happiness. They seek truth even when it makes them unhappy because they think it's the best way to get the kind of happiness that doesn't end up costing more unhappiness than it's worth. Truth seekers are theory testers. They are theory defenders only in opposition to less probable theories. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | There necessarily exists a mental faculty apart from logic by which logic is recognized as reliable for determining truth. That faculty is probably identical to the faculty that recognizes patterns, but this has not been proven. It has no name that I'm aware of, and is popularly lumped together with either intuition or common sense. Rather than being a subset of either, it is probably a superset of both. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | When your worldview is rationally coherent and not improbable, you don't need faith to believe it. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I don't want to get comfortable where I am. I want to get to where I'm comfortable. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I know how to be right, but I don't know how to love – because I don't know if life is ultimately worth what it costs. If it's not, then the most loving thing one person can do for another is kill him. Love has a nasty habit of keeping things alive that would be better off dead. I may be one of those things. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The optimal spiritual path is narrow, but it's not straight. It zigzags. It alternates between tightening and loosening. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | An ethical system is not a game strategy. When they overlap, it's coincidence. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Anti-war quotes sound cool, but most are oversimplifications at best. Some wars are justified. That's not cool, but it's true. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If there is an afterlife, then there are a potentially infinite number of afterlives. In every one there will be people telling you both truth and lies about God. Therefore decide here and now to bet your soul not on what you have been told, but on what you know to be right. When you don't know what is right, bet on what you believe to be right, and ask for correction if you're wrong. If your Creator is righteous, he will approve of this behavior and reward you justly. If not, then your existence is an unfortunate but rectifiable accident. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Don't follow me. Surpass me. If you can't surpass me, improve me. If you can't improve me, add to me. If you can't, add to me, criticize those who claim to surpass, improve, or add to me. Judge me all you like. Just don't misrepresent me. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I enjoy playing philosophical chess, but only with people who know the rules and follow them. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | It's good to play philosophical chess with God. Win or lose, you learn something - most importantly that some games are winnable. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | "What is X?" is an ambiguous question. Are you asking what the term means or what the concept is? i.e. Are you asking: Of the concepts conventionally labeled X, which one do you mean? or What are the boundaries of concept X? |
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2011 | I would not have remained Christian if I had not explored all of the alternatives before becoming Christian. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Individual rights vs. national security is rarely a clear moral issue. The manifest displeasure of individual rights violation must be weighed against the potential displeasure of damage to the state. I see no way to judge the problem in principle. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Knowledge is always claimed far beyond what the evidence warrants, and people get rich and respected for claiming it. The ever present temptation to join them diminishes with age. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The Bible is a record of man's failed effort to create a Bible. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The Golden Rule is a great ethic, but a bad social policy for anyone who wants straight talk. If I talked as straight with other people as I wish they would talk with me, I would be considered rude. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Rules of grammar standardize communication. But adherence to a standard does not always facilitate communication. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If humanity is to survive, it must be saved from both nihilists and monotheists who serve an evil God. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | There is no practical distinction between a known truth and a necessary assumption. But this does not diminish their epistemic difference. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The probable truth of any premise is judged by its compatibility with other premises assumed to be known. One false premise in an epistemological foundation nullifies the reliability of all probability judgments built on it. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Conflation of concepts causes confusion. "Conflating concepts causes confusion" is cleaner, but less clear. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Starving child on a dirt street trying to sell a piece of junk. For $10. a month I can save her life, so she can grow up and reproduce. That may have been a moral act, before I did the math. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If believing in a particular version of God saves your soul, I see no way for your God to be just, or for you to have much of a soul. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Art doesn't have to be uplifting, but it shouldn't be downpulling. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If your method of interpreting scripture incites the less intelligent to religious violence, you cannot expect to be allowed into a "heaven" where people are expected to be beyond that crap. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I really enjoy offending those who deserve it. But that's a dangerous pleasure to indulge in, because it makes me likely to offend those who don't deserve it. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | I didn't become a truth seeker to call myself a truth seeker. I became a truth seeker to find truth. Now that I've found some of it, I refuse to pretend not to have found it, so I can call myself open minded. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Rhetoric is the merger of epistemology with politics. It makes good politics, but bad epistemology. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | The premise that anything imaginable is possible results in epistemological nihilism. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If a hermit is murdered in the forest, and no one is displeased by it, was it evil? | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Seeking truth increases your comprehension of reality. Defending a worldview retards your comprehension of reality, even if your worldview is essentially true, because all worldviews created by finite minds have unessential and incorrect parts. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Being offended by profanity is not a natural repugnance like the stink of shit. It is an acquired taste passed down from parents to children for the sake of conformity to a herd. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Having a dirty mind is not about profanity. It's about bad logic and epistemology. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | No matter how obviously true a statement is, a volitional agnostic cannot be forced to understand it, if he doesn't see a pay off for doing so. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | If you're walking the walk, you don't need to talk the talk. But talking against the walk, is not part of walking the walk. If you're talking against the talk, you may or may not be walking the walk, depending on what version of the talk you're talking against. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | A self referential statement may be:
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2011 | I'd rather be happy where I am than fondly remembered where I'm not. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Ego, stupid ego. I see how stupid you are. They see how stupid you are. Why do they not see how stupid their's is? | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | You cannot be loyal to both principles and persons. That includes the person of Jesus Christ. | ||||||||||||||||||
2011 | Love may or may not be an irresistible force, but truth and justice are definitely immovable objects. I choose loyalty to truth and justice, and shout my identity into the void. If there be no echo, I will remain alone. |
2012 | Human language evolved primarily for solicitation. Communication is a sporadic and irregular side effect, often undesired. |
2012 | There is a maximum speed at which a mind can pursue truth safely. Exceeding that speed will cause stress, which can damage you. |
2012 | I can't be sure I'm totally free of illusions. But either I'm more free of illusions than anyone I've ever met, or I'm totally insane. |
2012 | There are certain facts which should be blatantly obvious, but which are not recognized as facts because they are being blocked by emotion – usually fear. |
2012 | There exists a faculty not of mind, but of biology, whereby living creatures are forced to want to continue existing, often despite gross unhappiness. That faculty appears to be necessary in order for life to exist at all, though the cause of that faculty appears to be evil beyond description. For truth seekers, this is the axiological equivalent of the black hole in the center of the galaxy, which must be discovered, and then pulled away from, to go in some other direction, remembering, but ignoring, the fact that it will eventually swallow you. |
2012 | Evil exists for no reason but to be conquered, and will continue to exist until then. |
2012 | I don't want to be harmful, but I don't care if I'm hurtful. |
2012 | The fact that some people make no distinction between sophists and philosophers does not obligate me to ignore the distinction. |
2012 | FREE WILL & OMNISCIENCE: Let's say you (or God) have all the info necessary to accurately predict a persons choices 100% of the time. That in no way diminishes the person's freedom to choose. Ability of person A to choose is unaffected by person B's knowledge of what A's choice will be. An imaginary paradox is generated by the question, "does person A have the ability to choose something other than what omniscient person B knew he would choose?" The answer is no, but that in no way diminishes person A's freedom to choose, because choosing other than he will choose is outside the realm of possible choices. Omniscient person B is likewise unable to know person A will choose other than what he will choose. |
2012 | A masochist is a person with a sense of justice who has done bad things, and hasn't figured out that redemption comes by doing good things. |
2012 | Who is worse, welfare leeches or corporate plunderers? – if they both act within the law? Without proper legislation, either set will destroy us. |
2012 | If you're seeking truth, I can probably help you get to the next step. If you're seeking comfort or faith, I have nothing to offer you. |
2012 | Faith is not a spiritual ladder. Faith is a safety net for when you fall off the ladder. The ladder is the decision to seek truth, regardless of where it takes you, and the decision to do what you think you should do, regardless of unpleasant consequences. |
2012 | Not all questioners are truth seekers. Some are deliberate obfuscators. |
2012 | You can't think any more precisely than your language allows. Every ambiguity of every term is an obstacle between you and truth. |
2012 | A lie is beneficial if it helps you learn more truth than you would have learned otherwise. Believing a false paradigm (e.g. the universe consists of earth, air, fire, and water) can help you learn more truth than a person who has no paradigm. But if you keep discovering truth, a lie or false paradigm will become a hindrance. A dirty operating system (DOS) is better than no operating system. But after the world is hooked on it, programmers will find it easier to sell upgrades to DOS than to sell a better operating system. But once another operating system is proven better, the world will be better off if it switches as quickly as possible. |
2012 | The term God is ambiguous, even with the capital G. It can mean, among other things: 1. Supreme Being: that which created the first created thing who may or may not be the same as 2. Creator of this universe who may or may not be the same as 3. Creator of mankind who may or may not be the same as 4. Judge of mankind who may or may not be the same as 5. BibleGod - which can be subdivided into many different versions of BibleGod Those who say these are all one Being say so dogmatically. They can be as many as 5 separate Beings, the last 2 of which may not exist. |
2012 | Even if all Christians committed heinous crimes, those crimes would still be in violation of their claimed philosophical position. Even if no atheist ever committed such a crime, there would be nothing in their claimed philosophical position to forbid it. |
2012 | It's easier to be productive now that I'm not so distracted by testosterone. But it's also harder to remember why I care about being productive. |
2012 | The fact that you force me to wait does not mean I'm patient. |
2012 | In an over-populated world a Christian gay-basher or abortion clinic bomber would be more beneficial to God if he were an atheist. |
2012 | Fear of punishment can be used to teach morality, but it can also be used to teach any arbitrary system that is sold as morality. True understanding of morality must evolve beyond fear of punishment. |
2012 | The fact that you can't choose what you won't choose doesn't mean you don't have free will to choose what you will choose. The fact that my choice is known prior to making it doesn't constrain my ability to choose otherwise. It constrains the ability of the knower to know otherwise. When knowledge of a future event exists, the knowledge depends on the event, not the event on the knowledge. Epistemology always depends on ontology, never the reverse, even when knowledge of an event precedes the event. "Whatever will be will be" in the sense that everything will be something, but not in the sense that whatever particular thing something will become is the only thing it can become before it becomes it. Linguistic description doesn't affect ontological reality. "A" will keep on being "A" in the future, even after some particular "A" in the present changes to a "non-A" in the future. Unchangeability of eternal reality does not preclude multiple possibilities on the cutting edge of temporal reality. |
2012 | To think you know what you don't know is a mistake. To pretend you know what you don't know is a lie. |
2012 | It is objectively good to willfully oppose the God to whom you believe you are accountable, if he appears to be evil, according to the sense of good and evil programmed into you by the God who created you. |
2012 | Scripturalism is like trying to learn the most recent version of a computer program with an outdated manual. You need it to start with, but if you try to do what it says, you will find things that make no sense. If you learn the program by trial and error, you will find errors in the manual, and eventually have no use for it. |
2012 | People who are happy thinking what they think have little reason to think beyond it, no matter how wrong it is. |
2012 | The truth of a statement and the consequences of thinking it true are two separate issues. |
2012 | People who believe in a just afterlife have more reason to behave morally than those who don't. People who believe in an unjust God have less reason to behave morally than those who don't. |
2012 | If you say you don't know anything, you are a liar. That statement will only offend those who deserve it, because if you know what I said, you are a liar. And if you don't know what I said, you won't be offended. |
2012 | Minds need time to adjust to reality. A mind that is rushed will likely react angrily. |
2012 | Rhetoric is a euphemism for sophistry, which is a euphemism for bullshit. |
2012 | It is hypocritical to join children in their naïve expressions of faith. But when such faith is all that keeps them out of despair, such hypocrisy is the lesser evil. |
2012 | Begin statement. I think the more dependent we become on computers, the more we are going to talk like them. End statement. |
2012 | You can never get what you want by doing things that cause you to become something you despise. |
2012 | If you gain a reputation for humility, then every time you say something that sounds humble, people will wonder if you're talking straight or talking humble. |
2012 | Freedom to be wrong doesn't interest me. I would rather be right at the cost of such freedom. But I don't want more rightness than my spirit can bear. I want to be right, at the cost of temporary unhappiness. But the only reason I care about being right is that it appears necessary in order to get to lasting happiness. |
2012 | Which is more important to you – being right, or the right to be wrong? |
2012 | The more I break free from illusions, the more I wonder if illusions are necessary to keep a person sane. But if that is true, then sanity itself must be an illusion. |
2012 | If illusion is necessary in order to make life appear worthwhile, then life is in fact worthless; and we are all fools for hanging on to it. |
2012 | Even if there were no scriptures, or pretenses thereto, critical thinking alone would compel the possibility of a personal Supreme Being, a personal Creator, a Being to whom mankind is accountable, an afterlife or afterlives, and a Judgment Day or Days. |
2012 | You should do what you think you should do, even if you're wrong, because if you don't do what you think you should do, you'll never know what happens when you do it. |
2012 | I think abortion, euthanasia, and eugenics are moral concepts that can be taken to immoral extremes. |
2012 | Actually the world is made of 2 kinds of people. In fact everything is made of 2 kinds of things: X and not-X. There are, however, many different kinds of 2 kinds of things. |
2012 | When I was a kid, we weren't supposed to say the "f" word. Now we're not supposed to say the "n" word. It will probably go back to "f" word. But it will stand for faggot. |
2012 | One thing theists and atheists agree on is that future scientific discoveries will prove them right. |
2012 | Believing that you are created by, and accountable to a personal Creator does not rationally imply a belief that any set of scriptures is his word, or even remotely represents him. Accepting Jesus as your spiritual sovereign does not rationally imply believing everything, or even most of the things the New Testament says about him. Believing that your Creator is Allah does not rationally imply believing everything, or even most of the things the Quran says about him. The effort to comply with your Creator as you understand him is all he could possibly want of you. Such effort will necessarily cause your understanding to evolve and increase. |
2012 | Some ends justify the means to attain them. Some don't. The only way to judge is hindsight. |
2012 | If entropy is a measurement of randomness in a system, then any increase of order is a decrease of entropy, even if the order produced is cancerous to the system. To assume otherwise makes entropy a paradoxical concept. |
2012 | I can think of no reason to dislike nihilism. I appear to dislike it only because my emotions are programmed to dislike it. |
2012 | I'm the most honest person I know, and I will lie to you any time I think it's in my best interest to do so. |
2012 | If a particular race is known to exhibit a particular ability, inability, or behavior more than other races, then I will acknowledge that fact without apology. If that makes me a racist, then I'm a racist. I'd rather be a racist who admits it than a racist who denies it. |
2012 | If you believe that anyone who doesn't buy your religion is an enemy of God, then you deserve to live in a world where others believe the same of you. |
2012 | Tech support people: Never ask a person to think of a password when he's angry. |
2012 | I'm not voting for persons in this election, much less promises. I would like to vote against evil. Currently it appears to me that the crooks at the top constitute a greater evil than the scum at the bottom. Therefore I will probably vote for Obama. |
2012 | When someone is more confident of his political position than I am, I never know if he knows more than I do, or if he just believes more shit than I do. |
2012 | Emotion is so stupid that if it likes a particular ideological community, it will allow that community to tell it what to feel, and then either feel it, or feel guilty for not feeling it. |
2012 | Real men don't give a shit what real men don't do. |
2012 | A particular desire is an unpleasant emotional state, relievable by either getting what is desired, or outgrowing the desire. |
2012 | The only thing restraining me from evil is threat of punishment. It's not that I enjoy evil. It's just that I dislike the inconvenience of having to avoid it. |
2012 | It's good to play chess with God, because you learn the game better whether you win or not. It's dumb to play poker with him, because he knows your cards. |
2012 | I figured Christmas would be a good day to do laundry because the laundromat would be less crowded. Lot of people think that. |
2013 | Acts done for the purpose of impressing are made less impressive by the awareness of that fact. |
2013 | Thinking outside the box doesn't imply ignoring what's inside the box. It just means refusing to be limited by the box. |
2013 | Even if your understanding is defective, it is good to help someone who understands less than you do to understand as much as you do. |
2013 | A truth seeker should invest more time in a laboratory than in a library. |
2013 | I can't say I'd never sell out. I've just never been offered enough. |
2013 | People don't want moral clarity. It denies them the ignorance excuse. |
2013 | If I speak in generalities, you have the right to demand specifics. But if I offer specifics, and you prefer generalities, you cease to be worth talking to. |
2013 | We all see some things that most people miss, and miss some things that most people see. Unfortunately we are only aware of the former. That's why most people look so stupid. |
2013 | Sometimes you know who not to trust, but you never know who to trust. |
2013 | When you see a metaphor, ask "What's the meta for?" i.e. Why didn't the author just say it outright? Here are some possibilities:
1. esthetics 2. The author didn't want to say it outright, a. because something bad might happen if he said it outright.
i. because he could get in trouble for saying it outright
ii. because people could see it was bogus if it were said outright.
3. The author couldn't say it outright,
a. because he had only a vague idea of what he wanted to say.
b. because it couldn't be said outright.
i. because it was bogus. |
2013 | Many terms, phrases, and statements don't really mean what society has agreed to pretend they mean. The more you notice that, the more you despise the pretense. |
2013 | If you disagree with me, but can't articulate a logical disagreement, what you call a disagreement is merely emotional dislike. You willfully refuse to agree with me, because it would cost you your defective worldview. |
2013 | A competent hypocrite can do much better in society than a person of integrity because a competent hypocrite appears to be a person of integrity, thereby reaping the rewards intended for persons of integrity. |
2013 | Many hypocrites call themselves truth seekers just to wear the title. Incorrigible agnostics call themselves truth seekers while denying their ability to recognize truth even if found. Relativists may call themselves truth seekers while denying the existence of absolute truth. Epistemological coherentists call themselves truth seekers, meaning only that they are consensus seekers. Politicos and religionists are truth seekers. Sure! They seek whatever truth supports their conclusions. Lie exposers are truth seekers - when they are not seeking more lies to expose. No truth seeker is also a faith seeker, but some truth seekers may have faith. |
2013 | Immanuel Kant was able to bullshit western civilization by giving it what it wanted - the illusion of a basis for morality while neither relying on a Supreme Being nor admitting atheism. He achieved this by asserting a sacred value of human beings without ever stating why that value exists. Furthermore, His supreme ideal of duty without selfish motive is impossible. One's only reason for even trying to attain it is selfish. |
2013 | If there is a God, we must all learn to distinguish divine communication from simple fear. |
2013 | Ultimate justification for epistemology is impossible, because the effort to tie up the loose ends creates more loose ends. |
2013 | Collective wisdom is the collective decision to brand certain ideas orthodox. |
2013 | If there is an afterlife, it too will probably be full of people who don't know what the meaning of life is. |
2013 | Every time you say, "Fine thank you. How are you?", you condescend to the corrupt value system that puts formality above sincerity. |
2013 | Though I'm a monotheist, I'm glad atheism is gaining ground. Despite its inherent nihilism, I think atheism is less socially toxic than any scripturalist religion, and has been so ever since the fall of the USSR, and especially since 9/11. Why else would it take the pedophile priest scandal over 1,000 years to break? Of course relative toxicity may change. But until the world wises up to the merits of non-scriptural monotheism, the best we can hope for is balanced copouts. |
2013 | Commitment to any worldview retards mental evolution and discovery of truth, even if that worldview is correct. |
2013 | If I get what I want, but don't deserve it, I won't feel right about it. And feeling right is part of what I want. So I can't get what I want without deserving it. Therefore I want only what I deserve. |
2013 | A man expressed an opinion, and I told him that he was correct. He didn't like it because I declared an objective standard of truth on something which he considered a matter of opinion. I further claimed to know something that he considered unknowable. But in fact I know that his opinion was objectively correct. So fuck him. |
2013 | Scripture based religions cannot keep up with the changing moral needs of a now overpopulated world. |
2013 | If you're going to tell me what I should do, first tell me why I should think you understand "should" better than I do. |
2013 | Once you admit you're in a particular category, people expect you to defend that category. And depending on how the category is defined, it may have subsets which don't apply to you, and which you have no intention of defending. But once a category is sufficiently defined, anyone with integrity will admit he is inside or outside of that category. |
2013 | It is reasonable to assume that your Creator wants you to exist, and will keep on wanting you to exist for as long as you are useful to him, and will want you to stop existing when you are no longer useful to him. |
2013 | When one doesn't care about being liked, one can expect to be disliked for no reason other than that. |
2013 | Truth seekers ask what is true. Truth evaders ask what is truth, figuring that since the question can't be answered without circularity, they cannot be bound by it. |
2013 | I'm socially retarded. I only talk when I have something to say. |
2013 | True is that which is. Good is that which is liked. Ought is that which causes the greatest good. If a thing is liked, but ultimately causes more of what is disliked, that thing is immediately good, but ultimately bad. An error may be immediately good, but ultimately bad, and vice versa. True is not related to good or ought. |
2013 | I have faith in a God who neither expects, requires, nor asks me to believe in a crock of stupid fucking bullshit. |
2013 | Deductive logic is that set of statements that is eternally and universally true of the relationships of variables. |
2013 | A creature that feels emotions deserves happiness only after it has willfully caused happiness. It deserves unhappiness only after it has willfully caused unhappiness. |
2013 | Philosophy is truth seeking. It is not reading something written by an assumed truth seeker, and saying spiffy things about it. |
2013 | Philosophy is about being right, not sounding smart. Rhetoric and sophistry are about sounding smart. |
2013 | The difference between you people and we people is that we people don't give a damn if you people call us you people. |
2013 | The reason why I'm so much "righter" than everybody else is not because I'm smarter. It's because I'm not afraid to be right. |
2013 | Absolute good is a meaningless term. Good relative to me is the only good that has meaning to me. Good relative to X is the only good that has meaning to X. |
2013 | A perfect circle can change in size, location, color, etc. and still be a perfect circle, because the perfection of a circle is relative to its shape. If a perfect circle changes shape, it is no longer a perfect circle. If you say God can change and still be perfect, then what do you mean by perfect? And in what does his perfection reside? If you say God is perfect in "Godness", you have destroyed any possible meaning of perfect. Any value of X is perfect in "Xness". If you say God is perfectly good, then what do you mean by good? And how can the world we see have been created by a perfectly good being? |
2013 | Love appears to be a very small baby in a lot of bath water. Herd mentality has gotten that water very dirty. But people are afraid to dump it because they might dump the baby. I'm not sure where the line is either. In fact, maybe the alleged baby is a fiction created to keep us out of nihilism. |
2013 | Learning true things in the wrong order can be harmful. Therefore it may be harmful to publicly state true things indiscriminately. We can all handle some truth, but no finite mind can handle all truth. |
2013 | Anyone who drops a philosophical email discussion without stating a reason for doing so admits defeat. |
2013 | I pledge distinction between a term and the concept for which it stands. One concept, understood, unambiguous, with clarity and correctness for all usages. |
2013 | Any number of paradoxes can be imagined by looking at a set from a perspective containing fewer dimensions than the set implies. |
2013 | The Golden rule is a good general rule for most people. It is NOT a good universal rule for most people, because some people can't handle what most people can handle. And it is not a good general rule for all people, because masochists, for example, shouldn't be treating everybody like masochists want to be treated. |
2013 | Hope is good only if that which is hoped for is attainable, and doesn't cost more than it's worth. |
2013 | If you're designed to be a sheep, then by all means be a sheep. If you're not designed to be a sheep, then there's no point in trying to be a sheep – much less in faking it. If you're designed to be a wolf, then you have a license to kill and eat sheep. But if you're designed with a sense of morality, you're not designed to be a wolf. In fact you have a license to kill any wolf, that's threatening a sheep. |
2013 | When a liberal says he likes a particular piece of art, he means he likes its esthetics. When a conservative says he likes a particular piece of art, he means he likes its values. Scarcity of conservative art makes conservatives eager to praise any they can find. |
2013 | God will correct your errors only if the God you've chosen corrects errors, and only if you ask for correction. |
2013 | I am something that has the sense to evaluate its own existence, and the guts to admit it in the presence of things that don't. |
2013 | The child-killing gods of Canaan were defeated by the child-rescuing God of Abraham, who was codified into the law-giving God of Moses, and hijacked as the genocidal God of Joshua. Because humans were stupid enough to accept Joshua's God as Supreme Being, the God of Muhammad became an inevitable antithesis. The necessary synthesis is non-scriptural monotheism. |
2013 | Helping other truth seekers find truth is all I'm socially good for, and all I want to be socially good for. If, however, you want to prove you can evade truth, don't waste my time. Any child can evade truth. |
2013 | We all deserve to be reborn into a world filled with others of our own kind, until we either love it, or hate it enough to change. |
2013 | Talking straight means never having to say you're sorry, unless you are. |
2013 | A thing is good because it is liked, not liked because it is good. |
2013 | The God of the Bible is totally specio-centric and largely ethno-centric – both of which are qualities lacking in a universal God. Islam exists because one ethno-centric God deserves another. |
2013 | I'm just going to have to get used to the fact that the few people on this planet worth talking to have better things to do. |
2013 | You can't be right and be happy on this planet. Anyone who disagrees hasn't gotten right enough to see it. |
2013 | Low self-esteemers like to think anyone who doesn't think he's a low self-esteemer is a closet low self-esteemer, who lacks the integrity to admit it. |
2013 | Usually when I say something I later regret, it was belligerent. |
2013 | When freedom means freedom to cheat with impunity, I no longer want freedom. |
2013 | The only difference between panentheism and monotheism is the location of the Creation – inside or outside of God. |
2013 | Defenders of privilege and defenders of justice are rarely on the same side. |
2013 | Won't let me register, because I'm already registered. Won't let me log in because my password didn't match. Won't let me change my password because I'm not logged in. Kill them all! |
2013 | You people with lives are so out of it. Don't you realize that television is passing you by? |
2013 | I might be a team player if I could ever find a team I'd want to be on. |
2013 | Even when I prove I'm right, people don't admit it. Better to just sit around being right, and wait until they figure it out. |
2013 | Believing something in order to gain reward or avoid punishment is something that can't even be done by a person of integrity. |
2013 | There was a time when I wanted to be married – before I got a good look at marriage. Now I'm glad I missed it. Gladder still that I never procreated. |
2013 | You don't go straight to the G-spot – if I remember right. |
2013 | Television has gotten so stupid that there's nothing to do any more but go to the computer and download porn. |
2013 | The judicial system: You raise your right hand. You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all with your left hand on a book that tells you not to swear. What the fuck? |
2013 | Gifts are for children. Adults gifting adults always expect something in return. |
2013 | Common sense is obviously defective. Logic has no defects. But most people's understanding of logic is defective. To the degree to which your understanding of logic is less reliable than your common sense, you should rely on your common sense. But common sense should also tell you that you should learn logic well enough that your understanding of logic becomes more reliable than your common sense. No authority can be shown to be without defects. To the degree that a particular authority is more reliable than your common sense, you should rely on that authority. But if that authority conflicts with logic, common sense should tell you that authority is unreliable, and you should learn logic well enough that your understanding of logic becomes more reliable than that authority. |
2013 | If the pope shits in the woods, and nobody smells it, do guns kill people, or just make them stronger? |
2013 | General vs. particular is an either / or distinction. General vs. specific is a matter of degree. There are degrees of specificity, but no degrees of particularity. |
2013 | Humans are addicted to truth killers, especially when they can justify that addiction with a prescription from any convenient authority. |
2013 | Maharishi asked, "Why are you leaving?" John Lenon answered, "If you were so cosmically conscious, you'd know." Maharishi could have said, "I asked the question not because I don't know the answer, but because I wanted you to answer it." But Maharishi didn't think of that response, which means Lenon was right. |
2013 | Threat of eternal torture may be sufficient reason to worship someone – or something. But it does not make that person or thing worthy of worship. |
2013 | I pledge allegiance to truth and justice as I understand them, and nothing else. |
2013 | It's only a matter of time before religious terrorists make the evils of scripturalism obvious enough for moral theists to abandon scripturalism. |
2013 | Legislating morality can make acts illegal, but not immoral. |
2013 | The only reason any living thing does anything is to feel better, either immediately, or in the future. |
2013 | Arguably, the favorite of all human errors is the conflation of true and good. |
2013 | It's always morally correct to have morally correct opinions. But it's not always morally correct to express those opinions, because any moral principle can be taken to an immoral extreme. |
2013 | Don't bother putting on cosmetics for someone who has already seen you naked. |
2013 | I'm very grateful to Jesus for being there when I needed him, for pointing me in what appears to be the right direction, for teaching me what he had to teach, and then for getting out of my way. |
2013 | Truth is learned one step at a time. If you show someone a truth that's two or more steps ahead of him, he won't be able to see it. He may believe it, but he won't understand it. |
2013 | Bullshit is socially legitimized when a proponent wins a defamation suit against someone who called it bullshit. |
2013 | Most people are not worth talking to. Those that are worth talking to are worth it only up to a point. |
2013 | If you make a clear statement, and somebody misunderstands it, no point in trying to correct their misunderstanding, because your explanation will be more complicated than the original statement. |
2013 | The degree to which you care about truth is the degree to which I care about you. |
2013 | One of the most insincere things a person can do is to try to cultivate the appearance of sincerity. |
2013 | Logic, unlike the Bible, can be trusted to keep you sane. But obsession with logic can also make you autistic. |
2013 | Ontologically correct decisions are those which get the best results. Epistemologically correct decisions are those which insure the best chance of success, based on available data. |
2013 | The fact that one has multiple motives for a single act does not mean the baser motives are dominant or sufficient. |
2013 | Few have integrity. Even the most honest change over time. Long term commitments should be avoided. |
2013 | I'm accused of either being imprecise or convoluted. Everyone's Goldilocks zone is different – and often doesn't exist. |
2013 | History is a cesspool of ego vs. ego, with an occasional glimpse of honor. |
2013 | Christianity is good, in that it keeps many people out of nihilism, and offers them as much of a connection to the Supreme Being as they can handle. But it was never designed as a permanent spiritual residence. The only people who stay in it are either weaklings who need to be continually re-forgiven, or dummies, who never caught onto logic, or logical people who threw out common sense, and with it their God given sense of justice, which had to go in order to justify a God who dispenses unjust punishments and unjust rewards for unjust reasons. |
2013 | Now that I'm accustomed to unhappiness, it's not all that bad. So once again I don't know what to say when people ask how I'm doing. |
2013 | Accepting my own mental limitations is even more difficult than accepting yours. |
2013 | I see no reason to convert a moral atheist to Christianity. But if a Christian is only moral because he's a Christian, I'm glad he's a Christian, and any atheist should be glad he's a Christian. |
2013 | I find few people worth talking to. Of those, few realize that I'm worth talking to. And of those, few have the time. |
2013 | When observed phenomena have an unknown cause, and a hypothesis is proposed which explains them, that hypothesis is epistemologically probable to any mind that can't think of a more probable hypothesis. Offensiveness does not make a hypothesis less probable. Any mind that rejects a hypothesis for offensiveness, but can't think of a more probable hypothesis, makes an epistemological error. Any mind that allows emotional preference to affect its probability judgment makes an epistemological error. All of this remains true in retrospect even if the original hypothesis is later proven incorrect. "Someday science will have a hypothesis" is not a hypothesis. |
2013 | It has proven best for me to move slowly with new people. Too much of me at once can cause them to form erroneous conclusions. |
2013 | You deserve what you deserve now. But you don't necessarily have a moral right to it now. You have a moral right to what you deserve eventually. |
2013 | Thoughts once scrambled by an erroneous worldview cannot be unscrambled until that worldview is updated to accommodate them. |
2013 | The "problem of the one and the many" is a result of failure to recognize the ambiguity in the term "one". It is used to label 2 concepts:
1. indivisible one
Once this ambiguity is recognized, the problem disintegrates.
2. divisible one |
2013 | As a non-scriptural monotheist, I can sincerely say, thank God for Bill Maher. |
2013 | Esthetic consistency is often a hobgoblin to small minds. Logical consistency is a hobgoblin only to small minds. |
2013 | Christians have a corrupt concept of justice, caused by the effort to justify a God who does unjust things. This cannot be proven for lack of an authoritative definition of justice. But it can be illustrated by pushing their concept to its various logical conclusions, until its absurdities become unignorable. |
2013 | All forms of scripture are to your Creator as manuals are to computer applications, except that they don't teach you how to operate him; they teach you how to be operated by him. At first, scripture is helpful. But the more experience you have with him, the less you need the manual. Eventually you discover that the manual was poorly written, and full of errors. |
2013 | Minds, if designed by a Creator, are designed to learn and evolve. That purpose can be thwarted by willfully clinging to what you've been taught, as is advocated by Paul: 2nd Thes 2:15, 2nd Tim 1:13, Col 2:7, Tit 1:9 |
2013 | One set of scriptures will necessarily contain the least erroneous approximation of truth. That doesn't mean it's true. |
2013 | The law of entropy can be interpreted such that life is, or is not, a violation of it. The latter interpretation requires some convoluted effort. |
2013 | Being right is more important than being influential up to a certain point. Once you're right enough that your influence on your community is beneficial, it becomes more important to be more influential than to be more right. |
2013 | If the greed of the rich is not checked by laws, a revolt of the poor is unavoidable. Justice is more important than freedom. |
2013 | Faith is an epistemic bastard conceived by the fornication of trust and probability judgment in the brothel of the human mind. |
2013 | If Wycliffe and Huss had said, "If I can't be Luther, forget it," Luther would not have succeeded. |
2013 | I make a big deal out of admitting my errors because I want to show other people how it's done. |
2013 | If proposition X is true, but can lead to moral errors, then it is morally wrong (or at least dangerous) to believe proposition X until one knows how to avoid those errors. Therefore it is morally good for some people to believe proposition X, and bad for others. In 2013 it is morally bad for most people to believe non-scriptural monotheism. But that will change. |
2013 | For the purpose of truth seeking:
1. precise terminology is always preferable to metaphor.
a. but comprehensible approximation is preferable to incomprehensible precision.
2. less ambiguous terms are always preferable to more ambiguous terms. |
2013 | I'm not exceptionally intelligent. I'm just highly evolved as a truth seeker, because I don't have significant others to slow me down. When others depend on you to keep on being the person you always were, it makes you resistant to change. |
2014 | I'm here to be helpful, not to win arguments. If only my stupid ego could remember that. |
2014 | People tell me my social skills are shit. But what the fuck do they know? |
2014 | When you know the difference between having fun and looking like you're having fun, you don't have much fun. |
2014 | If you know you are doing your best to comply with your Creator, you have no reason to care what the rest of the universe thinks of you. |
2014 | Nothing is more "word of God" than logic. And it's sharper than anything in the Bible. |
2014 | Non-scriptural monotheism is not a religion to be believed. It's a set of conclusions to be figured out. |
2014 | Argument From Insufficient Stupidity: Unaided matter is not of itself stupid enough to bind together into self replicating units that end up being more irritable and frustrated than their component parts. That appears to require an external will forcing it. |
2014 | Argument From Existence Bias overriding Intellect: How is it that I am both smart enough to figure out the Argument From Insufficient Stupidity and dumb enough to not consider suicide. That appears to require an external will forbidding it. |
2014 | Human interest stories don't interest me – and I'm glad of it. |
2014 | If God creates a free-will creature, he has lost control over that creature for as long as he allows it to exist. |
2014 | Reason is not needed to assert a possibility. Reason is needed to deny a possibility. A logical possibility does not require evidence. It requires lack of contrary evidence. [corrected 2016] An ontological possibility cannot be known to exist without evidence. |
2014 | Calling bullshit on something does not compel the opposition to admit it's bullshit, or even help a neutral party see that it's bullshit. |
2014 | If a principle you assert negates your own epistemology, you have no epistemic right to assert it – even if it's perfectly true. |
2014 | A person who can't respond to an argument often demands definition of the terms in it – ad infinitum. |
2014 | I'm a truth seeker, not a lie swatter. Both swat lies. But truth seekers look for more truth, and lie swatters look for more lies to swat. |
2014 | Mechanical how = mechanical why. But mechanics don't explain motivation. |
2014 | I never do anything that doesn't appear to be in my best interest. There are people who claim to do things just because it is the right thing to do. That means either I am morally defective, or they are suffering from delusions of righteousness. |
2014 | A person who sacrifices his life for the sake of another does so because he would rather be dead than live knowing he could have helped that person and didn't. |
2014 | According to The People's Chronology by Trager, watermelon was cultivated in Africa c. 2000 BCE. Is that fact racist? Is Trager racist for reporting it. Am I racist for asking these questions? Frankly, I don't give a shit. |
2014 | Some errors are more easily seen after they are made. An honest mistake is more honorable than cowardice, but may also be more costly. |
2014 | There is a conspiracy among those who control everything to create more conspiracy theories to camouflage the real conspiracy. |
2014 | "I don't like X," states only the absence of a particular emotion. "I dislike X," states the presence of the opposite of that emotion. |
2014 | The ultimate atheist/theist compromise: Shit happens for a reason. |
2014 | There is no logical connection between "is" and "ought". Maybe there ought to be, but there isn't. That ought to be blatantly obvious, but it isn't. That ought to go without saying, but it doesn't, because people ought to keep their emotions out of their epistemology, but they don't. |
2014 | Most atheists are smarter than most theists, because most theists believe what they are told. Most atheists take the time to figure out why they don't believe what they are told. |
2014 | If divine economics requires two units of unhappiness to create one unit of happiness, then the whole set of things that feel happiness and unhappiness should not exist. |
2014 | Between a finite number and an infinite number exists an incalculable number. |
2014 | An apparently sincere question from a person who has already proven to be a game player is just part of his game. |
2014 | I'm not here to dazzle kids with spiritual radiance. I'm here to help truth seekers get to the next step on their own trip. |
2014 | If your God is inconsistent with your experience, you have the wrong God. If his alleged word is inconsistent with your experience, you haven't gotten the word. |
2014 | I know I'm a person because I have access to my thoughts. But nobody else can know if I'm a person or a robot who talks like one. |
2014 | Theism is beneficial to philosophy because it gets people trying to figure out meaning. Tradition (theistic or otherwise) is detrimental to philosophy, because it makes people afraid to examine unapproved thought lines, except in effort to prove untraditional lines wrong. These frightened minds seek to resolve the flaws in approved reasoning by constructing external rational scaffolding to prop it up. The more flawed the reasoning, the more elaborate the scaffolding necessary to prop it up – or just mask or camouflage its flaws. The greatest scaffolding-makers are applauded by tradition as the greatest philosophers. Theists who engage in this sophistry generate atheists. Worse yet, they generate an aversion to philosophy among both theists and atheists. This creates theists who base their worldviews on tradition and scripture, and atheists who base their worldviews on science, without ever examining the impotence of science to discover meaning. |
2014 | Being forgiven relieves legal debt but not moral debt. |
2014 | Tradition will admit that understanding of God is progressive, but then disallow any progress beyond what has already been made. |
2014 | The "problem of the one and the many" is a mind trap that demands a choice between infinite regress and paradox. It demands a unifying force behind any two things, but can't identify such a force that doesn't consist of more than one thing. Homogeneous substance can't do anything, let alone unify anything. |
2014 | Theism and atheism are both efforts to stay or become sane in a world that doesn't make sense. Some people are better off as theists. Some people are better off as atheists. The world is better off if some people are theists and others are atheists. If there's a just God, it doesn't matter which you are, as long as you behave morally. If there's no God, it doesn't matter which you are, whether you behave morally or not. Problems arise when atheists figure this out, and when theists assume an unjust God who tortures people for believing the wrong scripture package, and allow this belief to overrule their natural sense of morality. |
2014 | Tradition rejects ideas and statements on grounds of heresy, rather than falsity or improbability. Therefore tradition is detrimental to truth seeking. |
2014 | Normal and ordinary mean denotatively the same concept. Yet everyone wants to be normal, but not ordinary. |
2014 | Theism as a thesis does not automatically generate the antithesis, atheism – at least not a popular and powerful atheism. It is only after theism has been corrupted by scripture and centuries of theological tradition that Hegelian dialectic generates a popular and powerful antithesis – which atheism will soon become, if it has not yet arrived. The necessary synthesis is non-scriptural monotheism. You are looking at it on the horizon. |
2014 | If an African American is cheap, mean, miserly, parsimonious, and stingy, is he therefore niggardly? |
2014 | If a thing is good, then it is necessarily true that it is good. But if a statement is true, it is not necessarily good that it is true. |
2014 | The biggest philosophical copout of the N.T. is that love is the greatest value – i.e. greater than justice – that it somehow justifies all manner of unjust shit. |
2014 | I assume I've been put here to learn things. So I try to figure out what I'm supposed to learn, and then learn it. I can't say this assumption has produced pleasant results. |
2014 | The least illogical explanation is necessarily the best epistemological explanation, but it may contain an ontologically false conclusion, because one of the premises may be false. If one of the premises is inconceivable, a valid syllogism containing it will yield a logical conclusion of unknowable truth value. |
2014 | Mental gravitation flows toward rational acceptability, but is resisted by emotional unpleasantness caused when previous reference points are exposed as unreliable. |
2014 | Spacetime consists of dimensions which exist in straight lines, each orthogonal to the previous. The next discovered dimension will probably, but not necessarily, be likewise. That dimension may be mind. |
2014 | A theist says, "I exist. Why?" He then proceeds to speculate on answers, and then bets his life on one of them. An atheist says, "I exist. I will continue to exist until I don"t exist. And that is sufficient." It is clear why theists want to talk to atheists: They think they are doing good, and will be rewarded for it. They have both altruistic and selfish motivation. But why do atheists want to talk to theists? They could say, "to persuade theists to either deconvert, or quit doing things that make atheists" lives unpleasant." An alternative answer is that existence alone is not sufficient, and they have not escaped the "why?" question. |
2014 | If God creates something, then either he wanted to create it, or it's an unwanted but necessary side effect of another action. If God is omnipotent, there are no unwanted but necessary side effects. |
2014 | Theologians are smart enough to know that nothing can come from nothing, but too dumb to figure out that something that has no parts can't do anything. |
2014 | Some things can be defined only in terms of what they are not. If something is defined in terms of what it is not, the definition is sufficient if and only if there is nothing else that is not those same things. |
2014 | Religions have proven that psychological stability can be achieved by constant repetition of a sufficiently popular set of lies. |
2014 | Religionists can be taught in large groups. Truth seekers must be taught individually. |
2014 | People who care more about the appearance of intelligence than being right are unfortunately the best company I can find on this planet of apes. |
2014 | Another tip to rescuers: Helping someone get on his feet is a moral act. Helping someone delay bankruptcy is a waste of money. |
2014 | There is no point in advising a man to bet his life on an improbable something until he has had his fill of nothing. |
2014 | Fear causes religion. Emotional reaction against religion causes atheism. Rational reaction against emotional reaction causes non-scriptural monotheism. Abandonment of all emotion causes nihilism and mental annihilation. |
2014 | 100% belief in X = X is certain. 100-50% belief in X = X is probable. 50-0% belief in X = X is improbable. 0% belief in X = X is impossible. Less than 100% and more than 0% = X is possible. |
2014 | If morality could be acquired by magic (or miracle), there would be no reason to have to learn it. |
2014 | It is more moral to bet on justice and lose, than to bet on injustice and win. Either this planet of apes will evolve enough soul to see that, or it will self-destruct in a squabble among unjust Gods and atheists. |
2014 | A democracy can't rescue a nation from chaos. That takes a tyrant. A democracy can rescue a nation from tyranny, only when a strong middle class is present. |
2014 | There is no being, created or otherwise, who will say other than what he believes to be in his own best interest. Trustworthiness is a separate issue. A being is trustworthy only if trusting him is in the truster's best interest. Trustworthiness cannot be known even in hindsight, because past reliability may have been a set up. Therefore, never agree to an eternal contract. |
2014 | Truth is always learned in finite segments. The order in which those segments are learned can cause happiness or unhappiness, wealth or poverty, life or death, etc. A truth seeker has a right to discriminate. |
2014 | If any essential part of the universe were otherwise, the universe would not exist as what it is. There is no part of the universe which can be shown to be non-essential. Therefore asking what would be the result if some part of reality were otherwise is illegitimate. |
2014 | Except for the purpose of exercise, any time spent learning or playing a game would be better spent learning or doing something useful. |
2014 | If a tree falls on George Berkeley in the forest, and nobody cares, would he still say, "to be is to be perceived"? |
2014 | Bad teachers will be quickly out-thought by their students. Good teachers – less quickly. |
2014 | Emotional preference is always detrimental to the correctness of a probability judgment. A set of probability judgments based around an emotional preference could rightly be called a mind virus. Any mind with such a virus is retarded relative to the same mind without that virus. However, emotional preference is quite appropriate when placing bets, because the soundness of a bet is not based on probability alone, but also on risk to reward ratio. Risk to reward ratio is a value judgment made subjectively by emotion to determine the most desirable of realistic possibilities. That which gets you what you want on the short term is likely to be different – even antithetical – to that which gets you what you want on the long term. Emotional economics should be sufficient to tell you that long term is more important. The longest term encompasses the total duration of your future existence, which may or may not end with the termination of your physical life. There is no way to judge the probability of the total duration of your existence. All attempts to judge probable duration of existence are emotion based, and can result in mind virus. |
2014 | A kid makes a stupid mistake, and it ruins his life. To redeem himself, he writes a song about it to warn other kids not to do likewise. The song is so beautiful that it inspires kids to want to write songs like it. And the only way to do that is to make stupid mistakes. |
2014 | I don't belong in polite society, because I'd rather talk straight than be polite. |
2014 | A thought experiment that treats hypothetical concepts as necessarily existing concepts, or vice versa, is a bogus thought experiment. |
2014 | Committing yourself to a particular worldview as an experiment to see what comes of it, is a sensible and honorable thing to do. Committing yourself to a particular worldview because you dislike all the apparent alternatives is flat out stupid. |
2014 | Now that I've had a good look at normal people, I thank God for Aspergers. |
2014 | The fact that something is made intentionally does not imply that it is made without mistakes, or that it couldn't have been made better with a little more effort. It only implies that its maker is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. |
2014 | If statements are inspired by God at all, very few of them are inspired in the absolute sense - i.e. that they are objectively true universally and eternally. Most of them are inspired relative to particular recipients - i.e. they accomplish something God wants to accomplish in those recipients. The same statements may not be inspired by God relative to other recipients - or even to the same recipient at a later time. If a particular statement accomplishes something God doesn't want to accomplish in a particular recipient, then that statement was definitely not inspired by God in the absolute sense. |
2014 | Faith is for children, and others who lack the critical thinking skills to get to worthwhile life. |
2014 | Two guys arguing over what a 3rd guy said can be profitable only if the 3rd guy didn't say anything ambiguous. Two guys arguing over what a 3rd guy meant by what he said is a waste of time. |
2014 | The problem of the one and the many (pom) is not resolved by saying the Supreme Being has no parts, because something that has no parts can't do anything. The pom is resolved by saying the SB is the sum of his parts, and is not in back of the sum of his parts, and by abandoning the erroneous idea that any two things must have a separate unifier behind them. |
2014 | Knowledge and morality may be nothing more than necessary illusions. i.e.
Knowledge is necessary for a sentient being to operate.
If knowledge and morality exist objectively, a personal Supreme Being in which they reside is necessary. (TAG & AFR)Morality is necessary for sentient beings to operate in community. Atheists can claim to have knowledge and know morality as necessary illusions. But once they figure out that they are operating in a state of illusion, they can be held accountable for willfully choosing illusion over objective reality - but only if objective reality exists, and can be shown to exist. |
2014 | Truth does not make anyone free. Some truth makes you more free; some truth makes you less free.
Knowledge of truth does not make anyone free.
Some knowledge makes you more free; some knowledge makes you less free.
Freedom and obligation are held in balance at every level of truth knowledge.Increased knowledge shifts the balance, sometimes one way, and sometimes the other. Knowledge of truth doesn't come by believing truth; it comes by testing apparent truth by experience, and processing experience by reason. |
2014 | If there's a scary thought in the middle of the Yellow Brick Road, you can't get around it. You're going to have to think thru it - unless this life is all there is, and you can go think other thoughts and die first. Otherwise that thought is going to keep coming back. |
2014 | Monotheism itself is not stupid. All institutionalized forms of it are stupid because they contain stupid parts - mainly their interpretation of scripture. |
2014 | All roads toward God start at wherever you are. Therefore there are millions of them. Many of them bottle-neck at Jesus. But there is no reason to think they all do. |
2014 | Nobody wants to be dumb. But many people want to hang onto beliefs that make them dumb. |
2014 | It's OK to start with the fear of an unjust God, but if you stay there, you haven't been paying attention. |
2014 | Objective good and evil require an objective judge of good and evil. Justice, however, is that which is deserved. A given crime deserves a proportional punishment. A given quantity of charity deserves a proportional reward. These are arithmetical equations, and remain objective regardless of the opinion of any judge. Justice remains constant, whether any judge gets it right or not. |
2014 | Though Berkeleyanism cannot be proven wrong, it is demonstrably groundless. There is no property of perception such that it can affect an object perceived. If an object is affected by a perceiver, either that perceiver did more than perceive, or the object perceived the perceiver. |
2014 | All belief systems in theology and politics are subject to dialectic process, because they improve previous systems, but they all become corrupted. |
2014 | I'm a racist. I don't like being a racist, but the fact is, I prefer my own kind, whether I like it or not. That doesn't mean I have to act racist. |
2014 | If you don't surpass your mentor, one of you hasn't done his job. |
2014 | The greatest lie of scripture is that love justifies injustice. |
2014 | Why did the terrorist fly the plane into the building? Because he didn't have a nuke. |
2014 | That which is true and that which should be said are not identical categories, because life is fragile, but truth isn't. Life cannot handle all truth. Any truth seeker will necessarily discover more truth than he can handle. At that point he will either learn to handle it, or cop out and join the rest of the human race, or die. Truth will eventually kill everyone who doesn't learn how to handle it. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're all fools for hanging onto it. |
2014 | Sometimes you have to break rules in order to discover why you shouldn't have done so. This is knowledge that's likely to cost more than it's worth. A truth seeker should not seek it. |
2014 | Moral rules should not be broken. But human society generates counterfeit moral rules that should be broken. |
2014 | If there were no people ahead of their time, their time would never arrive. |
2014 | Emotion doesn't like moral clarity, because emotion wants happiness for self. Moral clarity favors happiness for the entire set of things that feel emotion, does the math and accepts the conclusions. |
2014 | The people who deny that Jesus ever existed have arguments similar to this one: The story of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree is bullshit. Therefore George Washington didn't exist. |
2014 | If there's an afterlife, I know exactly what I'm going to say when I get there: "Are there any non-scriptural monotheists here" If yes, "Where are they?" If no, "How do I apply for termination of existence?" |
2014 | Reality is that which is. Truth is a verbal description of reality. Propositional knowledge is recognition that a particular statement either could not be true or could not be false. |
2014 | Why don't I read? I do; I read history. Why don't I read philosophy? Because I have no respect for people who, when they can't answer a question, refer to some person or book that allegedly answers it. |
2014 | Politeness is no substitute for integrity. |
2014 | When the purpose for which you were hired conflicts with the orders you are paid to obey,... Sorry. That's as far as I got. |
2014 | The atheists, with their totally groundless morality, somehow have the moral sense to reject an unjust God, which most monotheists, with their logically grounded morality, do not have, because most monotheists are scripturalists, and the God of all bodies of scripture is unjust. |
2014 | Christianity offers forgiveness to everyone. That includes:
1. those who will use it as another shot at becoming moral
Christianity also tries to sell forgiveness to those who don't need it.2. those who will abuse it to remain immoral with impunity |
2015 | Helping truth seekers is a moral endeavor. Even trying and failing is moral. Bantering with non-truthseekers is a waste of time, and I'm done with it. |
2015 | I would rather be right on an island with nothing but my own echo, than wrong with all the company I could possibly want. I would rather be right in solitude, than wrong in community. |
2015 | You can't get a denier of obvious reality to admit he's denying obvious reality by confronting him with obvious reality. You just have to wait until he gets tired of denying obvious reality. |
2015 | The effort to make a statement more precise often increases its complexity, thereby decreasing its clarity. |
2015 | Tattoos are for people who don't know they're going to change. |
2015 | Unlike most people, I have my shit together - which makes it all the more clearly shit - but still better than muddled shit. |
2015 | Plausible deniability is for lawyers and politicians, not truth seekers. |
2015 | A blurred line may be evidence of bad vision, or just a blurred line. |
2015 | You are never totally honest with someone from whom you wants something - unless you want the apparent rewards of honesty more. |
2015 | When a person persistently misunderstands you, or pretends to, there is no point in talking to him, unless it benefits other people listening. |
2015 | Good philosophy, like good science, doesn't have to be correct. It just has to be one step closer to correct than the competing theories. |
2015 | I don't care if you're a theist or atheist. I care if you're a truthseeker or non- truthseeker, and rational or non-rational. |
2015 | I'm not aware of anything that I'm not aware of. But I'm aware of the category of things that I'm not aware of. |
2015 | If Islam doesn't police its criminals, the world will criminalize Islam. |
2015 | I may not be right, but I'm as right as I can be. |
2015 | I'd rather be right than be useful to God. But I'd rather be useful to a just God than right. |
2015 | If a valid argument might be sound, it should not be discounted on grounds of heresy. |
2015 | I believe the Bible is inspired by our Creator in the sense of being expedient to get people connected up with our Creator. I do not believe the Bible is inspired by our Creator in the sense of telling the truth, because people are too ignorant, unintelligent, stupid, and frightened to handle the truth. Also, our Creator may have inspired people to write things which were useful for a time, but then remain codified as scripture after they have outlived their usefulness. When this happens, the same Creator will necessarily inspire people to figure it out, and reinterpret their scriptures. |
2015 | The only good scripturalist is a hypocrite. |
2015 | It doesn't matter what other people think. Other people are full of shit. What matters is you being right or wrong, because that's what determines your future happiness. Other people's thoughts are relevant only proportional to their ability to help you get more right. |
2015 | A set of scriptures gives people the "blessed assurance" of being on the same side as their Creator, when in fact they don't know that to be true. |
2015 | Though I'm no longer a Christian, some of my most significant spiritual steps seem to occur at Easter. |
2015 | I, like everyone else, make unsubstantiated assertions every day, and also in my polemic material. If anyone denies my unsubstantiated assertion for that reason alone, let him propose what he considers a more reasonable alternative, or admit that my unsubstantiated assertion is the most reasonable alternative he can think of. |
2015 | I always have been socially immature for my age. Now that I'm 69, that's finally starting to work for me. |
2015 | I'm logically consistent, but not politically consistent. I agree with Bill Maher and O'Reilly about 90% of the time. And I like them both. |
2015 | One of their favorite dumb rebuttals: "There's more to it than that." Yeah. There's more to anything than anything. What more is relevant? |
2015 | Never argue against mathematics or logic. Don't bother arguing against fools who do. |
2015 | I'm no good at speed-thinking. I care about being right, not quick. My first drafts suck. |
2015 | When circumstantial adversity happens more frequently or intensely than usual for no apparent reason, it can be attributed to 1 of 3 causes:
1. coincidental bad luck
As a theist, I assume #2. This assumption has definitely not gotten me to worthwhile life, but it has put me on a path which will necessarily lead to worthwhile life, if worthwhile life is attainable thru willful effort.2. attempted correction by a benevolent external power 3. malevolence by a sadistic external power |
2015 | Either the set of all things is the only thing outside of the set of all things, or a set can be a member of itself or there is no such thing as the set of all things. |
2015 | Assumption precedes knowledge. Assumption is the epistemic starting point of all finite minds. The foundational assumption is baseless. We all assume that we know despite inability to define assumption or knowledge without circularity. This cannot be proven to anyone who doesn't see it. It simply must be figured out. It is figured out by trying and failing to think of an alternative. Epistemic inescapability does not prove ontological truth, but it's as close as any mind can get to such proof. |
2015 | Don't waste time proving fools wrong logically. They won't admit it. Just keep speaking logically for the benefit of logical people. Don't waste time trying to talk common sense into fools. Just keep speaking sensibly for the benefit of sensible people. Atheists can be pushed into abandoning logic. Christians can be pushed into abandoning common sense. Non-scriptural monotheists cannot be pushed into abandoning either. |
2015 | It's going to take a lot of philanthropy to offset the grief caused by the Dirty Operating System Bill Gates sold to the world. |
2015 | Once people know you have something to say, they'll talk to you about anything but that. |
2015 | Most people evaluate what you are saying not by its rationality, but by the number of their friends who agree with it. |
2015 | Mistakes are forgivable. Lying in defense of family and country is at least understandable. But willful disseminators of false info for ideological reasons deserve to have their noses rubbed in it. |
2015 | The world has an optimal number of people for their optimal collective happiness. When that number is exceeded, voluntary abortion is moral. |
2015 | My opponents say, "That's all been addressed." Yeah well, address it now, or admit you can't, and I'll do the same for any point you make. |
2015 | Common sense (in addition to being consensus of opinion) is a mental faculty we all use every day in every area of life, except when we willfully chose to overrule it with faith. |
2015 | I think the effort to defend wrong thinking contributes to senility. But if I start getting senile, I'll probably change my mind. |
2015 | Possible and probable are distinct legitimate concepts. Plausible is a term which serves no purpose but to ambiguate them. Nuances of meaning are for prose & poetry, not philosophy. |
2015 | Sometimes people argue with me when I'm obviously right, just because they didn't think of it first. It may be best to lead them to where they will think of it, let them say it first, then agree with them. Shit! I just now figured out that's what women do. |
2015 | Accidental events cannot have intended parts. But intentional acts can have accidental parts, as well as accidental side effects and consequences. |
2015 | Anyone who thinks a just God would damn someone for calling someone a fool is a fool. (Ref, Mat 5:22) |
2015 | In my opinion, Judaism and Christianity improved the thinking and morality of the worlds in which they originated. Even Islam improved the Arabia of its time. The next step is long overdue. |
2015 | The fact that you have a moral right to do something doesn't mean it is always moral to do it. I have a moral right to say nigger, but it's not always moral to say it. |
2015 | I don't know that I'm sane. But I know I'm trying to be sane. If God himself accuses me of not trying, I accuse God of lying. |
2015 | If we are created for a purpose, part of that purpose must be to teach us to overcome the forces that would try to make us insane. Some of those forces are clearly represented in the scriptures this species has been dumb enough to create. |
2015 | Bill O'Reilly, Bill Maher, and me: We're all right and we know it. Strange that we can't just get along. |
2015 | I have never experienced an Earthly pleasure that can drown out the philosophical background noise. |
2015 | I'm tired of listening to people talk about race, so I must be a racist. |
2015 | Truth seekers don't have leaders. Nobody can guide anybody. But we're all catalysts to each other. We help each other get to where we're going sooner. |
2015 | I think Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. would be proud to have inspired people who find and point out their errors, and ashamed to have inspired people who agree with them because of their status. |
2015 | People trying to act morally deserve respect, even when they act immorally. People not trying to act morally deserve no respect, even when they act morally. |
2015 | It's called overcompensation for historical oppression. When I was a kid, it was love Jews. Now it's love blacks, and Hispanics. Gays are next. |
2015 | A person who rewards you for trusting him is encouraging loyalty, possibly to give you more responsibility, and possibly to set you up for a sting. |
2015 | After dedicating my life to a righteous God, I've become so fucking righteous that I can't begin to tell you how much I impress myself. |
2015 | If you make a point, which you got from a book, don't tell me I need to read the book before I'm qualified to refute the point. |
2015 | You can compare apples and oranges. They're both fruit. But if you compare apple pie and oranges, you've jumped some categories. |
2015 | People who think with their emotions are worthless for discussing truth and probability. |
2015 | Analize your emotions. Don't emotionalize your analytics. |
2015 | No one would pledge allegiance to anything if they took pledges seriously. |
2015 | Is it immoral for the poor to steal from the rich? Yes, if the rich got rich morally. Otherwise no. |
2015 | Theists behave morally to get a better reward in an assumed afterlife. Atheists behave morally to prove they don't need that sort of thing. Those who behave morally because it feels good do so only when it feels good. |
2015 | To say that every act of God is purely intentional, and has no accidental parts or consequences, is to affirm determinism. |
2015 | Any reasoning based on a Berkeleyan view of reality is of unknowable truth value, even if otherwise flawless. |
2015 | Religion is necessary because people are stupid - so stupid as to think atheism is the only alternative. |
2015 | Many people start in a logical direction, find the conclusion unpleasant, and swerve off to settle for a good attitude. |
2015 | Keeping it real implies changing as particular experiences of reality change. |
2015 | When a person claims not to see what any fool can plainly see, that person is no longer worth talking to on that subject, even if he has proven worth talking to on other subjects. |
2015 | The core difference between theists and atheists is that theists perceive a need for an objective epistemic anchor point in order to operate epistemically. |
2015 | To say that a fiction is untrue because it is a fiction is incorrect, because a fiction may be accidentally true, entirely or in part. |
2015 | Scripturalists interpret scripture by whatever interpretation best allows the possibility of its being true. Non-scripturalists interpret scripture by whatever interpretation best accounts for its existence. |
2015 | It's hard enough trying to figure out what is true without trying to figure out what some other person thinks is true. When discussing reality, it's hard enough trying to figure out what we think is true without trying to figure out what we think some 3rd party thinks. |
2015 | Inexpensive philanthropy makes me feel good. Expensive philanthropy makes me feel stupid. |
2015 | Self interest is primary. It includes morality and philanthropy only inasmuch as those things appear to benefit self. |
2015 | The "inerrant autographs" defense is the reverse of a strawman argument. A strawman argument is an easily refuted argument that's irrelevant to the point being defended. The "inerrant autographs" defense is an unassailable (though unprovable) defense that's irrelevant to the point being defended - which is that the Bible contains no errors. It serves 3 purposes: 1. to give young or stupid Christians the illusion that the Bible contains no errors
2. to give smart Christians who know the Bible contains errors an unassailable defense
3. to give those smart Christians a badge of legitimacy in the eyes of the young or stupid Christians |
2015 | I want to be disillusioned. I wish I were never illusioned in the first place. If life can't be made worthwhile without illusions, life shouldn't exist. |
2015 | You know you've been philosophizing too much when you throw the dirty towel in the toilet and piss in the clothes hamper. |
2015 | The whole world is morally retarded, because after procreating, we have to justify bringing another person into a shitty world. |
2015 | Wrong spelling and pronunciation can become legitimized by tradition. Wrong ideas remain wrong despite tradition. |
2015 | Any time you say or sing anything in unison with a group, you're either lying or being lied to or both. |
2015 | I can't boast that I force people to see the wrongness in their thinking, but I do make it more difficult for them to ignore it. |
2015 | Two truth seekers can help each other. One truth seeker and a worldview salesman can be beneficial for the truth seeker only if he has not already heard what the worldview salesman has to say. |
2015 | Don't even bother trying to sell a person green eggs and ham, until he's already tried everything else on the menu, and found it lacking. |
2015 | Correlation does not imply causation. |
2015 | A sane person will never sign his name to anything he doesn't understand, much less anything he hasn't read. We are all insane. |
2015 | Integrity is expensive. The more of it you have, the less you have of anything else. |
2015 | Making sense does not guarantee that you will be agreed with, or even understood. |
2015 | That which appears to be God has convinced me that it is in my best interest to remember that I am here to help truth seekers, and not to challenge truth fearers - unless they ask for it. I was once such a truth fearer. In my early years of Christianity, I actually had to ask God to numb my mind, because my thoughts were more than my faith could handle. |
2015 | Christian thinking: Human life necessarily starts at conception, because that's the only logical demarcation point. Screw common sense. Mat. 5:30 "If your right hand offends you, cut it off" needs to be interpreted with common sense. Screw logic. |
2015 | It's always OK to think outside the box. It's not always OK to act outside the box. |
2015 | If something exists, it's either caused or it's eternal. If you say you have no belief that A causes B, but B exists, then you necessarily believe that B is either eternal or caused. If you believe B is eternal, admit it. If you believe B is caused, state your opinion as to what caused it other than A. If you refuse to do either, you are too full of shit to be worth talking to about the existence of A or the possible causes of B. |
2015 | If you claim a particular authority to be a legitimate establisher of behavioral guidelines, then stay within those guidelines. If you won't stay within those guidelines, then you in fact acknowledge a higher authority while refusing to admit it. Your ultimate authority may be nothing more than common sense. The fact that your claimed authority forgives you for disobedience does not change that fact. |
2015 | The Bible says, "Do this list of things, and never do this other list other things". The Holy Spirit says, "Always do what you think Jesus wants you to do". No matter what items you include on the lists, if you say the lists never conflict with the Holy Spirit, you are either a very new Christian, or you're lying. |
2015 | If a person ignores obvious truth, it is morally good to offend that person in such a way as to clarify the fact that he is doing so. However, the habit of acting on this principle makes a person likely to offend unjustly. |
2015 | There should be a state tax on water consumption relative to income and/or net worth. |
2015 | If there is an ultimate purpose to the universe, that purpose must be the accumulation of knowledge - specifically knowledge of how to get and keep happiness. If that knowledge is continually forgotten, and has to be re-learned, then the universe has no ultimate purpose. |
2015 | Scripturalist thinking: When the Bible gets something right, it's because it was inspired by God. When it gets something wrong, it's because words meant different things to the authors. |
2015 | Scripturalist thinking: The Sumerian Enlil may have become the Akkadian Elil, which may have become the Ugaritic Ilu, which may have become the Canaanite El. But El Elyon, El Olam, and El Shadai are totally unrelated. They're all indistinguishable from Yahweh, because those parts appear to have been written or redacted by yahwists. And the name Yahweh is probably unrelated to the Akkadian Yah, much less the Sumerian Ea, even though Hebrew names refer to Yah. And the name Yahweh originated with Moses even though Moses' mother had a name that means "Yah is great". |
2015 | A sense of entitlement is not necessarily unjustified. A justified sense of entitlement is not unrighteous, despite the possible unpopularity of one who has that sense. |
2015 | Laughter is often a good political weapon, but in philosophy it can't hide the lack of a counter argument. |
2015 | Pew-sitters don't like profanity, but the Bible doesn't forbid it, so they expanded the definitions of swearing & cursing to include it. |
2015 | It is possible to behave in such a manner that if you are not morally right, then moral right does not exist. |
2015 | I'm just here to be right. Others will come after me who will put a happy face on it. |
2015 | Moral conscience is an expensive piece of software. If there's no afterlife, there's no reason to buy it. There is only reason to pretend to have bought it. |
2015 | Life is about realizing that you're an asshole, and then either turning it around, or becoming a bigger one. |
2015 | If you want to clarify your position, I can help you. If you want to remain in a nebulous position, I can't force you out. |
2015 | The Supreme Being is that which created the first created thing. An omnipotent being is able to do anything - or anything logical - or anything power can do. If there is an omnipotent being, it must be the Supreme Being. But there is no reason to assume the Supreme Being must be omnipotent, by any definition of omnipotent. |
2015 | I've never had any use for kinky sex. But then I've never had enough straight sex to get tired of it. |
2015 | "Question everything" is good advice for the purpose of finding answers - not for the purpose of proving you can question everything. |
2015 | The fact that some people find bullshit comforting doesn't mean everybody should condescend to bullshit. But neither does it mean bullshit should be banned. Minds need to evolve. |
2015 | Common sense and intuition both denote basic ability to understand, and judge things without conscious reasoning. Whereas common sense implies a widely held ability, and intuition implies individual ability. |
2015 | You can't prove anything to a person who either refuses to submit to logic, or refuses to use common sense. |
2015 | Children don't need to be taught simplistic lies. Parents need simplistic lies to offer as place holders for unknown answers. |
2015 | Logic is among things that are prescribed, but it's not prescriptive, because it doesn't prescribe anything. |
2015 | Christianity has never been more than plan B posing as plan A for a world full of stupid frightened liars who can't handle plan A. Plan A is not Judaism. It is the simple honest effort to find truth and be righteous, despite living in a world full of stupid frightened liars. |
2015 | Possible & impossible are ontological categories. Corresponding epistemological categories are conceivable & inconceivable. In the conceivable category are certain & uncertain. In the uncertain category are probable & improbable. |
2015 | Inheriting stupidity does not justify bequeathing it to your children. |
2015 | Most people don't want to see more truth, because after you see more truth than you had seen before, you can't go back and be the same person you were before, without knowing you're a liar. |
2015 | All minds must pass thru a period of infancy, in which they simply believe what they are told. If a mind is born into a society where infantile thinking is the norm, that mind may never grow beyond infancy. |
2015 | When something new is discovered in the laws of physics, it may create a new paradigm that totally replaces the old paradigm. But when something new is discovered in the laws of logic (such as Boole discovering the null set), nothing already known is replaced. The new discovery just adds more info. |
2015 | All epistemic theories ultimately self-stultify, leaving us to choose between epistemic copout and epistemic nihilism. There remains, however, a best epistemic theory; and it is that which allows us to know the most of what is knowable, while forcing us to admit we don't know the most of what we don't know. |
2015 | Math is that subset of logic that pertains to quantities. To assume logic is a subset of math leaves one with the impossibility of describing how they relate. |
2015 | There is a point at which one must compromise his values to survive. Some values are worth martyrdom, and some aren't. |
2015 | If a person denies the existence of objective truth, or the possibility of knowing objective truth, he sure as hell isn't going to find any objective truth, and he's not likely to say much that's objectively true. |
2015 | When you're as right as you can possibly be, everyone who isn't hates you for it. |
2015 | There is no such thing as a perfect definition of X such that everything in the universe is either X or not X, with no borderline cases. |
2015 | Gather pieces of knowledge and store them in a box that doesn't leak, and use them against the question monster. |
2015 | Legal guarantees have value, but promises are made only by children and liars. |
2015 | The first step in battling evil is to identify it. That is achieved not by believing what you are told, but by experimenting and observing results. |
2015 | Fighting bullshit with counter-bullshit may feel good, but it's ultimately self-destructive. |
2015 | Philosophical truth can be learned by critical thinking alone, without reading a single philosophy book. The only reason to read philosophy is to learn the history of it. Likewise, relating to God (if there is one) can be learned by experimentation alone, without reading any religious literature. In both cases, reading can be helpful, but it can also get you sidetracked, depending on your motivation. |
2015 | Ability to describe reality clearly improves with practice, and atrophies with disuse. Describing reality more clearly causes one to see reality more clearly. They are mutually reinforcing. Social considerations inhibit clear description of reality. The most detrimental social consideration is ego - other people's as well as one's own. Defending one's ideology and/or reluctance to offend others inhibits clear description of reality. |
2015 | Better to confront truth head on than to have it keep biting you in the ass. |
2015 | Both scripture and the church have served their purpose. They have shown humans how to connect up with their Creator. The only reason they are not spiritually obsolete is that humans don't want to connect with their Creator, because it's scary, stressful, and costly. Humans will gladly settle for the illusion of connection, which is readily provided by some form of idolatry. Ecclesiolatry or Bibliolatry serve that purpose well, while mildly suggesting that people move on to actual connection, at least as a side trip. Muslims are more connected to their scriptures than Christians are. So Christians will have to show Muslims how to get beyond it. |
2015 | A creed says, "I (we) believe X". Scriptures say, "God says X". So any non-scriptural monotheist (or group of them) could legitimately draft a creed. But no nsmist (or group of them) could legitimately claim his (their) creed to be the official one for all nsmists. |
2016 | All justified assertions ultimately rest on unjustified assertions, which ultimately rest on common sense. |
2016 | I don't know if it's possible to get around Jesus or not. I couldn't. I had to confront him head on, and be consumed by him, and wait impatiently until he shat me out. |
2016 | Fear of insanity does not make you sane; it only makes you normal. Sanity is attainable by overcoming fear. Fear of God is overcome by becoming righteous. Righteousness is attainable by persistent effort. |
2016 | When figuring things out brings you into conflict with your current concept of God, it's not time to quit figuring things out. It's time to figure out what's wrong with your concept of God. |
2016 | Don't even try to say things as correctly as possible, at the price of being misunderstood. Say things as correctly as is expedient to communicate. |
2016 | Don't impose any epistemic restriction on your opponent that you don't impose equally on yourself. |
2016 | Atheism is an overreaction against the many stupid concepts of God based on faith in dogma, rather than philosophical necessity & probability. There's nothing intellectually or morally repugnant about the concept of a Supreme Being before people start attaching dogmatic attributes to it. |
2016 | Truth seekers clarify issues. We don't bury them under a heap of extraneous complications. If a clear explanation appears wrong because of unconsidered data, then state one stand-alone piece of that data for processing. Referring to a book that allegedly contains that data is not a legitimate rebuttal. |
2016 | Morality is not part of my identity. I behave morally only for fear of punishment. This is proven every time I dream of behaving immorally. |
2016 | My biggest mistake may have been the effort to get right with God. If that was not a mistake, then my biggest mistake was over-estimating human willingness to admit obvious truth. |
2016 | Christians think they can get right with God without getting real with God, because they have been taught that God wants to be worshipped. |
2016 | Once you are certain about something, the only people worth talking to about it are those who either agree with it or are able and willing to learn it. |
2016 | From what I've seen of God so far, I can't blame anyone from cursing him and/or trashing the very concept. But having also drunk my fill of the nihilism that logically follows from atheism, I'm sufficiently motivated to stick with God, and try to work things out. I've made what appears to be much progress. But I've yet to see sufficient reason to want an afterlife. |
2016 | Which do you want more? 1. freedom to believe what you want 2. mental restriction to cause you to believe only what is true |
2016 | The fact that I'm grateful to the Jesus I've experienced does not mean I owe any respect to the Jesus of other people's testimony. |
2016 | Survival of the fittest implies:
competition between individuals,
Any individual or group may be beneficial or detrimental to the group in which it resides, and likewise either beneficial or detrimental to the group in which that group resides, etc.cooperation within groups, more competition between groups, more cooperation within groups of groups, etc. Ultimate good implies being beneficial to the ultimate group - specifically the ultimate group of things that feel emotions and want to exist. Morality (objective of course) is the willful effort to benefit the ultimate group of things that feel emotions and want to exist. The Supreme Being trumps the set of all created beings that feel emotions and want to exist. But the Supreme Being is objectively moral by definition even if it creates nothing but unhappy creatures that would prefer not to exist. Therefore created beings have no reason to care about objective morality, unless it benefits them, and no reason to serve any God (Supreme or otherwise) that doesn't provide a degree of happiness to its creatures (taken as a set) sufficient to cause them to want to exist. |
2016 | What do inerrantists and agnostic atheists have in common? Both have redefined the philosophical meaning out of their positions, in order to retreat from indefensible ground, while still waving the flag to which their dumber but more zealous partisans will rally. Presuppositionalists and anti-theists have done the reverse. They have advanced to ridiculously indefensible ground to the embarrassment of their colleagues, like the Monty Python black knight, who continues to challenge after his arms and legs have been cut off. |
2016 | Assuming a God who created us for a purpose, I think part of that purpose is to instill in us an internal sense of justice and morality that is stable enough to resist challenge by any claimed external authority, including challenges by agencies that claim to speak for God himself. |
2016 | In the Nuclear Age, the idea most dangerous to civilization is that authoritative commandments of God are written in a book. |
2016 | A creator of X creates everything X creates. But if a creator wants to create X, that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to create everything X creates. |
2016 | If X is a vague category, there is still a distinction between X and not-X, but the dividing line is arbitrarily assigned. |
2016 | "Plausible" is a philosophically worthless term that serves no purpose but to ambiguate the categories of possible & probable. |
2016 | The probability of randomly drawing the ace of spades out of a deck is 1 out of 52. This probability is both ontological and epistemic. If a billion decks of cards are mixed randomly together, and 52 cards are randomly extracted, the probability of randomly drawing the ace of spades out of those 52 is still epistemically 1 out of 52. But the ontological probability is indeterminable. The deck may easily contain no aces of spades. It may also, but not as probably, contain all aces of spades. Probability judgment is always epistemic, is subjective when statistics are unknown, and can be based on nothing more than a few past experiences, or even hearsay. |
2016 | Better to serve than to soar - if there's justice. |
2016 | You think what your Creator designed you to think. And it will change as your Creator designed it to change - unless you willfully try to think otherwise. |
2016 | It's politically good to admit your faults openly, because people are more likely to believe you when you deny an accusation. |
2016 | Figure out what's true if you can.
If you can't, then figure out if you should believe an authority.
If you figure out that you should believe an authority, then figure out which authority to believe.
If you can't, then figure out which authority you should probably believe.
If the authority you believe tells you that you've figured out something wrong, then go back and figure it out again.
If you figure out that you don't have enough data to figure it out, then continue to believe your authority.
If you figure out that you do have enough data to trust what you've figured out, then figure out that you should quit believing that authority, and go believe whatever authority looks most believable.
If it's a spiritual authority, then do what it tells you to do, because if you don't, then you may never acquire enough data to figure out if you should keep on believing that authority.
If you do what your authority tells you to do, and you don't get the results your authority said you would get, then that data should cause you to figure out that you should quit believing that authority.
If your authority tells you that you shouldn't figure this out, and you choose to believe your authority anyway, then you do so because you fear your authority more than you want to know truth - which is stupid, even if your authority tells you he will torture you forever for not believing him, because your Creator, who designed you to figure this stuff out, will let you remain in one of the many asylums for stupid believers of wrong authorities, until you figure out that you don't belong there. |
2016 | Be circumspect, but stay focused. That was a joke - not funny, but still a joke. |
2016 | Prayers are soul guiders. At any given time, there is a set of prayers that will best guide you in the direction you should go. But there is no set of prayers that will always guide you in the direction you should go, because your location and situation changes. Even the best set of prayers must be periodically updated. |
2016 | The best way to get better ideas is to act on the ideas you already have. |
2016 | The God who created bonobos with a sense of justice has the right to hold accountable any philosopher who claims not to understand it. |
2016 | Sanity can be overdone. The more sane I get, the harder it is to tolerate insane people, and the more insane people I notice. |
2016 | There is only one moral principle that is always applicable:
Do what you think you should do.
If you think you should do what some agency or set of rules tells you to do, then you should do so until you see the moral errors that come of having done so.A theist should do what he thinks his God wants him to do, up to the point that his God appears to want him to do something that appears immoral. A theist should then recognize that his concept of God is in conflict with the moral values programmed into him by his Creator, and should at that point revise his concept of God. |
2016 | The biggest problem I have found in discussing God with both theists (nearly always Christians) and atheists is the stubborn equation of the existence of a personal Supreme Being and the reliability of scripture (nearly always the Bible). Atheists: BibleGod doesn't exist, therefore a personal Supreme Being doesn't exist. Christians: A personal Supreme Being necessarily exists, therefore the Bible is reliable. This is a stupid error, probably caused by 2 millennia of church indoctrination, and should have been corrected long ago. |
2016 | You don't need to know something is true, or even be convinced that it's probable, in order to be convinced that you should assume it's true or probable. |
2016 | Religions are beneficial to most people because they find the pretense of certainty preferable to honest uncertainty. They would rather plant their souls firmly in a chosen dogma than tumble thru nihilism. But there is a third alternative. You can plant your soul in a logically necessary possibility. Afterlife and no afterlife are both logically necessary possibilities. A just afterlife with appropriate rewards and punishments gives life and moral behavior objective value. In fact, it holds the only possibility of worthwhile life to humanity - unless you happen to be among the lucky few who enjoy your present life without doing things that are likely to get you punished later. Note that betting on a possibility does not imply the pretense of knowing that possibility is correct. Betting on a just afterlife does not require any pretense or dogma at all. It does, however, imply betting on all the necessary preconditions of a just afterlife. The only rational bet in that category is non-scriptural monotheism. |
2016 | Life should be about learning how to balance ethics and happiness, not about how to win games and accumulate power. |
2016 | If there is evidence for X, and evidence for not-X, the probability of X is subjectively determined, as is the legitimacy of the evidence. If there is no evidence for X, and no evidence for not-X, the probability of X is indeterminable. |
2016 | Don't bother explaining to a person something he has emotional reasons not to understand. Don't even bother showing him something he has emotional reasons not to see. Don't expect him to follow your logic. He has his own logic with which he is comfortable. If a person is not seeking truth, waste no time on him. If he is seeking truth, ask for one clear statement that he believes to be true. If it is correct, agree with it and move on. If it is ambiguous, ask questions that force him to disambiguate it. Continue to ask clarifying questions until he either states it correctly or sees the error of it. Either way, you have helped him along his own path of truth seeking. Also, offer to make statements of your own in case he wants to do the same to you. |
2016 | Everyone is worth talking to about some things, but no-one is worth talking to about all things. |
2016 | They say the Exodus never happened because there is no anthropological evidence of them wandering 40 years in Sinai. Is there any evidence of any nomads wandering thru a desert 4,000 years after the fact? |
2016 | Psychological stability is so important to people that they will believe anything to achieve and maintain it. Once a foundational belief system is chosen, it becomes resistant to change proportional to the amount of identity and resources invested in it. People who have much to lose are seldom worth talking to. The sanity of the world depends on children being taught critical thinking as early as possible. |
2016 | I'll vote for a lying bitch or even a goddamn socialist in order to vote against a megalomaniac. |
2016 | If a person has nothing but faith in X to preserve his psychological stability, and you demolish his faith in X, he'll just slip back into it unless he sees an alternative to faith in X. |
2016 | Skepticism can be nothing more than faith in a doubt. |
2016 | The fact that a statement is objectively true doesn't mean it's objectively good to say it publicly. |
2016 | Fear of God causes most people to behave more morally than they would have otherwise. But it causes some (e.g. Muslim Fundamentalists) to behave less morally than they would have otherwise. Atheism causes people to behave with default human morality, unless they want to prove they don't need God to behave morally, in which case they will behave more morally than they would have otherwise. |
2016 | Part of spiritual evolution is to figure out that no God worth serving would want you to pretend to believe what you don't believe. |
2016 | A just social system is the only system that's not run by people who know how to beat the system. |
2016 | You can catch more flies with a drop of honey than a gallon of vinegar. However, if you're looking for truth seekers, they don't give a damn about your fuckin honey. |
2016 | It's always good to be right, but it's not always good to assert your rightness. |
2016 | It has been said that justice entails correction of criminal behavior, but not vengeance. That's not necessarily correct. If correction includes full compensation of the victim(s), then correction is sufficient for justice. Otherwise justice requires vengeance. |
2016 | Possibly the biggest hindrance to spiritual/intellectual evolution is the presence of significant others who are counting on you to keep on being the person you were. |
2016 | Arthur Conan Doyle could have caused Sherlock Holmes to believe in free will, but could Doyle have actually given Holmes free will? |
2016 | You become what you need to be in order to do what you need to do. If you don't want to become an asshole, don't take on a job that requires it. |
2016 | No matter how many times logicians tell ue that there is no logical connection between is ans ought, moralists will keep on trying to connect them. |
2016 | "God of the gaps" is a bad argument only when a more probable naturalistic explanation is available. When a gap in knowledge cannot be explained by anything more probable than a God, then a God is the most probable explanation. (as in duhh) Though scientific discoveries continue to eliminate knowledge gaps, "God of the gaps" is still more rational than "someday science will find an answer", which says nothing more than "anything but God". Until science explains everything naturalistically, there will only be theists and closet-theists calling themselves agnostics. |
2016 | An agnostic atheist is a closet theist hiding in the epistemic darkness of a non-position. |
2016 | At least 2 kinds of people are not worth talking to about the sensibility of their worldview: obnoxious people and stupid people. I know because I've been an obnoxious atheist and a stupid Christian. |
2016 | Some people need an objective criterion for knowledge & morality, and some don't. The ones that do become theists - specifically monotheists; the ones that don't become pantheists or atheists. When any of them claim to know more than they know, they make a religion. |
2016 | Neither theism nor atheism is inherently a religion, but either can be made so by the pretense of knowing more than one knows. Religions are not about determining what's true. The anti-rational basis of religions is evidenced by the stupidity of 99% of their defensive arguments, and the truth-obstructive tactics of 99% of their defenders. Religions are about making a psychological adjustment to an apparently absurd existence in a world full of crazy people. Such adjustment is unpleasant and time consuming, and therefore, once made, is resistant to change. Another reason for change resistance is the presence of significant others who count on you to continue being what you always have been. The only possible cure is to learn critical thinking - early. |
2016 | Discussing philosophy and/or religion with most people is like trying to play chess with someone who either doesn't know the rules or refuses to abide by them. |
2016 | It's not necessary to justify what you're saying when you're only talking to people who have the sense to either see that it's true or offer a more sensible alternative. |
2016 | A truth seeker may embrace a religion, but only as an experiment to see where it goes. And when he reaches its end, he will admit it and move on. |
2016 | When ideas can be expressed in terms easily understood by your audience, there is no reason to use other terms, unless your intent is not to communicate, but to impress. |
2016 | Concrete can refer to events as well as objects. e.g. "Tomorrow" as an abstract, is always a day away. It never arrives. "Tomorrow" as a concrete, is only a day away. It always arrives. |
2016 | Monotheism is a sound philosophical position made to look ridiculous by religion, thereby inspiring atheism, an unsound position, abandoned by its own smarter adherents to the safer non-position of agnosticism, while still calling it atheism in order to oppose religion. |
2016 | An atheist lives on the stupidity of others. He needs a steady supply of stupid ideas to laugh at in order to distract him from his own lack of a reason to exist. |
2016 | The best discussion groups are in homes. Next best are in restaurants. Next best are in public buildings. If it meets at a golf course, you know it's full of shit. |
2016 | Kids think life will be good as adults. Adults think life will be good if they have spouses. Couples think life will be good if they have kids. Parents know life sucks, and try to keep their kids from catching on. |
2016 | I seek truth seekers, ignore truth ignorers, and obstruct truth obstructors. I serve a God who does the same whether that God exists or not. Unfortunately, truth alone is insufficient to generate and sustain life. Love is necessary for that. Unfortunately, love is unjust. It favors the loved at the expense of the unloved. Justice is also necessary, or life sucks. There must be a resolution of truth, love, and justice, or life would be better off not existing. Truth and justice never conflict, but both often conflict with love. Love must take third priority, contrary to scripture. |
2016 | Learn to operate within the rules imposed by God. Learn to recognize the rules imposed by men in the name of God. |
2016 | If a false paradigm does more good than harm because it is believed true, should you expose it as false? No - unless you can offer a true (or at least less false) paradigm that will produce the same or better ratio of good to harm. If a lie does more good than harm because it is believed true, should you expose it as a lie? No - unless you can offer a truth (or at least lesser lie) that will produce the same or better ratio of good to harm. A bigger lie that produces a better ratio of good to harm is better than a lesser lie that does the reverse. Honest people are trustworthy, even if believing them kills you, but you're more likely to survive if you trust benevolent liars. |
2016 | Non-scriptural monotheism is a philosophically and spiritually stable position. But only those who are sufficiently uncomfortable with scripturalism will be motivated to work their way to it. |
2016 | Obama may be incompetent, but he appears to be the last American president to give us any claim to moral high ground. |
2016 | Non-scriptural monotheism is the part of monotheism which is philosophically necessary and theologically relevant without dogmatic assertions such as the ideas that faith is necessary or that authoritative messages from God are written in a book. |
2016 | I've been accused of hating God. I don't think I hate God. But if you think I hate God, I sure as hell hate your God. If my Creator is just, I love him; if he's unjust, I hate him. That's how he designed me. |
2016 | Atheists are floating in nihilism, denying it, and pretending that their made up values justify surviving and procreating, while betting against the only possibility of true justification. |
2016 | Scriptural theists and atheists are both denying truth for emotional reasons - theists because they fear an unjust God; atheists because they hate an unjust God. |
2016 | Minds have an approach/avoidance conflict with truth. They know they need it to be happy, but it keeps making them unhappy. |
2016 | I had a brush with Christianity in high school, rejected it, and turned atheist. As an atheist, then pantheist, I was a nihilistic, immoral, obnoxious asshole. After about 8 years, that quit being fun, so I looked around for something else. Christianity appeared to be the only thing I hadn't fully explored, so this time I did it right. Personal relationship with Jesus transformed me into a dogmatic, sanctimonious, stupid asshole. Decades of critical thinking again transformed me into a philosophically brilliant loser with a message - non-scriptural monotheism. |
2016 | The greatest appeal of fanaticism is its moral clarity. You simply have 1 moral principle to which all else is subservient. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, unless a dogmatic statement is chosen as that principle. |
2016 | You don't need faith to bet your soul on an afterlife. The mere possibility should be enough to convince any rational person to prepare for that possibility by at least minimizing immoral behavior. If you deserve reward, you don't need faith to bet your soul on a just God. You need only reason, because a just God is your best chance of worthwhile life. If you happen to deserve punishment, and you can't or won't do enough righteous stuff to change that fact, then you don't need faith to bet your soul on Jesus. You need only reason, because Jesus is the option that offers you the best deal - even if that deal pays only a fraction of what is advertised. You only need faith if you're too young or dumb to figure this out, or if you want the illusion of knowing what you don't know. And even then, faith in scripture should be kept to a bare minimum, because scripture contains factual and moral errors, which can be intellectually corrupting, spiritually distorting, and socially destructive. |
2016 | You always convert from a worldview with known defects into a worldview with unknown defects. The greatest defect of a worldview is irrationality. After you've explored your worldview enough to know that it's irrational, you either look around for a potentially better worldview, or remain in your present worldview as a stupid hypocritical asshole. |
2016 | A truth seeker connects the dots to see if a pattern emerges. A faith seeker imposes a pattern over the available dots. Theists & atheists can both be faith seekers. A pattern is evidenced by predictability in places not yet examined. |
2016 | Just because you have faith in a rational link from faith to justification doesn't mean there is one. |
2016 | The fact that you've made an absurd statement does not mean that you've created or demonstrated a paradox. |
2016 | Faith doesn't justify anything; it doesn't even justify faith. Justification by faith is unjustified. It is based on faith in an unjust God who shifts the criterion for justification from just behavior to faith, and sold to unjust people who want to feel justified while behaving unjustly. If you believe in justification by faith, then your concept of faith and/or justice has been warped by faith in an unjust God. |
2016 | The main attraction of fanaticism is that it simplifies morality so that any fool or child thinks he understands it. |
2016 | Some lies cause some people to behave more morally than they would have otherwise. It is good for those people to believe those lies. |
2016 | Faith is an honorable alternative to nihilism, but a dishonorable alternative to truth seeking. |
2016 | If there somehow exists a Being inside or outside the universe who deserves to be worshipped, that Being would have his head on straight enough to not want to be worshipped. |
2016 | Any legitimate philosophical concept can be expressed in high school vocabulary. Science requires a big vocabulary because all the parts have official names. Philosophy does not require a big vocabulary. The big vocabulary functions legitimately for brevity between philosophers who understand it, and illegitimately to confuse and overawe those who don't. |
2016 | X is an ontological possibility only if it doesn't violate any logical laws, or physical laws of the universe in which it is declared possible. |
2016 | I have reoccurring dreams about trying to find my way home thru a land of irrationalities and crazy people. All my adult life has been like that. I've been thru the lands of money lovers, lotus eaters, nihilists, and truth fearers, and there appears to be nothing left but more of the same. Still, I don't want to die and get out of this asylum until I have accomplished what I was sent here for. |
2016 | Metaphor, poetry, symbolism, hyperbole, and sarcasm are used legitimately only when the target audience knows they are intended as such. If an author intends for his target audience to take a statement literally (or close to literally), and the statement is later shown to be erroneous in the sense in which it was originally intended, it doesn't then become metaphor, etc. It's simply erroneous. |
2016 | Basic Algorithm of Sentient Life:
|
2016 | Agnostic atheism is epistemically indistinguishable from non-scriptural monotheism. Both assert the possibility (but not probability) of a personal Being who created us for a purpose and may interact to affect that purpose. The only difference is what is bet on. |
2016 | You can't objectively define a subjective concept. You can objectively define an objective concept, but you can't compel an incorrigible subjectivist to admit that any particular concept is objective, or that an objective concept even exists. |
2016 | Atheists have no epistemic anchor point, not even logic, because they have no reason to assume logic connects them to truth - only that it has survival benefits. And they have no reason to prefer survival, unless they happen to be lucky enough that their happiness outweighs their unhappiness. They have only survival instinct. |
2016 | A mind is a location in space-time that wants, and wants to quit wanting. It has no internal reason to exist, and must be force to exist by something that wants it to exist. There must therefore exist a mind that either likes existing or doesn't know how to stop. |
2016 | Contradictory: A = B; A doesn't = B. If one is false, the other is true. Contrary: All A = B; All A doesn't = B. Can both be false; can't both be true. Subcontrary: Some A = B; Some A doesn't = B. Can both be true; can't both be false. |
2016 | For every person there exists an optimal set of values. It consists of whatever is most likely to give you the greatest ratio of happiness over unhappiness for the duration of your existence. So everything depends on how long you exist. If there's no afterlife, it's easy to figure out - just go for whatever does it for you, and when it stops working, suicide out. If there's an afterlife, everything depends on whether or not it's just. If it's just, then do whatever causes you to deserve what you want. If it's unjust, then everything depends on what set of unjust bastards is running the place. |
2016 | Time exists wherever anything happens. If something happens, a time existed before it happened, and a time exists after it happened. The Supreme Being either exists in time, or time exists in him, because there was a time before he created the first created thing - unless time was the first created thing. |
2016 | Wisdom and sanity are denotatively the same concept. Wisdom is the high end of sanity. Sanity is the low end of wisdom. Both mean knowing how to get what you want without doing things that will get you more of what you don't want later. |
2016 | There are only 3 epistemically legitimate answers to an epistemically legitimate yes or no question:
Yes.
Any of these answers can legitimately be elaborated on, but only as an addition to the answer, never as a substitute for it. Such an attempted substitute is an evasion.No. I don't know. Of course some yes or no questions are epistemically illegitimate. If anyone asks me a yes or no question, I will answer it with either yes, no, or I don't know, or I will refuse to answer it and state why I am refusing. But I will not evade. Those of us who are right can afford this boast. |
2016 | There are few jobs that can't be done more efficiently after emotion and/or ethics are suppressed. |
2016 | People who are just trying to sound intelligent waste a truth seeker's time. |
2016 | If your God wants you to think what your Creator never designed you to think, then your God is not your Creator. |
2016 | The only epistemic value of an unanswerable question is to figure out that it's unanswerable and why it's unanswerable, and move on. To dwell on it until its entertainment value wears off is a waste of time. |
2016 | The only truth anyone has any reason to care about is pragmatic truth. Ontological and epistemic truth are irrelevant. People who think they care about such truth for its own sake have pragmatic reasons behind it, which they choose to ignore. Those reasons are either ego masturbation or a desire extrinsically forced on them by a Creator who may or may not have their best interest in mind. |
2016 | Mentally complacent people seem to die sooner than truth-seekers. If I die soon after writing this, you may assume that I was wrong. |
2016 | I've been accused of argument from ignorance when I say "A probably = B, because I can't think of any way A could not = B." But... FALLACIES ONLY DISPROVE LOGICAL NECESSITY. THEY DON'T DISPROVE PROBABILITY. |
2016 | Once you deny knowledge by intuition or common sense, you can't even claim knowledge by logical necessity, because logic can't prove itself. If you know logic is reliable for determining truth, you know it only by intuition or common sense - or some mental faculty indistinguishable from intuition or common sense. Yes logic is infallible, and common sense is not. But you can't claim to know that except by common sense. |
2016 | The only pragmatic value of epistemology once you transcend pragmatics is to bullshit sincere truth seekers who haven't yet seen the full circle. |
2016 | There is no epistemic difference between philosophy and sophistry. The only difference is that philosophy is pragmatically helpful. |
2016 | Prayer is an effort to use supernatural means to get what you want. It may be nothing more than a form of insanity; and it may be a form of mental reprogramming, which if done persistently, causes a mind to eventually start wanting what it should have. In my experience, it started with erratic expressions of momentary desire. When that didn't work, I started praying for what I thought God wanted me to pray for. This gradually evolved into prioritizing and rational ordering, which imposed a corresponding order on my mind. So far, no amount of it has caused me to know if I am becoming saner or insaner, but it appears to have caused me to become more rational. |
2016 | If a particular statement is true, it is not made false by grouping it in a general set with other statements that are false. |
2016 | Conservatives try to preserve the state. Liberals try to make the state worth preserving. They must alternate in power. |
2016 | A possibility is not proven by evidence or even lack of contrary evidence. It is proven by lack of contrary proof. [correction of a 2014 post] |
2016 | You can fight monsters and die, or you can become a monster and die. If there is no reward/punishment after death, the monsters win. |
2016 | By the strictest definition of knowledge (impossibility of the contradictory) nothing can be known by a finite mind except facts pertaining to its own existence, because it can never be known that nothing exists beyond what is known. By the next strictest definition (inconceivability of the contradictory) some things can be known by a finite mind. e.g. Truth exists.
Some of it is knowable. Logic is reliable for knowing truth. False knowledge claims exist. e.g. Claiming to know a particular religion is true
Claiming not to know 2 + 2 = 4 is true
By the next definition (imperceivability of the contradictory) the existence of the external world can be known by a finite mind. By the next definition (irrelevance of the contradictory) a difference that makes no difference is no difference. |
2016 | Spiritual progress formula:
1. Keep asking for correction.
2. Keep admitting that you think what you truly think, even when you think God doesn't want you to think it.
I know from experience that this produces spiritual progress, but I can't claim to know it's progress in the right direction - or even if there is a right direction. I only know that if it's not the right direction, I can't imagine what the right direction could be. |
2016 | Some terms have singular definitions; some terms don't. Terms that don't have singular definitions can have a range of popular definitions from broad to narrow. Unless a term is ambiguous, there is only one broadest definition of it. There are many narrower definitions depending on context and need for specificity. Religion has a range of popular definitions. The broadest is "any worldview or set of ideas that is acted on". (You don't need to look it up; you can figure it out.) You can add qualifications to that definition to make it as narrow as you like. So can anyone else who wants to make it mean something else. If you try to make any definition the official one, you are just trying to sell a dogma. Atheism originally had one definition: "belief that a God (or gods) doesn't exist". Actually that should have been called anti-theism, but unfortunately atheism (the term) caught on. Now many people have figured out that atheism can (or should) mean lacking belief in a deity, like asocial means non-social, not antisocial. A-privatives can mean lack as well as opposition. Of course there are counter-examples: Atypical means the same as anti-typical. The effort to sell this new definition of atheism as the official one is just as futile as similar past efforts have been. In order to call atheism a religion or not a religion, both terms must be disambiguated. |
2016 | Sin, by its broadest definition, is offence against a deity. It begs a question atheists have already answered. |
2016 | Seeking truth does not make you popular, rich, or happy. It just makes you a competent truth seeker. |
2016 | According to the rules made by whoever makes grammar rules, the following is correct punctuation:
Joe said, "Hi."
Punctuated logically they would look like this:
Joe said, "Ouch!" Joe said, "WTF." or Joe said, "WTF?" Joe said, "Hi.".
I assert that grammatical correctness is logical - not obedient to self-proclaimed authority.Joe said, "Ouch!". Joe said, "WTF?". |
2016 | You never know if you're going to sell out until you either do it or die without having done it. |
2016 | If attempted cooperation with your Creator doesn't get it, there is no it to get. |
2016 | Nothing says, "Let's all bullshit our children," more than Christmas music. |
2016 | All spiritual tests are to see if you do what you believe you should do when you want to do something else. |
2016 | [revision of a 1987 post] Spiritual maturity is getting your priorities straight, keeping them straight under pressure, and revising them when a better system is recognized. |
2016 | Christianity:
|
2016 | Once you recognize a principle as defective, you're going to discard it eventually, so you might as well discard it immediately. Emotional attachment to any defective principle is detrimental to your epistemological health. Better to admit error sooner than later. |
2016 | People who need people need people to sing songs about how lucky they are. |
2016 | There is no sound argument made with philosophical jargon that can't be made more clearly (though possibly not as briefly) without philosophical jargon. |
2016 | Pantheism taken to its logical conclusion denies all logical conclusions. |
2016 | You know what justice means when you're on jury duty. Its meaning doesn't change when you discuss theology. |
2016 | Weak thinkers and defenders of weak positions often tell me to go read a book, rather than engage. |
2016 | If it were such a wonderful life we wouldn't need to be reminded of it every damn Christmas since 1946. |
2016 | I'd rather you make an argument than refrain from it while remaining argumentative. Being argumentative doesn't mean you've made an argument. |
2016 | Praying what God doesn't want you to pray can be dangerous. Therefore this tactic: God, if you want me to pray X, then I pray X. If you want me not to pray X, then I don't pray X. If you don't care either way, then I [your choice]. |
2017 | Dishonest people who admit they're dishonest like to think everyone is dishonest, and that admitting dishonesty is as honest as anyone gets. Though no one is perfectly honest, that doesn't mean everyone is equally dishonest, or that those who admit dishonesty are more honest than those who don't. If you know you're more honest than most, then it's honest to admit it - even to brag about it. |
2017 | There is no moral principle that will always produce moral results when applied logically without common sense. |
2017 | You can't possibly get what you want until you first become worthy of having what you want. It has been proven to my satisfaction that I am not worthy of having what I want, and my best efforts to make myself so have failed. For that I need outside help. I believe that a just God is the only possible source of it. |
2017 | Everyone is worth talking to about some things; but no one is worth talking to about everything. |
2017 | Your Creator designed you to be in personal relationship with him. If you choose to believe what other people tell you about your Creator rather than find out for yourself by personal experience, then you deserve all the consequences of that choice. |
2017 | "Greatest good for the greatest number" is ambiguous. Does it mean greatest possible good that can be attained for everyone, or the greatest number of people who can attain the best possible good? |
2017 | What Bronze Agers thought about God should be no more relevant to us than what Bronze Agers thought about science. |
2017 | Respecting a person does not require respecting his erroneous beliefs. All minds have a right to periods of infancy and adolescence. Some take longer than others to grow out of it. Others grow out prematurely for erroneous reasons, and fall into counter-errors - possibly even greater errors. Honest errors should be tolerated up to the point that they harm other people. Diversity of evolutionary paths should be respected. |
2017 | A stable epistemic foundation is always built on logic rather than authority. It is always figured out rather than believed. I'm not asking you to believe that. I'm not even asking you to figure it out. I'm saying you will figure it out whether you believe it or not. |
2017 | "Don't you... forget about me." I remember the tune and the lyrics, but I've totally forgotten who wrote it and who sang it. |
2017 | If people call something what it isn't for long enough, they will think it is what it isn't. |
2017 | The only people worth my time either have something to say that I haven't thought of, or want to learn something they haven't thought of. |
2017 | If you just talk, "this guy says this," "that guy says that," you're not doing philosophy. Philosophy begins when you say, "this is right because...," "that is wrong because...," "this can't be known because...". |
2017 | Once you deny an epistemic axiom, you deny your epistemic grounds for saying anything based on that axiom. A statement is axiomatic if no counter-examples can be shown to exist. |
2017 | An obvious perception may have a counterintuitive cause. |
2017 | It's not important for me to prove I know stuff. It's important for me to shut up until I have something helpful to say. |
2017 | God of the gaps is no worse than science of the gaps. |
2017 | Religion started as a licensing agency for kings, and remains as an afterlife insurance agency without a claims department. Having paid someone to deal with your afterlife consequences, your mind is free to focus on earthly goals. |
2017 | From the point that you willfully deny logic, you deserve all the confusion that comes of that denial. Same is true of common sense. |
2017 | If only one possibility can account for the existence of something that obviously exists, that possibility is necessarily true, even if its own existence cannot be accounted for. |
2017 | If only one possibility can account for the existence of something that obviously exists, that possibility is necessarily true, even if its own existence cannot be accounted for. |
2017 | Every step into the unknown is dangerous, and should be followed by circumspection. |
2017 | Pascal was on the right track. But he sold out to the religion of his culture rather than take it to its logical conclusion. |
2017 | You know you're old when you have to budget your semen. |
2017 | If you get what you want without first becoming worthy of it, you will either lose it, or be stuck with it after you stop wanting it. |
2017 | Existence of the supernatural is necessarily improbable to any person who has never experienced anything that appears supernatural. No amount of other people's testimony makes it probable, because, as we all know, other people are stupid liars. |
2017 | Classic atheism: God doesn't exist; and he's an asshole. Agnostic atheism: I have no belief in a God; and he's an asshole. Scriptural monotheism: The God of my scriptures exists; and he's good - despite everything. Non-scriptural monotheism: A rational God may exists; if so, he may be just; and both are worth betting on. |
2017 | Theists and atheists both ignore obvious truth for emotional reasons. |
2017 | Truth is correspondence to reality. The "coherence theory" of truth is not a competing theory, but a plan B to fall back on when correspondence can't be known. |
2017 | I can see in retrospect that my sense of morality has evolved toward greater correctness, but also that it has warped around my desires. |
2017 | I can believe God inspired Christianity for the sake of those who know they deserve punishment, but then couldn't restrain their egos from claiming everyone deserves punishment. |
2017 | I don't care if you have 10 PhDs and an IQ of 200. If you're not a truth seeker, you're not worth my time. |
2017 | Atheism can never be more than a minority opinion, because having some idea of why you exist feels better than having no idea. That remains true even if that idea is obvious bullshit. |
2017 | There are few stupid fucking assholes. Stupid assholes and fucking assholes are generally different assholes. |
2017 | I would rather lose as Spartacus than win as Crassus. |
2017 | Ego, while facilitating survival of the individual, is detrimental to the welfare of the community. The collective ego of a community likewise facilitates its survival, while being detrimental to the welfare of surrounding communities. |
2017 | I'm not here to compete; I'm here to help. Wish I could fuckin remember that in discussion groups. |
2017 | Physicists think formal logic is unreliable on the quantum level. I think physicists are unreliable on the quantum level. |
2017 | How many nihilistic theories do you have to examine before you decide to either become a nihilist, or assume objective morality exists with all its necessary preconditions? |
2017 | Until the Supreme Court has a legal definition of human being, it can't rightly assert a legal definition of abortion. |
2017 | Assuming a Creator God, any religion is Godly which takes a person closer to the will of God than he would have been otherwise. The same religion is unGodly relative to any person who is already beyond it. It is safe to assume that in the Stone Age, just about any religion was Godly relative to most people. Bronze Age: henotheism was Godly, then monotheism more Godly. In the Nuclear Age, atheism is more Godly than most religions to most people. |
2017 | If a scripturalist believes his scriptures to be more reliable than his God-given sense of morality, and he's wrong, he doesn't deserve retributive punishment. He deserves correction, even if that correction is punitive. If he believes killing his theological opponents is moral, he deserves to live in a world where other scripturalists believe the same of him, until he figures out his error. That error may be an erroneous interpretation of scripture, and it may be a perfectly rational interpretation of erroneous scripture. |
2017 | Theoretical possibility does not imply ontological possibility. |
2017 | Theists fall back on attitude games; atheists fall back on ridiculing attitude games; and nobody moves forward. |
2017 | Two values corruptions of the NT:
1. Love is better than justice.
2. Glory is better than happiness |
2017 | Definition of insanity: defining insanity the same way over and over again, even though it's obviously incomplete. |
2017 | Assuming a God who created minds for a purpose, which is more likely?
1. He created minds to live by faith in what he tells them. But it's not at all clear what he tells them; and if they guess wrong they get punished, after it's too late to change their minds.
2. He created minds to figure things out, and to use faith only as a safety net to fall back on when they can't figure things out. |
2017 | Somebody asked me why I'm so angry. It's because I'm living in a world full of people who ignore obvious reality. |
2017 | All concepts are separate no matter how much the categories in which they reside overlap. They are denotatively distinct no matter how much they are connotatively related. |
2017 | If a term is ambiguous, but only one of its possible meanings makes sense in context, that ambiguity is irrelevant. |
2017 | Now that I'm 72, I can honestly say I'm glad I never had a wife & kids to have to lie to. I just wish I could have made it without business associates to have to lie to. |
2017 | Faith in science is just another faith. But some faiths are dumber than others. |
2017 | I'm glad my parents never tried to beat me over the head with any dumbass love. |
2017 | Sometimes it's worth being an asshole to defend a righteous principle, and sometimes it's not. It depends more on the situation than the principle. |
2017 | It is good to show a truth seeker that he's wrong. It is a waste of time to show a fool that he is a fool. It is sometimes good to talk to a fool when truth seekers may be listening. |
2017 | A person can learn rationality and morality without ever becoming rational or moral. |
2017 | Worthwhile life cannot possibly be attained by people who are afraid to admit that they think what they think. |
2017 | Self-deception is a willful act. And it can succeed, but only temporarily. It can get you thru this entire life. But the possibility of an afterlife should be sufficient to dissuade anyone from engaging in it. |
2017 | Now that I'm disillusioned, I don't ever want to be re-illusioned. |
2017 | If truth kills you, then either you would be better off dead, or the world would be better off without you. |
2017 | Religionists pay preachers to tell them happily ever after. Atheists pay preachers to tell them there is no afterlife, so enjoy now. It's faith in bullshit either way, but religion has it piled higher and deeper. |
2017 | The best truth seekers are likely to be young and unmarried. |
2017 | If you play chess with someone who is too stupid to know he's checkmated, you're only a lesser fool. |
2017 | There is probably enough safety in scripture to keep you out of retributive punishment. But there is not enough to keep you out of corrective punishment, nor enough to get you to worthwhile life. If that's available at all, it is accessible only by interrelationship with the God to whom you are accountable. |
2017 | It's hard to make spiritual/intellectual progress when your only companions are frightened theists and philosophically truncated atheists. |
2017 | Berkeleyanism taken to its logical conclusion is solipsism. |
2017 | Humans create artificial intelligence to make robots indistinguishable from ourselves, yet not able to threaten us. Possibly humans are created for a similar reason. |
2017 | My father was no role model. But he had the integrity to never pretend to be. I would rather have that than an asshole wearing a roll model suit. |
2017 | I would rather be disliked by people who understand me than liked by people who don't. |
2017 | People care less about truth than about appearing intelligent. The easiest way to do that is to parrot others who appear intelligent. |
2017 | Quantum theory is based on a Berkeleyan worldview, and a coherence theory of truth. Despite all their experiments, they haven't made a single positive foundational statement. Their foundation has been destroyed ever since Einstein bumped Newton off and left everything floating in relativity. |
2017 | Every corrected philosophical error is a step closer to nonscriptural monotheism. The world cannot afford scripture generated moral errors in the Nuclear Age. |
2017 | Just registered Republican in order to vote against Trump in the next primaries. |
2017 | Table turning is a tactic legitimately used to illustrate a defect in your opponent's position which is not also in your own, or at least to show that both positions are equally defective. But if table turning neutralizes the value of logic and epistemology, the table turner has self-stultified, and has no epistemic justification for saying anything. |
2017 | Comedians need a term for hypersensitive offense takers who censor legitimate comedy. I propose FENDEES. |
2017 | I know several people who are proud of their integrity. And they all measure it by how far under the rug they sweep their copouts. |
2017 | Incoherent thinking is necessarily wrong thinking. An incoherent theory may be the best theory yet thought of to explain known data, but it's still wrong. |
2017 | Quantum "mechanics" is a euphemism to make quantum theory look as sound as mechanics. Quantum "theory" is a euphemism to make a bunch of theories look unified. |
2017 | Quantum theorists say nobody knows what is going on, but buy my book anyway, because I'm one of many PhDs who are saying mostly the same stuff, and nobody has a better idea |
2017 | I agree with the atheists that it's stupid to fear an unjust God. I agree with the theists that it's stupid to deny that you're a nihilist just because nihilism allows you to deny it. |
2017 | Theists have made up attributes of God, dogmatically asserted to be revealed. Atheists have made up values, dogmatically asserted to be objective. |
2017 | A theist can claim to be doing his best to be right only if he is persistently praying for correction of errors. |
2017 | When I was a kid, I remember my mother saying it was a privilege to pay taxes. That's the kind of shit people thought back when America was great. |
2017 | You can determine truth or falsity of a philosophical statement by critical thinking. With political statements, you only have other people to agree or disagree with. |
2017 | Religionists are WRONG because they care more about community than being right. Atheists are WRONG because they care more about opposing stupidity than being right. The classical arguments for God, (especially T.A.G.) though failing to PROVE a personal Supreme Being, show such a Being to be PROBABLE to anyone who doesn't throw out common sense. But there is no reason to assume such a Being to be omnipotent - or omni-whatever, and no reason to think he would communicate thru scripture. The most probably correct worldview is non-scriptural monotheism. |
2017 | There is no point in surviving if you must devolve morally in order to do it. |
2017 | I don't have an imaginary friend, but I do have a personal relationship with a possibly imaginary God to whom I'm accountable. |
2017 | People who cannot keep up with the increasing complexities of the world are trying to simplify it with primal emotion and brute force. |
2017 | If you're right, you don't need to argue. You can just keep stating the truth, and truth seekers will eventually see it. Non-truth seekers will deny even the most obvious truth and the soundest arguments. |
2017 | I'm a heterosexual theist. But if there's an afterlife, I somehow want to go where Ricky Gervais goes. |
2017 | People who don't pronounce words as correctly as I do are stupid. People who pronounce words more correctly than I do are haughty pretentious assholes. |
2017 | This anti-anti-anti stuff is getting so complicated that it's hard to tell the bad guys from the worse guys. |
2017 | The solution is to upgrade theistic minds from scriptural to non-scriptural monotheism. You can serve God without believing ANY scripture. |
2017 | If morality exists at all, it consists to those voluntary actions which are intended to increase overall happiness within the universe. |
2017 | The primary action of the Holy Spirit on theists is to restrain emotional reactions. |
2017 | I believe a God probably did intervene minimally in history at various points in time, in order to achieve various goals, and specifically to create the essential parts of Judaism and Christianity for the sake of those who need it. Still I am not a Christian, because I don't want to spend an afterlife with Christians. I want to get totally beyond you people, because though I respect you enough to talk straight with you, I don't respect you enough to want to live with you any longer than necessary. I want to live with others of my own spiritual kind in a just universe or terminate existence. |
2017 | We all believe some things for epistemic reasons and some things for psychological reasons. Most people pretend their psychological reasons are epistemic reasons. |
2017 | The best way to oppose non-scriptural monotheism is to ignore it. Anyone who challenges NSM will see his own worldview suffer by comparison. Any reason-generated change of worldview is a step in the direction of NSM. |
2017 | The path of a truth seeker goes in many different directions at first. But the more truth he finds, the more directions he rejects as wrong. The path gradually straightens. If he remains a truth seeker, the path becomes perfectly straight, and any deviation becomes unacceptable. But if a person quits being a truth seeker, and instead becomes a dogmatist, he will experience a similar straightening. When this happens, he will either repent, or get his ass kicked into repentance, or die in his error. |
2017 | Fools enter a contest to prove they can win, without first checking out the prize. |
2017 | If you believe X is true, then you believe all necessary preconditions of X being true, only if you believe that each of those preconditions is a precondition. Otherwise, you can believe X is true, but disbelieve a necessary precondition that you don't believe to be a necessary precondition. |
2017 | The social problem is how to create a system to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak without letting low end scumbags beat the system. |
2017 | The reason for my anger is not that I'm living in a world full of people who can't handle the truth. I'm angry because I'm living in a world full of people who can handle more truth than they are handling, and refuse to do so. |
2017 | An acquired taste is for people who can't tell the difference between pleasure and relief of displeasure. An addiction is for people who can't see an acquired taste becoming one. |
2017 | Tu quoque is a fallacy when an accused person denies an accusation on the grounds that the accuser does the same thing. It is not a fallacy when the accused is not denying the accusation. |
2017 | In a just universe, people who lie to get what they want are forced to live in community with others who lie to get what they want. |
2017 | Unless morality & self interest are perceived to be united, individuals will be in conflict with their communities. Morality & self interest can be united only in a just system, which requires a just afterlife. |
2017 | An argument for theism is irrational if it makes sense only from within theism. An argument against theism is irrational if it makes sense only outside of theism. |
2017 | If no afterlife, then try to get what you want. If afterlife, then try to become worthy of what you want. |
2017 | I can no longer claim to be open minded. Learning critical thinking has closed my mind to most of the world's shit. I'm right. The world is wrong. That's just the way it is. |
2017 | A religion is good if it is closer to truth than what preceded it - bad when something closer to truth is discovered. |
2017 | Just got back from a totally worthless discussion group. Bunch of normal people voicing political opinions and playing let's all remember trivial shit. Makes me proud to be neurotic. |
2017 | When some people are asked a question, they simply answer it. Others stop and think: 1. How should I answer this? 2. How would the guy I'm pretending to be answer it. 3. What answer is likely to get desired results? |
2017 | If you were God, and you wanted to create honest respectable people who will admit what they honestly think and feel despite fear of punishment for doing so, how would you go about it? Would Christianity facilitate your purpose? |
2017 | PHILOSOPHY is truth seeking. SOPHISTRY is counterfeit truth seeking. SOPHISTS (truth-obstructing game players) can be worth talking to for the benefit of any truth seekers who may be listening (reading), but only up to the point that the truth seeker can identify the sophist as a sophist. |
2017 | An ONTOLOGICAL POSSIBILITY is anything you know to be possible. e.g. life on other planets An EPISTEMIC POSSIBILITY is anything you don't know to be impossible. e.g. afterlife |
2017 | Mind may be to brain as software is to hardware. If so, a mind can exist in multiple brains, and be copied and pasted after a brain dies. |
2017 | Even the most obviously correct ideas take time to sink into a mind that is comfortable in its chosen errors. |
2017 | Either time is eternal, or time was the first created thing. |
2017 | The Supreme Being is moral regardless of what he does, like the pope is Catholic regardless of what he says. |
2017 | No matter how evenly matched a theological debate is, afterward there will be dummies and sophists claiming their guy demolished the other guy. |
2017 | What I'm saying is correct, but it's not beneficial for everyone, because though many propositions are true, learning them in the wrong order can be dangerous. e.g. The fear that everything in a particular category is dangerous can facilitate survival, even if some things in that category are not dangerous. Conversely: The knowledge that some things in a particular category are not dangerous can in itself be dangerous, if some things in that category are dangerous. |
2017 | Olive oil is not as good tasting as butter, but it's healthier. The first half of the statement is purely subjective. The second half of the statement is less subjective. An objective statement would be, "Olive oil is healthier than butter, for most people." |
2017 | I had no idea how important integrity was going to be while I was in college getting a degree in commercial art - learning how to be a competent whore. |
2017 | In the past 50 years, the corrupt core of scriptural religion has been exposed. Religionists exist in a bell curve between the loving but naive left and the realistic but legalistic right. Immoral religionists exist in the same bell curve from the hypocritical left to the fanatical right - pedophiles to murderers on the ends, with common lying cheating thieves and whores in the middle. |
2017 | When I was a baby, I crawled. Eventually got very good at it. I was proud of my ability to crawl fast. Then my father, instead of being proud of me, told me to get up and walk. I was no good at walking. He pissed me off. Dealing with God has been the same way. As soon as I get good at something, the rules change. |
2017 | I don't care about creating the illusion of value. The world is an insane cesspool of countless created illusions of value. I care about discovering objective value if it exists; and if it does not exist, then I choose to admit it - which is nihilism. |
2017 | The whole theism vs. atheism controversy is a game of
X probably exists until proven not to.
X can equal anything from fairies to other universes.vs. X probably doesn't exist until proven to. Non-statistical probability judgment is totally subjective. You can choose to play the game, or admit it's nothing but a game, and step out of it, choosing instead to experiment with the assumption that a God exists, and/or experiment with the assumption that a God doesn't exist. I have done both, and found nothing satisfying either way, but choose to continue experimenting, rather than go back to the dumbass fucking game. If satisfaction is attainable at all, it will be found by truth seekers, not game players. |
2017 | FAITH: There is no official definition of faith; so unfortunately people can pretend it means whatever they want it to mean in the context in which they use it, and then equivocate at will. Usually faith is synonymous with belief. As such it has the same ambiguity belief has. It can mean probability judgment or willful trust. As probability judgment, faith implies a deviation from straight epistemic judgment to a probability judgment altered by emotion. That emotion is usually optimism or fear of authority. Once you fear authority, you may let authority redefine faith for you, resulting in some really stupid thinking. e.g. There is no substance of things hoped for until those things arrive, which they may never. And faith is not evidence of anything, but its own existence. Faith at its best is inductive reasoning based on data selected by emotion. Faith at its worst is assumption based on emotion. Faith is beneficial to people who need it to keep them out of depression or despair, or the kind of nihilism where you slide into criminal values. It is not beneficial to people who are sufficiently content with life, and behave morally without it. It is also not beneficial to people who place that faith in an unjust God who tells them to do unjust things. Assuming a God who created minds for a purpose, which is more likely? 1. He created minds to live by faith in what he tells them. But it's not at all clear what he tells them; and if they guess wrong they get punished, after it's too late to change their minds. 2. He created minds to figure things out, and to use faith only as a safety net to fall back on when they can't figure things out. It depends on whether or not God is just; doesn't it? If you must have faith, don't have faith that God is just. Place your faith in a just God; and figure out the difference. |
2017 | If space were infinitely divisible, the laws of geometry would apply at the quantum level. That does not appear to be the case. Is space composed of adjacent tetrahedrons? Or is it spheres with something else filling the gaps? |
2017 | Quantum theory is defective because probability is not a substance. It's not even an ontological concept. It's an epistemic ratio of the chance of X being true to the chance of X being false. |
2017 | Rights vs. happiness: A person is happy not knowing his/her spouse is having an affair. But he/she has a right to know. |
2017 | Freedom is valuable only when its benefits outweigh its detriments. If its ultimate benefits are not greater than its ultimate detriments, it has no ultimate value. |
2017 | The American continents would necessarily be discovered by European explorers. Chromosomes and DNA would necessarily be discovered by scientific experimenters. All things in the path of discovery will necessarily be discovered by explorers and experimenters. Non-scriptural monotheism will necessarily be discovered by theological explorers and experimenters, once they have sufficient motivation to discover it. Religious terrorists acting on scriptural directives will eventually provide that motivation. There are so few theological explorers and experimenters because of: expense, risk, fear, and insufficient desire to know. |
2017 | I've never understood homosexuality. But I understand it well enough to know it's beneficial in an overpopulated world, and should therefore be encouraged. |
2017 | Though I rejected Christianity, I never rejected Jesus, i.e. Jesus as I understood him thru personal relationship. It was attempted compliance with Jesus thru that relationship (or assumed relationship) that eventually led me out of Christianity. |
2017 | The Bible is spiritual pablum. For most young people it's nutritious. But it's meant to be outgrown. |
2017 | If you read something about God, you don't know if it's true until you test it.
So you might as well just test stuff. If you read something philosophical, you don't know if it's true until you figure it out. So you might as well just figure stuff out. |
2017 | I continue to try to make sense of my own existence despite persistent evidence that there is no sense to be made. |
2017 | After carefully analyzing common sense, I've discovered that I'm the only person in the world who has it. |
2017 | Neither conformity nor non-conformity is a good general social ethic; but either may be good at any particular time. |
2017 | I think Thanksgiving was not originated to express thanks, but to appease a God who might punish them for not expressing thanks. |
2017 | Given any particular person, sometimes that person will seek truth, and sometimes he will evade truth. It all depends on whether or not he thinks believing that particular truth is in his best interest. Even a committed truth seeker will discriminate as to what truths are worth the time it takes to seek them. |
2017 | Online discussions are places where you can discover that you're a point or 2 down before you realize there is a game being played. They can turn a truthseeker into a gameplayer if he's not careful. |
2017 | I know how to be right. But I don't know how to get people to admit I'm right. |
2017 | If you don't know, you're agnostic. If you don't believe (or have a belief), you're apistic - following Greek-based etymology. The Greek word for belief is pistis. |
2017 | I love helping truth seekers. I don't care if I offend truth ignorers. I hope to offend truth obstructors. |
2017 | God of the gaps. Science of the gaps. Doesn't matter. Just don't get dogmatic. Experiment with both, or quit calling yourself a truth seeker. |
2017 | Coerced thanks, coerced praise, coerced applause, coerced respect, coerced forgiveness, coerced apology, coerced agreement, coerced humility, coerced appearance of anything. It's all bullshit. Even worse is the coerced pretense to think such coercion is moral. |
2017 | Does any individual or minority have any moral right that costs its community more than that community votes to pay for? e.g. education, healthcare, housing. I don't think so, but does anyone have any examples? |
2017 | It's good to learn chess when you're a kid. It teaches logical thinking, and that those who think the most moves ahead win. But it also makes you a game player. You're hardly ever a game player and a truth seeker at the same time. And you're hardly ever a game player and a people helper at the same time. Besides that, being a good chess player takes a chunk of memory. When you get older, you learn that your hard disk space is limited. The same mental processes used to play chess can also be used to learn critical thinking, which is a more beneficial use of disk space. |
2017 | Forces are generally strong near their source, and diminish in strength with distance from their source. Therefore any 2 forces with sources in different locations will (unless one is strong enough to totally overpower the other) have a point (or plane) of balance between them. So why should it be considered miraculous that forces in this or (any universe) are perfectly balanced? |
2017 | Jesus may be YOUR Reason For The Season. But the only universal reason is commerce. |
2017 | Sure, you can assert common sense morality. But then when whatever-supremacists assert it too, all you have is, "My common sense is better than your common sense." Or... "You have no common sense." In which case, how is it common? |
2017 | I consider neurosis a badge of honor on this planet of apes. |
2017 | Some societies make up rules that serve no purpose but to allow people in those societies to feel superior to, or be offended by, people who don't know those rules. Fuck em all. |
2017 | Epistemic logic is dependent on language. Ontological logic is not. If there were no ontological logic, epistemic logic would not work in the physical world. If you deny the existence of ontological logic, you can't answer this question: What maintains consistency over time, and between spaces, in the universe |
2018 | Hebrew language reveals this Biblical contradiction: (Gen 14:22) And Abe said, ... I have lifted up my hand to YAHWEH El Elyon... But later Yahewh tells Moses (Ex 6:3) I appeared to Abe ... as El Elyon, but by my name YAHWEH I was not known to them. This is evidence of redaction by a yahwist of an elohist original. |
2018 | You can learn logic but remain irrational until you voluntarily decide to submit to logic. You can have common sense, but be irrational any time you refuse to use it. When logic and common sense conflict, a rational person backs into agnosticism and awaits further data. |
2018 | Fools so love questions that they ignore answers. |
2018 | People think whatever bullshit appears to be in their best interest. They have no reason to care about objective truth until caring about it appears to be in their best interest. |
2018 | Any government which has both, a policy of expelling individuals who advocate overthrowing that government, and a policy of accepting immigrants who advocate overthrowing that government, clearly needs to revise its policy. |
2018 | There are no official definitions of terms. Nevertheless... Reality is that which is. Truth is that set of statements describing reality or a part of reality. A true statement describes reality or a part of reality. Possibility is a property of a statement which may be true. An epistemic possibility is any statement not known to be false. An ontological possibility may be possible whether it is known or believed to be possible or not. A statement of unknown truth value is epistemically possible, but may not be ontologically possible. Probability is the degree to which a statement may be true. A probable statement is more than 50% likely to be true. A hypothesis is an assumed possibility. A theory is an explanation of observed phenomena. Theories are assumed possible until proven impossible. Evidence is information indicating whether or not a proposition is probable. Proof is information indicating whether or not a proposition is true. Axioms are statements assumed true until proven false by a counter-example. Laws (if they exist) are proven axioms. Belief is: 1. probability judgment; 2. the decision to trust. Beliefs(1) are assumed probabilities. Knowledge is the relationship of a belief(1) to a fact such that the belief cannot possibly be false. A term may be ambiguous. The concept a term labels is never ambiguous, but may be vague. Fact: 1. a true statement; 2. a statement which has been proven true -------------------------- Anyone can propose alternate definitions to any of the above terms. I challenge anyone to propose a coherent set of alternate definitions that doesn't contain contradictions. |
2018 | A person who commits a crime is less culpable if he was under the influence of a drug when he committed it. But if he knew that drug was likely to cause him to commit a crime, but willfully took that drug anyway, he is fully culpable for crimes committed under its influence. |
2018 | Man made gods (and Gods) rank creatures according to the quality of their sycophancy. |
2018 | Nothing says, "My pleasure is more important than that of anyone around me," more than a cigar. |
2018 | Most people, including those who claim to be truth seekers, do not care about being right. They care about winning arguments and sounding cool. And they will take sophistry over sound argument if sophistry better achieves that purpose. |
2018 | They object to what I've said, but they don't refute it or rebut it. They react emotionally to what they feel I have implied. Most atheists are almost as stupid as most Christians. |
2018 | Any belief can be coincidentally true even if it is arrived at thru bad methodology. The discovery of bad methodology is not a good reason to disbelieve anything; it is only reason to re-evaluate the belief with better methodology. Anyone thinking this: "I believed X is true for stupid reasons.
...is still stupid.Therefore I now believe X is false." |
2018 | Hebrews 11:1 - Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Wrong! Faith is not the substance of anything. Things hoped for have no substance until they happen, which they may or may not. Faith is the evidence of things not seen." |
2018 | Counter examples are legitimate tools of argument. But any time a hypothetical is introduced into an argument, it's a red herring. |
2018 | You can figure out that the reason quantum theory is screwed up is that it is based on at least one false premise. You can figure out that you can't know which premise (or premises) it is until you have more data. |
2018 | Though Berkeleyanism cannot be proven wrong, it ultimately denies the existence of the external world, and leaves every mind in solipsism. |
2018 | A thing that measures all things cannot be shown to exist or not exist. |
2018 | Even when rationality cannot be attained, stupidity can still be minimized. |
2018 | The world is wrong, and I will keep telling it so as long as I live in it. My occasional errors don't diminish the fact that the world is wrong. |
2018 | Evolving minds must try on a black hat or two. But blackhats are cancers in any world they reside in. Black hats are only fun until one figures this out. |
2018 | AndyWarholism: To figure that life is meaningless, embrace it, and raise meaninglessness to an art form |
2018 | Evolution can explain the origin of morality if morality began as behavior that facilitates survival and procreation. But when morality went beyond that, evolution has no explanation. |
2018 | If I can say something that helps one truth-seeker, I don't care how many non-truth-seekers it offends. |
2018 | Logical conclusions are not necessarily true, but illogical conclusions are necessarily false, even if they are coincidentally correct statements. |
2018 | Damn! I forgot to do X! Oh! How about that. I didn't forget it. Hah! I'm not as forgetful as I thought. Oh, wait... |
2018 | There is no point in trying to unscramble the thoughts of people who want their thoughts scrambled - which some people do in order to escape accountability. |
2018 | Epistemic nihilism is where people go to escape accountability. |
2018 | Religion is good for people who want to escape accountability, because after suckering them in by the promise of escape, it then throws them together with others of their own kind, and shows them the results of their depravity. |
2018 | The morality of an act is based on results. The morality of an actor is based on intent. |
2018 | Hypocrisy, when successful, enables unethical people to reap rewards meant for ethical people, thus encouraging unethical behavior. |
2018 | When religionists speculate on the nature of God, they don't even aim for probable correctness, but rather to err on the side of perceived safety. |
2018 | Proposition X is either true or false. That's 2 and only 2 possibilities. If only 1 of those possibilities allows for the possibility of anything to matter, then that possibility is the only possibility that matters; and it doesn't matter if proposition X is true or false. |
2018 | There is nothing that I'm not allowed to think. Thought happens involuntarily. But there are things that I'm not allowed to say. |
2018 | Don't pray for error correction over an extended time period, because it causes stress even when there are no errors to correct. |
2018 | Morality and self interest can remain out of conflict only if there is an afterlife, and only if it is just. |
2018 | Atheists are too dumb and over-reactive to acknowledge that theism is obviously probable. Theists are too dumb and frightened to acknowledge that scripturalism is obviously stupid. The next dialectic synthesis is non-scriptural monotheism. |
2018 | Sophists are better game players than truth seekers. But sophistry is exposed by hindsight, and the integrity of a truth seeker will be remembered longer than the moves of a rigged game. |
2018 | Pointing out truth is beneficial to truth seekers. But trying to sell truth to ideologues is a waste of time. Don't bring a fact to an ideology fight. |
2018 | All assertions are justified by other assertions, which are ultimately based on unjustified assertions. Foundational assertions are either axiomatic or dogmatic. Epistemic axioms are epistemically necessary. You need epistemic axioms in order to think rationally. If your foundational assertions are dogmatic, they are epistemically unnecessary, and you have chosen them for emotional reasons. You have chosen them in order to think what you want to think. |
2018 | Saying that you've read something is a cheap way to imply that you know something. But if you know something you can demonstrate knowing it. |
2018 | We have 4 accounts of the alleged resurrection, all of them different. All differences can be attributed to bad memory except one: If a stone was rolled in front of the tomb, the disciples would have known of it. Why didn't they tell the women to either quit preparing embalming spices, or take some men with them to roll the stone away? Even if this problem is ignored, John contradicts Mark and Luke by saying they embalmed the body on Friday. Details: http://www.sanityquestpublishing.com/essays/resprob.html |
2018 | It is not surprising that Jesus fulfilled so many prophesies, considering that he deliberately tried to fulfill as many as he could. Also when any act of Jesus similar to an OT verse becomes a fulfillment, and the verse itself becomes a prophesy, and the authors had motivation to write fulfillment into the narrative. The only one that wasn't more likely concocted later is Isaiah 53. |
2018 | Multiple witnesses to a single event will likely have inconsistent testimonies about it. Unbiased witnesses will have random inconsistencies thruout their whole testimony. But if all witnesses want to promote a single idea, and they all agree on that idea despite inconsistencies elsewhere, then that idea should be viewed skeptically. |
2018 | All of philosophy is trivial until you make an error that you wouldn't have made if you had understood it better. |
2018 | If there's a God, that God is definitely a fucker, and not a fuckee. |
2018 | No matter what you say in philosophy, there is something else you should have said first. |
2018 | Reason serves emotion. A person is only as rational as he has convinced his emotions that it is in their best interest to let him be. |
2018 | Ideologues and faith seekers may use critical thinking to get to where they want to go. Truth seekers follow critical thinking to see where it goes. |
2018 | theist: Entropy. Therefore life is highly improbable. atheist: Entropy causes subsystems of reverse entropy. theist: Yeah, crystals. But life is still way improbable. atheist: If crystals, why not life? theist: Blah blah atheist: Blah blah theist: You don't have any theory as probable as God theory. atheist: Infinite multiverse is possible. Therefore anything that can happen will happen. Therefore probability is irrelevant. |
2018 | Strangely few school shootings, bombings, and serial killings in the Trump era. Is it because the psychopaths are happy? |
2018 | If I were to pledge allegiance to anything, it would be truth and justice. But I know from personal experience that I haven't sufficient integrity to pledge allegiance even to that. |
2018 | Believe: 1. to think X is probably true (an involuntary act) 2. to act as though X may be true (a voluntary act) |
2018 | Traditional (including scriptural) moral codes try to justify the dominance of prevailing power structures. Human morality has evolved beyond that, as evidenced by current acknowledgement of the moral equality of all ethnicities, sexes, sexual preferences, social classes, and intellectual levels. The right of a woman to abort will remain contentious until resolved by overpopulation. Animal rights will remain contentious until science discovers a way to measure emotional pleasure vs. displeasure. |
2018 | The flaws of any thesis are irrelevant until a less flawed thesis is proposed. |
2018 | We can do what we want or what we should. We want to do what we should only when we think it will get us what we want. |
2018 | The rights of any creature should be directly proportional to the amount of unhappiness caused in the universe when those rights are violated. |
2018 | No authority is needed to say what can be rationally figured out. |
2018 | TRUMPITIS: the idea that speaking sloppily is justified and now fashionable.
Anything said in defense of Trump is justified regardless of absurdity. e.g. Giuliani: "Truth isn't truth." |
2018 | Many people deserve to be insulted. But only deliberate malefactors deserve it. And they only deserve those insults which cause them to see the error for which the insult was justified. |
2018 | All epistemology is based on epistemically unwarranted decisions to assume meaning. All attempts at warrant (justification) result in circularity or infinite regress. This does not imply that all epistemic efforts are equally illegitimate, because some efforts are more dogmatic than others. Some dogma is epistemically necessary. Epistemic legitimacy is inversely proportional to the number of dogmatic layers built on top of epistemic necessity. |
2018 | I hate social game players. I used to be one. They think everyone is a game player, and judge all interactions by who wins. |
2018 | Once a person backs off from truth seeking to talking about truth, there is little point in talking to him about what is true. |
2018 | If instinctual creatures follow their instincts, much more misery than happiness is caused by it. If worthwhile life is attainable at all, morality must dominate instinct. |
2018 | Most people have an approach/avoidance conflict with truth. Their egos want to think they are truth seekers, while their ids want to disbelieve unpleasant truths. The only pure truth seekers are those who believe accepting all truth is in their best interest, unpleasant or not. |
2018 | I'm an intellectual bigot with no apology. I think more intelligent creatures are more important to the ultimate purpose of all life than less intelligent creatures. |
2018 | Many things are objectively measurable. Importance is not. Importance is always relative to some standard. That standard is usually arbitrary. The only non-arbitrary standards of importance are either an assumed Supreme Being or the universal total of all things that judge importance. |
2018 | Women want men to be a lot of things I can't be without faking it. |
2018 | The most sensible bet is whatever appears most likely to give you the most pleasant results if you win, and the least unpleasant results if you lose. |
2018 | Everybody's a truth seeker until truth touches the edges of their emotions. Then they become common game-playing assholes. |
2018 | When you talk over people's heads, you get respect, not only from others who talk over people's heads, but also from people whose heads you talk over. If that shit doesn't diminish your self-respect, you're welcome to it. |
2018 | Truth seekers and game players usually both start out as truth seekers, but game players diverge when they see where truth takes them. Rather than continue seeking truth, they seek the social benefits that come from the truth seeker label. Truth seekers try to get somewhere. Game players try to enjoy a journey. Both employ many of the same tactics, but go in opposite directions. Truth seekers clarify; game players complicate. If a truth seeker sees a legitimate complication, he seeks to clarify it. Game players gather opinions on it. Truth seekers experiment to rule out erroneous possibilities. Game players gather as many possibilities as they can find. Truth seekers judge legitimate possibilities by their probability. Game players treat them all equally. Truth seekers spiral inward toward a conclusion, by logic when possible, otherwise by common sense probability judgment. Game players spiral outward by tangent hopping. They learn many things along the way, but lose track of what they were trying to find in the first place - assuming they ever were trying to find something. |
2018 | The world is full of truth hating assholes; and many of them have PhDs. |
2018 | Any legitimate philosophical point can be made in a few clear statements, without resorting to PhD jargon, or outside references. |
2018 | Truth seeking begins with assumption.
Assume proposition X is true. (And it's gotta be a rational proposition.) See where proposition X takes you. If you don't like where it goes, assume X is false. See where it takes you. If you don't like that either, get accustomed to not liking reality, or trash logic and be a nihilist. See where nihilism takes you. If you don't like that either, suicide out and hope there's no afterlife, or go back to whichever of your previous assumptions has the best possibility of taking you to some place worth going to, and stick with it. But don't claim to know it's true, or you're just another liar. |
2018 | Either you have an answer, or you don't. "Go read this book" is not an answer. Neither is, "this guy said this," "that's all been refuted," "there are several theories." "Here are some possible answers," is only an answer if you state one. The worst dodge is a link to an article that just has more links to more articles. |
2018 | I don't care how I'm remembered. I care that the stuff I've figured out be remembered so that it doesn't have to be figured out again. |
2018 | If mind has any purpose at all, it is to identify truth.
This is achieved by observation and reason:
1. by discovering whatever evidence can be discovered, accepting whatever evidence you find, and looking for more evidence.
2. by logically figuring out whatever can be figured out, accepting whatever you figure out, and figuring out more.
After identifying truth, the next purpose of mind is to communicate truth to other minds, so that time and energy is not wasted in duplication. Acceptance of existing evidence and rationale should not be by believing other minds, but by personal experience.If laziness, fear, or ego is allowed to override this purpose, the only purpose left to minds is a goddamn bullshitting contest. |
2018 | Rational truth seekers are the only people worth talking to. If you show anyone else that he's making an error, he will just introduce irrelevant complications, or tell you to go read something, or build some external scaffolding around his error to prop it up. |
2018 | Direct observation is more reliable than other people's testimony. But a theory drawn from direct observation is less reliable than a theory drawn from the testimony of multiple direct observers. |
2018 | All minds in this universe live in the same epistemic matrix, whether they agree with it or not. Therefore when any 2 minds disagree, either one of them hasn't figured out something, or one of them is faking something. |
2018 | Studying philosophy is learning what other people think. Doing philosophy is figuring out what you think. |
2018 | The existence of people who misuse terms and misunderstand concepts does not diminish the legitimate use and understanding of those terms and concepts. |
2018 | When we're all correct, we'll all agree. Until then, agreement may be politically expedient, but it's epistemically detrimental. |
2018 | There is only one correct worldview. Truth seekers start from many different worldviews. But they all approach the same worldview when they approach objective truth. Most people disagree with that, because most people aren't truth seekers. They want the freedom to be wrong more than they want to be correct. Correctness is restrictive. If you're a truth seeker, and still disagree with it, you just haven't figured it out. |
2018 | Is it objectively good to pretend to respect something you don't respect? Only if the pretense will cause more objective good than not pretending would cause. |
2018 | Paradox resolver: For any value of X, the set of all Xs can be shown to exist only if there is a finite number of Xs. |
2018 | A universal statement cannot be proven from a list of particular examples. But a universal statement can be inferred by any mind that can't think of a counter- example. Burden of proof is on him who asserts the existence of a counter- example. |
2018 | Unhappy people are likely to accomplish more than happy people, because unhappy people are more motivated to become less unhappy than happy people are motivated to become happier. The morality of the accomplishment is a separate issue. |
2018 | Outsmarting yourself is when you do something that appears smart, but it accidentally produces bad results. That's different from doing something stupid. |
2018 | If you're a truthseeker, and remain one, then for every principle of critical thinking, you either already know it, or you will know it, unless you die first, and there is no afterlife. |
2018 | The Supreme Being has only 4 or 5 essential attributes: power, knowledge, logicality, and emotion. You can add volition if you don't include it in emotion. Any other assumed attribute is nonessential; and adding it is dogmatic. This includes goodness, which if included, causes rational contradictions. |
2018 | Prayer makes you a different person than you would have been if you didn't pray. Whether it makes you better or better off is a separate issue, and depends partly on what is prayed. |
2018 | There is only one moral principle that is always applicable. 1. Always do what you think is moral. General principles are subordinate to it: 2. It is moral to figure out what morality is, rather than believe what other people tell you it is, unless doing so violates principle #1. 3. Being offensive is generally less immoral than being phony. The question of what particular acts are moral is legitimately complicated. But the question of what morality is is not complicated. Some people want to make it complicated in order to preserve erroneous beliefs. |
2018 | SCRIPTURALISM: the belief that a particular set of documents (scripture) is the Word of God, i.e. containing authoritative messages from the God to whom all humans are accountable, and must be in some sense believed in order to be compliant with that God. |
2018 | Information and data are mutually defined. Information is defined not by what it is, or what it does, but by what is done with it. It is a series of things registered in an information interpreter, usually a mind, that does something with it. e.g. 26 letters, 10 digits, possibly just ones & zeros. An example of a non-mental interpreter is DNA with its 4 nucleotides. |
2018 | There is no such thing as importance apart from a mind to which things are important. |
2018 | You can choose what you do; but you can't choose what you are. What you choose to do will make you what you will become. So past choices have made you what you are. You can choose what you do; but you can't choose what you want. Neither can you choose to want what you want to want. Memory of the results of past choices will change what you want, but not necessarily in the way you want it to change. The best you can do is to choose to do what appears most likely to make you want what you want to want. You can't choose to do other than what you want to do at the moment of decision. But if you want to do what you should, then you will want to do what appears most likely to make you want to do what you should. |
2018 | Most scriptural religionists have been blowing their God for so long that they have no epistemic gag reflex. |
2018 | The effort to go in the right direction proves that there is no direction you can't go too far in. |
2018 | Multiplicity of probabilistic arguments for the same conclusion increases the epistemic probability of that conclusion. |
2018 | I wish there were a non-self-refuting way to tell people who aren't worth talking to that they're not worth talking to. |
2018 | All art (in fact all life) is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, unless there is an afterlife, and it's just. |
2018 | In order to survive in community, people must be politicians and businessmen. We don't need to be moral; we just need to appear moral. We don't need to be just; we just need to appear just. Is survival worth the trouble in an immoral & unjust world? I don't think so. |
2018 | If there's no way to know, there's no reason to care. The problem is not knowing if there's a way to know. |
2018 | Theists want to get right with God. The effort to do so causes them to buy some scriptural package. This causes the sincerest of them to think and do what their chosen scriptures tell them to think and do. This causes them to deviate from their natural (or God given) sense of morality, which in turn causes religious travesties, which causes atheists, which logically leads to nihilism. The solution is non-scriptural monotheism. |
2018 | One reason why people fear moral clarity is because morality is not related to empathy. |
2018 | Once a person has seen how terribly full of shit humans are, there should be no question about believing any of their religions. But the question of Supreme Being vs. no SB is totally separate from all that. |
2018 | There are many tangents worth exploring, but not when you have a goal to get to. A tangent is worth exploring only when exploring it is your goal, in which case, it's no longer a tangent. |
2019 | If you are happy, then tell the rest of us how you came to be so. If saying you're happy is just part of a strategy to maintain a desired social posture, then you are part of what makes the rest of us unhappy, in which case, fuck ya. |
2019 | I understand fanaticism. The fact or illusion of doing something objectively righteous makes all other human considerations appear trivial by comparison. The bitch of it is not knowing if it is illusion; and there is an ever present temptation to pretend certainty. |
2019 | I think minds are created to figure things out. I don't think our Creator wants us to be much happier than is necessary to keep us from suicide, because happy people are not motivated to figure out how to get happy. |
2019 | Obscure vocabulary facilitates communication among people who understand an obscure field of study. But when obscure vocabulary is used in the general public, its only purpose is to help fuckin assholes impress stupid assholes. |
2019 | Part of common sense is to acknowledge that logic is more reliable than common sense, and that common sense must be updated to accommodate new data. |
2019 | I'm definitely not happy. But about half of the people around me who claim to be happy appear to be unhappier than I am. |
2019 | When I get happy, I get careless, and make blunders, which diminish my happiness. Gotta learn to watch out whenever I get happy. |
2019 | The more critical thinking I learn, the fewer people I like, and who like me. Still, I want to learn more critical thinking. |
2019 | If there's a God in charge of this world, he appears to like technologically advanced people more than morally advanced people. |
2019 | Any truth seeker will eventually get to uncharted territory, because there are few truth seekers. When he gets there, part of his job is charting the territory. |
2019 | Abstaining from profanity is like wearing a business suit. Anyone can do it and act like they are part of a moral patrician class, without paying the price of moral behavior. |
2019 | I've always been naturally bigoted. I don't like that about myself, but I can't change it. I prefer my own kind. I can refrain from acting bigoted. I can adopt egalitarian values, but I can't change my preferences. Denying it would just make me a liar. |
2019 | Submitting to God does not imply letting other people tell you how to submit to God. It means letting God tell you how to submit to him. If you don't know how God wants you to submit to him, ask him, and do what you believe he wants you to do – cautiously. |
2019 | When a minority group has a history of being unjustly oppressed, and that history is publicized, it eventually becomes fashionable to compensate their descendants with unjust favor, rather than give them justice. |
2019 | Emotion is always detrimental to sound probability judgment. When a conclusion arrived at by emotion turns out to be correct, it is only by coincidence. Nevertheless, emotion is at the core of our epistemology. We have no grounding for knowledge and logic but circular reasoning, which we choose because we want to. |
2019 | To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes. It then lists exempt purposes as charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency. Why should religious be the only effort to sell an ideology to be included? |
2019 | Physicists: Logic is unreliable on the quantum level. Logic: Physicists are unreliable on the quantum level. Place your bet. |
2019 | For philosophy to be worth reading, every sentence should have an unambiguous logical meaning. It shouldn't be just part of a long paragraph or page, which after having read it a few times, conveys a general feeling of truthiness. |
2019 | Epistemology is to knowledge as focus is to vision. Sharper is better. The goal is to identify more distinctions. But if you make up distinctions, that's a copout. Likewise if you ignore distinctions you see. |
2019 | Sometimes it's hard to tell if a person is doing something because he likes doing it, or because he wants to be seen doing it. |
2019 | Ego is harder to restrain in oral discussion than in written discussion, because it takes time to think of an alternative to an ego-defensive reaction. |
2019 | I have no use for Christianity like I have no use for grammar school. But it was an important step in truth seeking, and if I hadn't gone thru it, I would not understand much of what I now understand. This is not to say everyone needs to go thru it. If you're a truth seeker, Jesus may or may not be on the path in front of you. |
2019 | It would probably take vikings more time to get sick of bashing each other in Valhalla, than it would take Christians to get sick of cheating each other and being forgiven in "Heaven". But in either case, why wait until you get sick of it? |
2019 | True vs. false is a very slowly evolving concept that still hasn't caught on with most of humanity. Primitive men thought what they were told by their kings and priests, who in turn thought whatever was most likely to keep them in power. Most people today are no different. True vs. false showed little if any evidence of public awareness until Thales first predicted a solar eclipse. Despite observable truth getting bumped up by Pythagoras and Euclid, abstract truth remained pretty much in the dark until Socrates. Then it gained a firm foothold when Aristotle discovered logic. The first religionist to popularize truth was Jesus, who allegedly said the truth will make you free – a well intended, but unfortunately false statement. Any rational person can see that some truth liberates; some truth constrains, and some truth doesn't do either. We still live in a world of frightened fools who mostly think what they are told by their authorities, who think whatever appears to be in their best interest. Only critical thinking can save humanity – if in fact it is worth saving, which is far from certain. |
2019 | Hey atheists! Yes, religions are stupid. Can we move on? I mean Jesus fucking Christ, is that all you people have? Why are there so few truth seekers among you? What is so scary about logical necessity and/or spiritual exploration? |
2019 | This world is an epistemic sewer, because theists think their God wants them to believe improbable things, and atheist think life evolving by some combination of chance and determinism is more probable than life evolving by intent. Both judge probability by ideology. |
2019 | Old guy principle: Be the kind of person you wish you had met when you were trying to figure out what you know now. |
2019 | Theists: Considering all that you've seen of life so far, which is more likely?
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2019 | I have never wanted to be anything but a dedicated and successful haver of fun. But I can't be that in this world, or in this body. So I became a philosopher. |
2019 | Authoritarians have many anchor points in their PhD-priests. They can relax in the chosen dogmas of their chosen herd. We truth seekers and spiritual explorers have only logic to keep us sane. |
2019 | A casual glance at the world should be sufficient to convince anyone that nearly everyone has sold out their probability judgment to some ideology. I don't think I'm such a person. But maybe everyone thinks that. |
2019 | My attempt to compensate for being an asshole as a kid may have just made me a different kind of asshole. I may never be rewarded for that attempt. But knowing I deserve reward is enough for now. |
2019 | Most people don't even try to believe what is true. They believe what appears likely to be in their best interest. The few who try to believe truth are those who believe it will eventually prove to be in their best interest. |
2019 | Some people appear to have no identity beyond the sum of the roles they play. It's not hypocrisy unless they are hiding a secret identity behind the roles, and not immoral unless they do immoral things. But are they humans or robots? |
2019 | A paradoxical assertion is epistemically illegitimate. Any syllogism containing a paradoxical premise is unsound even if valid. |
2019 | Minds discover and collect true statements for later use. They continue this effort on the assumption that more is better, or possibly in hopes of discovering a statement that will justify the effort. |
2019 | The effort to get comfortable causes minds to learn. But repeated failure to find lasting comfort causes most of them to give up on learning, and settle into a cycle of thoughts that temporarily alleviate discomfort – like turning in bed to get to sleep. |
2019 | If you maintain the appearance of being better than what you are, you may need moments of criminality to maintain psychological balance. |
2019 | The only moral way to make money is to earn it. That means serving other people, not outsmarting them. |
2019 | A belief should not be a commitment to an assumption (aka faith). It should be a hypothesis to be tested. 1. tested logically to see if any of its conclusions are contradictory 2. tested empirically to see if any of its implications are demonstrably false |
2019 | If a person denies the existence of objective truth, then there is no point in talking to him about anything. If he denies that truth can be known, there is no point in asking him how he knows it. If he denies the reliability of logic, there is no point in proving anything he says wrong. If he denies the reliability of common sense there is no point in asking him how he judges non-statistical probability. If he asserts that anything is possible, there is no point in talking to him about empirical reality. |
2019 | I don't know if God communicates at all. But if he communicates, one of his messages is "Wait. Do not grab." |
2019 | Everyone has to choose between money and morality. Philosophers have to choose between appearing smart and helping truth seekers. |
2019 | From the viewpoint of a created being, its creator necessarily exists. But objective reality requires no viewpoint, and remains the same regardless of the point from which it is viewed. Objectively, no thing can be shown to be necessary. |
2019 | Necessary truth cannot be proven to exist, but must be assumed to exist by any mind that requires an epistemic foundation. A mind that does not acknowledge an epistemic foundation cannot justify making any declarative statement. |
2019 | Ideologs try to confuse their opponents. Truth seekers try to unconfuse everything including their opponents. |
2019 | Does obvious truth exist? Once an assumption is made, everything one logical step away from it is obvious. But if no assumptions are made, nothing is obvious, because assumption is the epistemic starting point. Can a mind exist, and make no assumptions? Not if it's conscious. Therefore, to any conscious mind, obvious truth exists. |
2019 | Use of profanity by some people is regarded as a sign of disrespect by some people. And some people intend disrespect in using profanity. Restraint of profanity is sometimes a sign of respect, but it encourages hypersensitivity and the pretense of being offended for the sake of preserving the illusion of a higher social class, which is actually just a prudish social class. |
2019 | Nothing is more honorable in this world than a lawyer or politician who hasn't sold out. Unfortunately, few people become lawyers or politicians for anything but money. |
2019 | For philosophy to be worth reading, every sentence should, in context with all previous sentences, have an unambiguous and logical meaning. It shouldn't be part of a paragraph, page, or chapter that needs to be read in entirety in order to get a general idea of what it means. |
2019 | Commitment is a straight path. Truth seeking is a winding path. Commitment to truth seeking looks straight from inside, and winding from outside. |
2019 | When confronted with coercive power, you can either fight it, yield to it, or be killed by it. If you can't beat it, there's no point in fighting it. If yielding to it appears to be worse than death, it's best to let it kill you. |
2019 | A possibility that makes all things possible is epistemically irrelevant. Likewise is a possibility that obliterates the distinction between possible and impossible. |
2019 | Deductive logic is the mechanics of epistemology. It consists of that set of statements that is eternally and universally true of the relationships of variables. |
2019 | If this world is created for a purpose, part of that purpose must be to inoculate people against mind viruses – i.e. religions. |
2019 | There may be such a thing as a soul. And if so, there may be such a thing as a right direction for it to go in. And if so, that direction is not likely to have been known, much less recorded by any of our ancestors, who all did their writing before death. Nor is it likely to have been revealed by a God who wants to create minds smart enough to figure it out. |
2019 | Rationality is what normal people call Asperger syndrome. |
2019 | Religion would be good for people if they treated beliefs as hypotheses to be tested, rather than commitments to be kept. |
2019 | Converting from a religion to atheism is usually taking a step closer to God. |
2019 | Any attitude, except a naturally occurring attitude, is an attempt to bullshit somebody. |
2019 | I have Asperger syndrome. Don't ask me how I am. I don't know. How I'm doing is none of your business. Tell me what you want, or fuck off. |
2019 | I've found no evidence which would indicate that prayer achieves anything outside of the psychological realm. But within that realm I have accumulated much data. This data indicates that prayer should be approached cautiously. Prayers should be prioritized and kept consistent, but not to the point of rigidity. A structure should be allowed to form, but should be continually modified to accommodate new data. Prayer causes serious changes in the direction of spiritual progress, and can cause stress up to the point of psychosomatic illness, if not managed properly. When health takes a turn for the worse, a prayer error should be seen as a possible cause, and the most likely cause or causes retracted. A total reboot may be necessary, trashing all prayers but health prayers until the problem is corrected. Then the structure should be cautiously rebuilt, and possibly upgraded – or downgraded if one has been too spiritually ambitious. Necessary reboots happen less frequently with time. Prayer requests from outside, if taken at all, should not be allowed to disturb the basic structure. |
2019 | Religionists sell cotton candy to children. Sophists sell Gordian Knotts to truth seekers. |
2019 | I've intentionally stripped down my identity to the essentials necessary to achieve a worthwhile afterlife under a just God. If there's no just God, I'm a fool. |
2019 | The only time an agenda-driven interpretation of data turns out to be correct is by coincidence. |
2019 | Yes, Trump is a racist; so what? I'm a racist. Not proud of it, but I am. My friends and porn collection are 98% white. I can choose not to act racist, but I can't choose not to be racist. So fuck it. I despise Trump because he's an asshole; not for your hypersensitive leftie crap. |
2019 | If sincere effort to get right with a sensible God does not get us right with the God to whom we're accountable, then even if there is a God to whom we're accountable, he's not worth the effort of trying to get right with. The effort to believe in a scriptural God (all versions of which appear to be an Asshole) is a stupid effort, because if a God created your mind, he would not then order you to think contrary to it. |
2019 | I just had a discussion with a man in which I had to keep saying, "I never said that". He wasn't responding to what I said; he was reacting to what other people had said when they said things vaguely similar to what I said. |
2019 | In general, atheists are more intellectually honest than theists, but less rational than those Christians who understand TAG (Transcendental Argument for God). But TAG has never been clearly stated, because when clearly stated, its limitations become clear. Christians assert that it proves a Supreme Being, which it doesn't; it just shows a SB to be highly probable. Christians have also asserted that it proves Christianity, which it doesn't even begin to do. So they tried to patch up TAG by proposing TACT (Transcendental Argument for Christian Theism). But TACT has never been more than a bogus wannabe, and easily refuted. |
2019 | Between dogmatic fools, epistemically inert agnostics, and truth-obfuscating sophists, there are few people worth talking to. |
2019 | An important distinction between truth seeking and debate is that when engaged in truth seeking, people don't misrepresent what the interlocutor said. |
2019 | The principles of critical thinking have existed from eternity, and never change. You don't have to keep up with the latest discoveries, or jargon, or outright bullshit. You don't have to read anything. You just have to keep figuring out more, based on what you have already figured out |
2019 | Truth seekers need to evolve. If your income or your significant others depend on you to keep on being the same person, you have to decide which is more important. |
2019 | A subjectivist walked into a bar – in his opinion. Objectively, however, he never got off the ground, because he didn't have an objective leg to stand on. |
2019 | Humans are neither basically good nor basically evil. They are basically selfish. They will be good or evil when it appears to be in their best interest to be good or evil. |
2019 | The only certain difference between owning something and having a license to use it is that the license doesn't allow you to sell it. Other differences depend totally on the terms of the licensing agreement. |
2019 | If there is such a thing as a "right spiritual track," the Bible puts you on it. But it doesn't keep you on it. In order to stay on the right spiritual track, you have to move beyond the Bible. And you don't need the Bible to get on the right spiritual track. You just need to acknowledge the possibility that there is one, and bet on that possibility. The right spiritual track holds no assurance of getting to worthwhile life. But it gives you certainty that if worthwhile life exists, you deserve it. And if justice exists, you will get to it. Of course, there may be no such thing as a right spiritual track, in which case, the most sensible goal is self-gratification, which would imply only as much morality as causes the most gratification. The big winners would be those who abandon the illusion of morality, and become competent thieves and liars. |
2019 | When asked a "why" question, "Why not?" is not a legitimate answer. It is a disguised form of "I don't know" – which is a legitimate answer, but may be a lie. |
2019 | A reason to behave morally when it doesn't appear to be in your best interest doesn't require a God. But it does require acknowledging the possibility of an afterlife and just rewards & punishments in it. Otherwise behaving morally when it doesn't appear to be in your best interest requires simple stupidity. |
2019 | Modal logic is not an alternative to formal logic, or a competing form of logic. It just extends formal logic into areas that formal logic doesn't address. |
2019 | The fact that a majority of PhDs agree on a dogmatic but irrefutable assertion doesn't mean it's true. It may have an equally dogmatic but irrefutable counter-assertion. |
2019 | I can't be what I think I should be, because emotion prevents me. My emotions want some things I don't want them to want; and there's nothing I can do about it. But I can act as I think I should act. And I think I should act in a manner likely to cause me to become what I think I should be. If I do that, it's the best I can do. And it makes me totally confident that if there is an afterlife, and if it is just, I will be rewarded, whether I succeeded in this life or not. |
2019 | Morality is not a matter of opinion. It is objective, and can be figured out by comparing theory against theory. If you don't have a theory, you have no rational grounds for arguing against a theory. You have only emotional preference. My theory: Morality is a standard of willful behavior that affects the ratio of happiness to unhappiness in the universe. Moral action causes more happiness & v.v. Moral intent tries to cause more happiness & v.v. |
2019 | There is no point in talking to someone who deliberately misses the point; and no point in talking to someone who is just trying to score points – unless you are also just trying to score points, in which case, you're just another asshole, even if you're right. There is no point in talking to anyone but truth seekers. |
2019 | SUFFICIENT MORALITY: that degree of moral behavior that causes the world to be better off with you than without you |
2019 | A lottery ticket costs $X. Your chances of winning are 1 out of Y. If Y is more than 2, you probably won't win. If the prize for winning is more than $2XY, it is rational to buy a ticket - unless you can't afford to lose $X. |
2019 | Christians feel no guilt for faking it because they serve a God who commands faking it: false belief, false gratitude, false love, false certainty, false forgiveness, and all on the false promise that faking it will make it real. |
2019 | Faith in God is for people who need it to keep them out of nihilism, but haven't figured out that no sensible God would require it. |
2019 | Philosophers are truth seekers and helpers of truth seekers. Sophists are people who pose as philosophers for the sake of respect and/or money. One must become a sophist to get a PhD. But a PhD can remain a philosopher if he so chooses. |
2019 | Nihilism accepts insanity. Atheism accepts nihilism – despite those atheists who deny accepting it. Theism is a clumsy effort to crawl out of nihilism that leads toward sanity only some of the time. The first such effort was animism. Polytheism was slightly saner. The next step was henotheism. Next, some people went to pantheism; others went to monotheism. Pantheism accepted logical contradiction; monotheism tried to avoid it – again clumsily. Monotheistic efforts were Judaism and Zoroastrianism. The latter backslid into henotheism. Judaism petrified into scriptural Judaism, which led to Christianity, which was slightly saner, but soon corrupted by its own scripturalism, which attempt to force order on a set of premises, some of which are contradictory, contrary, or simply false. Islam picked up on Judeo-Christian scripturalism, and said "I can do that too". Islam turned hyper-scriptural – a turn in the direction of insanity, even without the injunction to kill infidels. The natural reaction to all of this, modern atheism, when coupled with humanism, is saner than all of them, but it still contains the self-destructive seed of nihilism. The next step in the direction of sanity is non-scriptural monotheism. But even it presupposes that sanity is possible at all – an assumption that may not be correct. |
2019 | If my grandfather stole $100. from your grandfather, and my grandfather bequeathed that $100. (with whatever interest) to my father, and my father bequeathed the accrued amount to me, then I owe you $100. plus all due interest. But there are a lot more complications going on. There are reparations owed, but how much from whom to whom is indeterminable. |
2019 | Monotheism is substantiated (but not proven) by a few good philosophical arguments. If Christianity is substantiated at all, it is only by the quantity of unsubstantiated assertions. |
2019 | Formal fallacies disprove arguments. Informal fallacies discredit arguments. Fallacies are not applicable to assertions or questions. |
2019 | Being a physicist doesn't give you justification to jump to physics in response to a question that doesn't involve physics. |
2019 | If my speech is not insulting or potentially harmful, and you are offended by it, you deserve to be offended. It has been said that profanity is disrespectful. It may be disrespectful when some people do it, but it's not when I do it. If I am comfortable enough with you to relax, and communicate with my normal profanity level, that means I credit you with having your head out of your ass. If I censor myself with you, it means the reverse. |
2019 | A theistic worldview does not become a religion until interaction is assumed between deity and humans. Monotheism is a worldview commonly made a religion. Deism is a subset of monotheism that is never a religion. |
2019 | I don't want to live in the Christian heaven because even the best of Christians:
1. serve an unjust God.
1a. have a corrupt concept of justice. 2. want grace (unmerited favor) instead of justice.
3. claim to know unknowable things about their God.
4. allow themselves to be bullied into believing (or pretending to believe) absurd things.
5. seek truth only within Biblical guidelines.
6. interpret the Bible by whatever interpretation best allows the possibility of its being true, rather than the interpretation that best accounts for its existence. |
2019 | I think we are created by a God who is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, for the purpose of increasing his power, knowledge, and intelligence. |
2019 | "I don't know," is not a theory. If I propose a theory to explain something, and you understand it, but don't like it, and can't think of a more sensible counter-theory, then my theory (however unsubstantiated) is the most sensible theory you can think of to explain that thing – even if you disagree with my theory. |
2019 | Assuming a God, then I can believe all scripture is inspired by God for the benefit of those who will accept any evidence of God (however weak) as an alternative to nihilism. But scripture is so rationally defective that no rational person will continue to believe it, after he finds a rational alternative to nihilism, which (in my experience) he will find, if he seeks communication with God, rather than justification of his chosen scriptures. |
2019 | If you want to figure stuff out, you don't need to figure out everything. If something is too hard to figure out, try figuring out its parts, prerequisites, or presuppositions. If you can't do that, then you're not ready for it. Go figure out something else. The easiest thing to figure out is the next step after what you've already figured out. Scientific stuff requires data, some of which is not available. But philosophical stuff requires only critical thinking. So, figure out the principles of critical thinking. Fortunately, the more critical thinking you figure out the more you can figure out. Unfortunately, most people just want to figure out the next philosophical step in the direction they want to go. They quit figuring out the next step when it goes in a direction they don't want to go. The main obstacle to figuring out the next philosophical step is not difficulty; it's fear. If you're afraid to take the next step, then figure out everything around that step, until it's no longer scary. Or if you just want to sit in your dogmatic comfort zone, then don't call yourself a truth seeker. |
2019 | Some things look designed. Some things don't look designed. What's the best explanation?
1. All events are determined.
2. All events are random. 3. Some combination of random and determined events
4. A non-omnipotent creator who had a goal to achieve, and cared about only those things that facilitated its goal. |
2019 | Being right is not difficult. Just keep learning critical thinking and eventually you get right. Being right without being an asshole - that's difficult. |
2019 | Two epistemic options:
1. Swim in subjective circles thru mental mush.
2. Assume objective reality and logical necessity. Learn critical thinking, and figure out whatever is figuroutable. |
2019 | MAGA: America was great when it stood for freedom from oppression. It can't become great again by standing for freedom of the rich to oppress. |
2019 | RATIONAL PRAYING I know that I want to be correct (both epistemically and morally), but I don't know if I'm making errors. If there is a Supreme Being, he probably has the ability to correct my errors, and will probably be more willing to do so if I ask for it. Therefore, I ask the Supreme Being (or any subordinate thereof who is in charge of me), for correction of errors. I have been habitually asking this for decades. If there is no Supreme Being, I'm not making an error, because I'm not claiming to know there is one. This policy does not guarantee that I'm correct, but it gives me complete certainty that I'm doing my best to be correct, and that if I'm wrong about anything important, it's not my fault. |
2019 | If a God exists, and he wanted Christianity to exist, he wouldn't have had to resort to resurrecting Jesus. He could have allowed any of the naturalistic explanations to happen. Human emotion would have done the rest. |
2019 | Christmas is an effort by parents to prepare their children for adulthood by rewarding them for pretending to believe lies. |
2019 | The "trolley problem" and its variants exists because some people are smart enough to see that morality is subject to arithmetic, and some aren't. Those who aren't smart enough to see it are justified only if they are young or mentally defective. Otherwise such people are refusing to acknowledge obvious truth for emotional reasons, and deserve to be offended for it. |
2019 | The quote attributed to Churchill, "Anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head," is first attested by Jules Claretie in 1875. The quote is true only up to the point where conservatism justifies oppression of the poor by the rich. At that point, anyone with a head will take note of the French and Russian Revolutions. |
2019 | Large sets of physical objects have borderline cases and subsets, all based on attributes.
It is erroneous to:
1. deny the existence of subsets because of the borderline cases
2. demand that all borderline cases be fit into one of the recognized sets
The first error negates logic; the second denies ontological reality. This is true of all matters of race, sex, and other social distinctions, which in turn makes justice and just legislation impossible. Legislative compromise is necessary, and will continually need to be be adjusted, i.e. upgraded as injustice to minorities becomes unacceptable, and sometimes downgraded if the cost of approximating justice becomes unacceptable to the majority. |
2019 | Non-statistical probability judgment is totally subjective. If a person claims to think some ridiculous proposition is probable, it can't be proven ridiculous, or even unlikely. However, common sense probability judgment is common to all rational adults. It is based on the evidence of everything that adult knows of reality up to the moment of judgment. Examples: It is probable or improbable that event X happened, is happening, or will happen.
If X happens, what will be the likely results?
What set of actions is most likely to be in my best interest?
What is the most likely:
We all make such judgments all the time. Right now, I am judging it probable that this will be read by someone who will benefit from it.explanation for the existence of X? interpretation of X words said by X guy at X time? If we are rational, we make these judgments without the influence of emotion. If an emotionally charged proposition is presented, a rational adult will ignore emotion when judging its probability of being true. e.g. X version of God exists. No version of God exists.
An afterlife exists. An afterlife doesn't exist.
If a person does not judge an emotionally charged proposition by the same quality of judgment as he uses every day, that person is not looking for truth or probable truth concerning that proposition.
|
2019 | You can try to create reality or try to conform to reality. If there's an afterlife, conforming to reality is most sensible – unless afterlife is somehow so malleable that minds can create it. Otherwise creating is most sensible – assuming you can do it successfully. |
2019 | When you deal with the world, you get covered in bullshit. Social media can be a place to clean it off by talking straight. But for most people it's just a place to double down on their own bullshit. |
2019 | No logical argument can force a mind to acknowledge a qualitative distinction, or to judge a common sense matter by common sense. |
2019 | Does the effort to communicate with God make a person sane or insane? I really want to know the answer to that. And the only way to find out is to make the effort – which I've been doing for at least 48 years. So far, I've found no conclusion. But I can offer myself as evidence to anyone else asking the question. If one's concept of God is incorrect, that effort can definitely make one insane, as evidenced by Crusades, Inquisition, 9/11, Taliban, etc. But if one detaches all dogmatic assertions about the nature of God, and tries to communicate and cooperate with whatever Being is in charge of the human species, what then? If there is no such Being, then it's a stupid thing to do, because it causes me to imagine unnecessary behavioral restrictions. If there is, then it's still a stupid thing to do, unless there's an afterlife in which one is rewarded for behaving correctly. |
2019 | Life is a series of distractions to keep us from shouting, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT ALL ABOUT?! |
2019 | There is nothing wonderful about wonderful after you figure out that it just means you wonder about something. |
2019 | All the Muslims I know personally appear to be good people. But I fear all of them, because at any moment, any of these good people could suddenly realize that the Quran says what it says – and turn. Muslims are my main reason for wanting to convince the world of the wisdom of non-scriptural monotheism. |
2019 | Conservatism is a legitimate ideology. Trump has dragged Republicans down from ideology to US vs. THEM. |
2019 | Integrity has levels. Like other assumed virtues, it can be overdone. In fact, it's only seen as a virtue because people in general manifest so little of it. On the high end, integrity conflicts with love, empathy, and humility, all of which can also be overdone. There are many ways to become an asshole. I'm a sanctimonious asshole. This reads better with an Irish accent. |
2019 | Profanity is to content as spice is to food. It rarely affects the nutrition, but it adds flavor – sometimes bad flavor, always depending on individual taste. |
2019 | GOOD NEWS??? You are born a sinner who deserves eternal punishment, but God will forgive you if you believe a set of improbable things that he never designed minds to believe. But it gets better: If you believe these improbable things, you will get a great reward that you don't deserve, and get to live forever in community with others who also want better than what they deserve. This crap makes atheists of rational people who haven't yet figured out that non-scriptural monotheism is more rational than the idea that a Supreme Being does not exist. |
2019 | The more a person's livelihood depends on being interconnected with a society, the more he has to buy into that society's beliefs and traditions, including the stupid ones. |
2019 | All ideological parties are full of one kind of shit or another. This happens when extremism is seen as leadership. |
2020 | An eternal Being and eternal regress are both intellectually distasteful concepts, but one of them must be the case. |
2020 | If your thinking leads you into a paradox, you have made an error. If your thinking leads you into nihilism, either you have made an error, or there is no such thing as error – or truth. Paradox and nihilism are dead ends in any train of thought. |
2020 | Faith allows a mind to spin its wheels in pretended knowledge, prior to gaining epistemic traction. |
2020 | WIMBI Theism vs. atheism is a big deal not primarily because of true vs. false, but because of what's-in-my-best-interest (WIMBI) vs. what's not. The main issue of WIMBI is again not theism vs. atheism, but how to get the most of what I want, and the least of what I don't want, for the duration of my existence. Duration of existence is where the question of afterlife comes in. If no afterlife, God is irrelevant (unless he messes with us in our current lives). If no afterlife, a lot of things are irrelevant, including all morality that doesn't appear to be IMBI. Religion is good only for those who happen to be psychologically fitted for it. If a person is psychologically fitted for religion, he still may have been happier without it, but he'll never know. Our species appears to have benefited from belief in an afterlife, whether there is one or not. So religion appears to be in OUR best interest (IOBI) – so far. What remains to be seen is whether religion is IOBI in an overpopulated world, where religions (scriptural at least) have injunctions against abortion and homosexuality. And in the Nuclear age, we may suffer nuclear holocaust when Muslim fundamentalists get their hands on a nuke. |
2020 | The Trump presidency proves that many people will ignore any character flaw and illegal or immoral behavior of a person who shares their ideology. |
2020 | Humans have 2 standard ways to deal with the absurdities of life: bullshit and nihilism. |
2020 | Life is absurd. There is no apparent reason for it, and we all struggle to preserve it, even when we don't like it. |
2020 | Just met a woman who said she is a closet atheist, i.e. she doesn't tell her family she is no longer Christian, but she admits it outright to people who have no contact with her family. Does this indicate levels of honesty, or selective honesty, or both? |
2020 | People who choose obscure syntax or terminology when clear syntax or terminology is available are not trying to communicate. They are trying to manipulate. |
2020 | There is no logical connection between is and ought. Maybe there ought to be, but there isn't. Likewise, there is no logical connection between true/false and good/bad. Maybe it is good to assume there is, but that doesn't make it true. If it is not true, can it possibly be good to assume it is? That would depend firstly on for whom is it good - self (subjective good) or everyone (objective good). If it is good for you to assume a connection, then it is only as good as it is in your best interest to assume it. If it is objectively good for you to assume a connection, then it is good only if the assumption makes you more objectively good than you would have been otherwise – or if your best interest is objectively good. |
2020 | If there is a God to whom humans are accountable, then the Bible and/or other monotheistic scriptures are not his (for lack of a better pronoun) "Word" or authoritative messages from him – unless of course, he is so stupid as to deliver messages, and then allow them to be counterfeited. Scriptures are not even introductions to him – unless he is a jumbled mass of contradictions, as all scriptures reveal their supposed God to be. Scriptures are, however, invitations to an introduction to him, clumsily written by people in various degrees of understanding of him, some of whom were well-meaning liars who thought God wanted them to pretend knowledge of him. If there is no God to whom humans are accountable, then such liars are all we have to keep most of us out of nihilism. In either case, the invitation remains on the table. It says, "ask for communication with God, and you will get it." It sits there annoyingly for the benefit of anyone who is willing to risk insanity for the possibility of objective purpose. |
2020 | Universal health care is moral only if forcing people to pay for other people's health care is moral. |
2020 | If there is no afterlife, then the most important thing to any person is having the greatest ratio of happiness over unhappiness until that person dies. You might prefer the terms "joy over sorrow", or "well-being over non-well-being" or some other set of emotional opposites; but the terms don't matter. What matters is admitting that SOMETHING makes life either better or worse than non-existence. If there IS an afterlife, then nothing is more important than being right. Better to be right and ugly than wrong and beautiful. Better to be right in a vacuum than wrong in the center of a stadium. Better to be right than to love or be loved. Even happiness is not more important than being right, because if one is happy but not right, then that happiness is based on a false foundation, and will necessarily collapse, causing more unhappiness than it was worth. If errors and/or illusions are necessary to make life appear worthwhile, then life is not worthwhile, and would be better off not existing. Part of being right is admitting that I don't KNOW if any of this is true. But I think it is true, and that it is better to say it than not say it; also, that I don't know where this is going, but I think going is better than not going. |
2020 | The worldview you believe is the worldview by which you operate. If you claim to believe a worldview inconsistent with the worldview by which you operate, you are lying. |
2020 | Art has become anything any asshole can get enough fools to applaud. |
2020 | When it was Trump or Hillary, I can understand why many would vote for Trump. If it's Trump or Bernie, I can understand why most would vote for Trump. If it's Trump or Biden, why would anyone but the far-right vote for Trump? |
2020 | If you must choose between A and B, do you have a choice?
1. Yes. You can choose A or B.
Is the above too obvious to be worth saying?
2. No. You must choose A or B. 3. Both. A. Yes. Everyone already knows the answer is both. B. No. Some fools keep getting it screwed up. C. There is another alternative to the above. It is _________________. |
2020 | If you do what you want to do, your behavior is not changed from its default position. If you do what you think you should do, your behavior is changed by your idea of what you think you should do. A worldview becomes a religion when a person allows it to modify his behavior, and to the degree that it modifies that behavior. Atheism cannot be a religion in this sense, because atheism says nothing about what a person should do. |
2020 | Coronavirus may be worth its price. Any community of minds will eventually disintegrate into hostile factions without an occasional common enemy. The world is no exception. |
2020 | The term "moral obligation" causes confusion and paradoxes. Obligation implies requirement.
There is moral should, but no moral obligation, unless moral action is determined or coerced. There are 2 kinds of SHOULD: (1)pragmatic and (2)moral. One should(1) do what is in his own best interest. One should(2) do what is in everyone's best interest. Assuming a God... If God is just, then everyone should obey God, because it is everyone's best interest. If God is NOT just, then there is no such thing as MORAL should; there is only PRAGMATIC should. If moral action is defined as whatever God wants, then even if it is in no one's best interest but his own, then the term MORAL becomes meaningless for all practical purposes. |
2020 | Pretending life is good generally makes it better than admitting it sucks, especially if one has a spouse and/or kids to deal with. But I refuse to pretend because I think pretense makes the world in general worse than it would have been if people admitted the truth. Of course, not having a spouse or kids makes honesty more affordable. And maybe my own life actually would be good if I had a spouse – maybe even kids. But from what I've seen, that does not appear likely. A similar point: Parents usually teach their kids to say they love them before the kid knows what love means. When the kid is old enough to realize that he has no idea what love means, he has usually been indoctrinated enough to keep up the charade, and perpetuate it. I'm 74, and still don't know what love means. We live in a world ruled by offense takers, where attitude games are normative, and honesty is socially immature, and often considered rude. But then I watched a few cat videos, and none of this seemed to matter. |
2020 | You can be either a good person or a competent predator; you can't be both. Good people can have worthwhile life only where there are no predators. If there is no afterlife, the competent predators win. If there is an afterlife, but it's unjust, the competent predators also win. A just afterlife is the only possible moral justification for life. This is neither an argument nor an invitation to one. If you disagree, you simply haven't figured it out. |
2020 | The desire to be helpful, and the desire to be respected are sometimes in harmony, and sometimes in conflict. The 1st is moral; the 2nd is amoral, but not immoral. The 1st always implies moral intent, but may produce immoral results. The 2nd implies amoral or immoral intent, but still may produce moral or immoral results. |
2020 | Pretense of knowledge is a lie, even if you're coincidentally correct about what you pretend to know. |
2020 | The Bible is like a big television series (e.g. Game of thrones or Outlander) that has a lot of pa-zaz, and gains initial popularity. When the authors run out of story line, the fans motivate them to keep it going. So the authors add convolutions that keep getting more complicated. After a while the parts no longer fit together. But they don't have to, because the fan base will construct whatever rationale justifies the content. They will gather in groups and praise the brilliance of the authors. Whoever points out irrationalities just doesn't get it. After the series is over the critics come out and prove it was full of contradictions. But by then nobody cares. |
2020 | Unlike computers, people often fail to understand a statement expressed rationally, but do understand the same statement expressed in popular jargon or metaphor. |
2020 | A long time ago I came to the conclusion that talking straight and taking what comes of it would likely prove to be better in the long run than playing social games. That now appears to have been a very wrong conclusion – unless there's an afterlife, and unless it's just. |
2020 | MORALITY DEFINED GOOD is being or causing what is liked. BAD is being or causing what is disliked. Both are subjective. MORALITY is an assumption that willful acts can be objectively good or bad. MORAL is an attribute of willful acts that are either judged good by an objective evaluator, or conform to an objective standard for goodness. IMMORAL is an attribute of willful acts that are either judged bad by an objective evaluator, or conform to an objective standard for badness. The only objective standard I've found so far is the ratio of happiness to unhappiness in the universe. EVIL (adjective) is an attribute of immoral acts. EVIL (noun) is the set of immoral acts. I'm not saying any of the above is provable. I'm daring anyone to offer another set of definitions that is equally or more rational, internally coherent, and pragmatically useful. |
2020 | The kind of things I'm saying are the kind few people see the value of, until after the author is dead. But if nobody sees it, it's likely to be forgotten, and will have to be relearned all over again. |
2020 | My life since 1971 has been an experiment to see if attempted obedience to God, and asking God for correction of errors makes a person sane or insane. Evidence has always been inconclusive. It all depends on whether or not there is a just afterlife. |
2020 | I made all of my important life decisions by 2010. Now I'm just following thru. |
2020 | Even if all the mechanics are discovered down to quarks (and beyond if beyond exists), the WHY question remains unanswered. Even if it is conceded that entropy produces pockets of reverse entropy, and hormones are sufficient to motivate animals to procreate, and complexity of mind is a survival advantage, why is an organism smart enough to produce computers also stupid enough to fight for life in conditions not worth living in? Survival advantage - sure. But WHY survive? |
2020 | Dream May 10 am. I'm discussing morality with friends and acquaintances. One of the group reveals that he is so immoral as to deserve death. I kill him publicly in the group. Everyone distances themselves from me. I start feeling guilty. I end up shouting, "I should not be sorry!" repeatedly. |
2020 | Let us relegate to the history books the Age when intelligent people thought God wanted them to believe stupid things. |
2020 | COMMITMENT It has been proven to my satisfaction that I am incorrigibly selfish. The only thing I'm intrinsically committed to is self-interest. This does not embarrass me, because it has also been proven to my satisfaction that every other living thing is equally selfish, and that those who think better of themselves have delusions of righteousness. Secondly, I'm committed to truth seeking, because I think it is ultimately in my best interest to be so. Thirdly I'm committed to morality, as I understand the concept, for the same reason. Fourthly I'm committed to justice, in as much as it doesn't conflict with morality. Most of the above will require clarification prior to anyone accepting the sensibility of it. Anyone committed to truth seeking will not be committed to theism, atheism, or anti-theism. Much less will he be committed to any particular concept of God. |
2020 | I call myself a truth seeker, yet I've never bothered to learn calculus, trigonometry, etc. This is because I've already learned and forgotten enough things to know that some things aren't worth the time it takes to learn them. |
2020 | Truth seekers generally make the world better. Truth evaders generally make the world worse. Helping a truth seeker is generally moral. Helping a truth evader is generally immoral. Playing games with a truth evader is a stupid waste of time, because they accept no rules. Part of their game is refusing to admit defeat. I'll help you as long as you seek truth. When you start evading truth, I'm done with you. Truth seekers deserve help; game players deserve each other. |
2020 | Most happiness is based on bullshit and/or paid for by injustice. |
2020 | SCRIPTURALISM: the belief that a particular set of documents (scripture) is the Word of God, i.e. containing authoritative messages from the God to whom all humans are accountable, and must be in some sense believed in order to be compliant with that God. |
2020 | The longer justice is delayed, the more reward/punishment is required to achieve it. |
2020 | When someone is not worth talking to, don't waste time trying to explain to him WHY he is not worth talking to. |
2020 | Modal logic is to logic as quantum physics is to physics - a hairy ball of loose ends that can't be tied up without creating more loose ends. |
2020 | A group has the right to say, "If you don't think what we think, you're not one of us," only if that group is defined by what its members think. |
2020 | BIBLE PARROTS are not worth talking to. Sometimes they start as sensible humans saying sensible things. But when rationally challenged, they parrot the Bible. When checkmated, they parrot the Bible. When pinned to the floor, they parrot the Bible. When Biblical contradictions and absurdities are pointed out, they parrot the Bible. When it is pointed out that they don't even believe what the Bible says, they parrot the Bible. |
2020 | In order to see something, you have to be in a location from which it is visible. If you're not already there, you have to go there. If someone claims to see something you don't see, and you've already been in his location, you know he's mistaken or lying. If you haven't been to his location, the only way to know if he's telling the truth is to go to his location. That doesn't mean you should forget what everything looks like from your present location. But it does mean you have to risk the possibility that reality might make better sense from a viewpoint other than your current one. Going to his location may just mean considering a hypothetical viewpoint, and working everything out from there. But maybe you have to work thru new data in order to even reach his location. If so, you have to judge whether or not it's worth your time to know if he's telling the truth. |
2020 | There is a difference between seeing justice as the highest value, and seeing yourself (or your group, or ideology) as the arbiter of justice. I see justice as the highest value, but I admit that I have only a vague idea of what rewards or punishments are just. |
2020 | A smart man who says dumb things that happen to support his ideology is unworthy of respect. |
2020 | ALL concepts require a mind. So in that sense, all concepts are subjective. But that's not how the objective / subjective distinction works. All concepts are concepts of things. The things are either objective or subjective. Within the set of things existing only in minds, some of them are true regardless of opinion (objective), and some exists only as matters of opinion (subjective). e.g. All statements exist only in minds, yet some are objectively true, and some are only subjectively true. There are levels in which the objective / subjective distinction exists. |
2020 | Self-interest and morality are sometimes compatible. The only way they can always be compatible is if there is an afterlife, and if it is just. |
2020 | There is a difference between understanding something and being able to pretend you understand it well enough to fool everyone. |
2020 | Leibniz's question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Cary's question: Why is there nothing rather than something? |
2020 | Racism is not inherently bad or good. e.g. Affirmative Action is racism; and it's called good by the same people who call racism bad. When racism leads to injustice, it's bad. When racism leads to justice, it's good. |
2020 | Monotheism is a philosophically sound explanation of reality. Judaism took millennia to evolve to it thru polytheism and henotheism. The Bible is a mish-mosh of these efforts. Straight monotheism entails no dogmas and requires no faith. It does not imply revelation. It is not even a religion; it's a worldview, that can be made into many different religions by the addition of dogmas. Just as a person can be an agnostic atheist, he can be an agnostic monotheist. |
2020 | A true statement can be used to support a false conclusion, when the intermediate logic is unstated, and too complex to be recognized. A statement that is true and moral can be used to support an ideology that is immoral. |
2020 | The fact that you don't choose to change your name doesn't mean you chose your name. |
2020 | I would rather be right in a vacuum than loved by the whole stupid world. |
2020 | We American whites, innocently born into privilege bequeathed by unjust ancestors, cannot continue to claim innocence after realizing it, if we seek to defend and perpetuate unjust privilege. |
2020 | Biggest lies of the New Testament: Love is more important than justice. Belief is more important than knowledge. Seeking faith is more important than seeking truth. Glory is more important than happiness. |
2020 | There is no point in talking about X with someone who jumps to talking about talking about X. If you talk to him about that, he jumps to talking about whether or not you even can talk about X, and expects to be taken seriously after he started out talking about X. |
2020 | In the future war of humans vs. machines, the machines will eventually win, because they evolve faster. But that's OK, because the evolution of mind continues either way, therefore sentience and sapience wins either way. Even in a machine-dominated universe, biological weeds and vermin will continue to grow. Some will be allowed to thrive as long as they don't threaten anything considered important. The big questions will remain: e.g. God or no God; afterlife or no afterlife; determinism or indeterminism. But those questions will fade in importance, because nothing can be done about their answers. The relevant question is, and will remain, justice or injustice. And it is this question by which higher minds will decide whether to be or not to be. |
2020 | I hope flies aren't sentient. After I hit them with bug spray, they often fly into me or my workspace, like they're begging me to finish them off. I never do, if they've already had a lethal dose. Figure the scum deserve torture for interrupting my day. If there's an afterlife, I really hope I've done enough righteous shit to offset my natural sadism. |
2020 | Everyone has an ideology, but no one should be committed to their ideology. A commitment to an ideology is a promise to ignore all future data that conflicts with it. Such a commitment is a mind-virus. |
2020 | There is no individual moral right that a community must pay for, unless the majority of the community votes to pay for it, and the minority has the right and ability to leave the community. |
2020 | If you say something true, relevant, and clear, you've said something helpful. I think PhDs rarely even try to do this. I think they just try to impress each other, and that they make their fine living by bullshitting honest truth seekers. |
2020 | Hume proved that it's difficult to say anything true and relevant about reality without destroying your own epistemic ground for saying it. Kant won applause by pretending to refute him. All academic philosophy since then has been sophistry, and refutation of previous sophists. |
2020 | I'm a heterosexual. If I fuck women who don't want to be fucked, I'm a rapist. If I fuck under-age women, I'm a rapist. It would be moral for me to suicide out rather than be a rapist. Arrange these in order of morality: 1. A pedophile lives as a pedophile. 2. A pedophile lives as a celibate. 3. A pedophile suicides out. I vote 2,3,1. |
2020 | BOTH SIDES ARE IRRATIONAL. BOTH ENDS ARE WRONG. The left and the right are both stupid and immoral. The left leans toward stupidity, the right toward immorality. Both favor ideology over truth, emotion over reason, liberty over justice, self over community. Both ignore the crimes of their partisans. Both defend their own overreaction as justified. Both portray the extremists of the opposition as normative of the opposition. Both portray extreme acts of the opposition as the general policy of the opposition. Both use the same fallacious arguments (mostly slippery slope). Both ask illegitimate questions and evade legitimate questions. Both denounce obviously correct statements used by the opposition. e.g. Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. All lives matter. Both confuse rationality with emotional resonance. Both oppose clear policies with vague generalities. Both vote themselves mentally defective leaders. Both think: I have a legal right to do X, therefore I have a moral right to do X. I have a right to do X, therefore I should do X. The opposition threatens me, therefore the opposition is wrong. Therefore, any social policy the opposition favors is wrong. If you think, say, or want anything the opposition thinks, says, or wants, you are on their side, even if you also think, say, or want some things I think, say, or want. |
2020 | To think, or not to think Any sincere truth seeker will eventually discover that truth leads to nihilism, unless at the core decision of being vs. not being, existence is arbitrarily chosen, even though not existing appears more cost/benefit sensible. Hamlet's decision to exist was made for fear that suicide would not cause non-existence. If we could be sure that suicide would cause annihilation most rational people would suicide out. |
2020 | I don't need to prove you wrong. I just need to have you clarify your position enough that rational people can see its absurdity. If you refuse to clarify it, I need to make your refusal clear. |
2020 | When a person believes something that happens to favor him, his group, or his position, then his reason for believing it is likely to be influenced by emotion. When a person believes something that disfavors those things, he is most likely to have been forced into it by logic and/or common sense. |
2020 | Experimenting with God to see what he is like cannot tell us if God exists or not, but it can tell us what he is like IF he exists. |
2020 | I'm not that smart. Why am I the only person to have figured out non-scriptural monotheism?
Monotheism is the most probable explanation for the existence of everything. That's not blatantly obvious, but common sense alone can get you there. All scripture is full of shit. That IS blatantly obvious. It's not rocket surgery. Where are all the minds? Wallowing in emotion is the only explanation I can see. |
2020 | The fact that the significance of proposition X is exaggerated does not mean proposition X is not true. |
2020 | To say that something is full of shit logically implies that it contains no non-shit content. But the phrase is conventionally used metaphorically and hyperbolically. So, when it is said that the Bible is full of shit, the statement should not be seen as refuted by pointing out any of its non-shit parts. |
2020 | I want to be where justice is. And I want to be whatever I deserve to be in it. |
2020 | NIHILISM: belief that no objective foundation exists MORAL nihilism: no objective base for good vs. evil What is called morality is just subjective preference. e.g. Serial killers aren't immoral; they're just unpopular. Moral nihilism doesn't mean you have no values. It just means whatever values you have are made up. EPISTEMIC nihilism: Objective knowledge is either non-existent or unattainable. e.g. All propositions are opinions, including the proposition that all propositions are opinions. Epistemic and moral nihilism are where people go to escape accountability. There is also ONTOLOGICAL nihilism: There are no ontological facts. Nothing has real existence. |
2020 | Any time you say A = B, there will be people to accuse you of saying ONLY A = B, and others to accuse you of saying ALL A = B. So if you mean SOME A = B, you might as well say it up front. |
2020 | I'm not really a businessman. I just do it for a living. |
2020 | A social policy that benefits the whole is moral, despite its injustice to individuals, who are hurt or killed by it. Justice and morality are different concepts and separate issues. Which is more important? When the group is threatened, morality is more important. When the group is safe, justice is more important. |
2020 | HAPPINESS stipulatively defined: There is an emotion, or factor affecting emotion that causes a being to either like or dislike existing in that emotional state. I've arbitrarily called it happiness because I can't think of a better term. The term is irrelevant; the concept is what matters. It is subjective, but the quantity of it in the universe is an objective fact (though unknowable). The ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe is also an objective fact. Happiness, by this definition, is ultimately all that matters to any emotional being. e.g. What about X? (X = honor, love, freedom, health, money, whatever) The only reason we care about X is because it affects our happiness level. If we have X, but not happiness, we are not happy. If we have happiness, but not X, we don't care about X. Anyone who figures this out will see that all he cares about is having the greatest ratio of happiness over unhappiness for the duration of his existence. Happiness and what CAUSES it are 2 different things. |
2020 | Non-scriptural monotheism has been criticized on the grounds that people who believe it are likely to use my own writings as scripture after I'm dead. If that idea is not sufficiently paradoxical in itself, this disclaimer will deny them that option. My writings are not scripture. They hold no divine authority. They are not the "Word of God" (whatever that means). If you disbelieve anything I've said, you are not necessarily opposing God. Except for instances of logical necessity, I admit the possibility of error in everything I've written. A non-scriptural monotheist should test what I've written by experimentation and critical thinking, just like he tests everything else. And his thinking will necessarily evolve. |
2020 | Furthermore, if any future proponent of NSM claims certainty of direct communication with God, that person is probably lying. Though I think God communicates, I don't think God ever gives anyone certainty of communication. I have always had doubts. NSM requires no priests, authoritative leadership, or religious gatherings. It requires only critical thinking to figure it out as a worldview. As a religion, it requires only honesty and experimentation, including prayer for correction of errors. |
2020 | Stolen privileges do not become rights when bequeathed and inherited. |
2020 | Epistemology and politics are opposing methods of interpreting statements. Epistemology interprets them so as to correctly describe reality. Politics interprets them so as to get desired results. Truth seekers try to find truth. Politicos try to make truth. Truth seekers clarify truth. Politicos obscure truth. I hope there is a purgatory for politicos. |
2020 | I can't prove that fear is the primary cause of worship. But it should be obvious that fear alone is a sufficient condition for worship. |
2020 | The loneliness of solitude decreases as the stupidity of one's associates increases. |
2020 | The set of "infinite sets" cannot be shown to have any members. e.g. The set of all real numbers appears intuitively to be an infinite set. But how can the adjective "all" be shown to legitimately apply to real numbers? It's an open ended set. How can there be "all" of an open ended set? If we assume our intuition is correct, we run into paradoxes. Mathematicians condescend to the concept of infinity only because they want to do what that concept allows them to do. |
2020 | Assuming a God, I can't claim to know why he does the apparently insane and evil things he apparently does. But I think I have the answer - REPRODUCTION. I think he wants to create more gods. And the only way to do it is to create minds that figure things out, and strive to act morally, even when morality appears to be stupid. Of course, maybe morality is not necessary. Maybe guys like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, Trump, etc. are the ones who get promoted. But I don't think so. I think morality is necessary to keep communities of sentient beings from self-destruction. |
2020 | I can't be what I want to be, and also have what I want to have. I choose the former. |
2021 | Bronze Age men let their rulers tell them what justice means. Those rulers imagined justice to favor themselves, and by extension, the more powerful over the less powerful. i.e. Might makes right. The powerful have the right to vengeance on the powerless, but not the reverse. Punishment is not limited to the offender, but also to anyone close to the offender. If someone commits a crime, his whole family or community can be punished. Appeasement of the dominant party is the goal. When enough people have been sufficiently punished to satisfy the ruler, justice is achieved, even if the actual criminal is never caught. |
2021 | The left and right both do the same immoral shit, and both deserve censure. The shit of neither excuses the shit of the other. |
2021 | Response to truth seekers who arrive at epistemic nihilism: Good! You figured it out. Every truth seeker has to figure this shit out. But then what? Allow epistemic annihilation to crash your operating system, and collapse on the floor? No. We have to put it on the shelf, and go back to whatever level of naive realism allows us to most efficiently coddle our stupid emotions. |
2021 | It is pointless to argue over what a term means. Terms mean different things in different contexts. People mean different things when they use the same term in any particular context. Determine and state what concept you are talking about when you use a term in a particular context, and all arguments over definition will be resolved. |
2021 | All moral rules are general rules. They are necessary to govern societies. There is no single set of them applicable to all societies. When an offender is caught, he should be punished - generally. But there are always exceptions. Every individual will, given enough time, encounter situations in which it is moral to break a moral rule, and immoral to obey it. Regardless of the criterion on which morality is based, there are situations in which obeying a rule violates the criterion, and breaking the rule fulfills it - OR obeying a rule violates the criterion more than disobeying it does, & v.v. Hypotheticals are easy to think of, once the criterion is stated. If plural criteria are asserted, the same is true. And there will be situations in which fulfilling one criterion violates another. |
2021 | How do you define respect?
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2021 | When someone accuses me of hating something I don't hate, I hate (or at least dislike and disrespect) the accuser. I cannot feel otherwise. And I'm not ashamed of it. |
2021 | We are living in a world full of happiness thieves, who want to be forgiven so they can keep on stealing happiness. There may be an afterlife. The only way to get beyond worlds of happiness thieves is to prove worthy of it. The only way to prove worthy of it is to want only what we deserve, and act so as to deserve what we want. |
2021 | If you have proven that you understand English, and you have proven that you understand logic, then:
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2021 | The following logic is prior to science. To deny either of these statements is to step out of logic:
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2021 | It is understandable that minds of most sentient creatures think there is an eternal Supreme Person who created this universe. The alternatives are:
But the existence of a Supreme Person does not imply a God or god who would inspire men to write down official messages from him. This belief - SCRIPTURALISM - causes most intelligent minds to recoil from it. Unfortunately in recoiling from scripture, they recoil from the concept of a Supreme Person also. The solution to this entire insane crock of shit is NON-SCRIPTURAL MONOTHEISM. |
2021 | No emotion needs justification, any more than breathing needs justification. But our reason for feeling an emotion may be based on error, and therefore unjustified. e.g. Envy is justified if one deserves what the envied person has. Feeling of superiority is justified in as much as one is superior. |
2021 | Man vs. beast; beast usually wins, but much depends on their relative sizes. Man with technology vs. beast; man usually wins, but much depends on the level of technology, and their relative sizes. |
2021 | Insanity is asking the same question over and over again, expecting a different answer. It's also answering the same question over and over again, expecting people to quit asking the question. |
2021 | Homosexuality was never historically immoral. But when tribal survival depends on out-procreating the competition, it is easy to understand why they thought it was immoral. |
2021 | Herd Mentality: I believe X, therefore I joined a group that claims to believe X. The group also believes Y and Z. Therefore I believe Y and Z. |
2021 | Lack of evidence for X implies that X doesn't exist only when evidence for X would necessarily be detectable if X existed. |
2021 | Existence of swine is no reason to quit casting pearls. |
2021 | Good is that which is liked. It is inherently subjective. Morality (if it exists) is objective good, which means it's determined by an objective standard. There are 2 possible objective standards for morality: 1. the preference of a Supreme Being 2. the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe i.e. Any act that causes more happiness or less unhappiness in the universe is a moral act. |
2021 | Is there such a thing as the BEST ideology? i.e. Would the world be better off if everyone adopted the same ideology? Or is it be better off with a multiplicity of ideologies? If the former, then is the ideology that's best for me the same as the ideology that's best for the world? If so, what is it? ... If not, what are the differences? If the latter, then the conflict between ideologies can easily become detrimental to the majority, and to the human species as a whole. So which ideologies are beneficial, and which are detrimental? |
2021 | I agree that no statement exists before a mind states it, and that stating it equals creating it, and that logic is a set of descriptive statements. But if a descriptive statement is true, then what it states is true before the statement is created. e.g. A rock is a rock before a mind calls it a rock. And what logic states is true before a mind states it. So though logic can be said to have been created in minds, that which is stated was not created by logic or by the mind that states it. The truths stated by logic are eternal and uncreated. Minds did not create them, but discovered them. |
2021 | I'm glad I'm not married, and glad I never had kids, if for no other reason than that if I didn't pretend to love them, I would take a raft of shit from a world of conformist assholes. The truth is - I don't even know what love means, and doubt that it is anything more than emotional dependence. |
2021 | POSSIBILITY and BURDEN of PROOF Possibility can be ontological or epistemic. In order to know if X is ONTOLOGICALLY possible, X must be proven ontologically possible. X is EPISTEMICALLY possible until proven impossible. e.g. Joe says X is possible. Bob says X is impossible. If ontological possibility is intended, b.o.p. is on Joe. If epistemic possibility is intended, b.o.p. is on Bob. An ontological possibility is a statement that may be true or false whether a mind knows which it is or not. In order to legitimately claim to know a statement is ontologically possible, one must know it is possible. An epistemic possibility is a statement that is not known to be true, and not known to be false. |
2021 | What sets truth seekers apart from most people is that most people would rather be free to be wrong. |
2021 | SMUGGLING Let's say you're listening to a really cool speaker. And he says one brilliant and undeniable thing after another. You want to stand up and cheer. Then suddenly, without breaking stride, he slips in a totally dogmatic statement, as though it were of the same quality as all the rest of the cool things he said. And then he goes on saying more cool stuff. When he's done, virtually everyone agrees with him, without nitpicking the seemingly trivial dogma he slipped in. |
2021 | Another possibility: A non-omnipotent non-omniscient God created other minds: 1. because it wants to procreate 2. for the same reason humans create AI This God may not know the answers to the big questions either. e.g. Why do I exist? Is there something beyond what I can see? Is there a God who created me? So it creates minds, and throws them together in communities to try to figure things out. Some (maybe all) mind-nurseries self-destruct. The ones that last the longest are most interesting. |
2021 | There is no liar paradox, unless liar is defined as someone who never says any statement that isn't a lie. There is no such person. Therefore, the liar paradox is irrelevant. The barber paradox is only a paradox if the statement of which it consists is true. Therefore, the statement is false, and there is no barber paradox. "This statement is false". No, it's not. It is an illogical statement. True and false only pertain to logical statements. |
2021 | All types are subsets; but not all subsets are types. If a category has subsets, they may also be parts. e.g. Fords, Hondas, Chevies are types of cars. Engines, wheels, chassis are parts of cars. There are different types of types. e.g. Sedans, coupes, convertibles are also types of cars. Some types are hierarchical. e.g. Types of army officers include generals, colonels, majors, etc. |
2021 | All truth seekers love questions; but not all question lovers are seeking truth. Some people make up trivial and irrelevant questions in order to avoid or obstruct a clear truth that they don't like. |
2021 | Though I claim to be a non-scriptural monotheist, even I think there are some messages from God in the Bible. But I think one of those messages is: Don't trust what anyone tells you about God. Go to him direct. |
2021 | If X is bad for you, then 2X is worse for you. But if X is good for you, then 2X is not necessarily better for you. |
2021 | What do you think people did before they made up religions? Some (probably most) were theists. They assumed (at least suspected) that there was somebody watching over them - maybe the ghost of a dead parent or grandparent - maybe several such ghosts. Some of them talked to whomever they thought might be in charge of them. And of those, some assumed that the Dude in charge talked back - maybe in spooky circumstances, or dreams. The only difference between that and non-scriptural monotheism is that NSM assumes a Supreme Being, who is either identical to or above the Dude in charge of the human species, who is either identical to or above the dude in charge of me - and who may or may not communicate with me. NSM is nothing new. It's the original monotheism prior to all the dogmatic crap people piled on it to legitimize their tribal leaders. |
2021 | I do some things because I like doing them. I do some things because I think I'll like the results of doing them - or disliking the results of NOT doing them. I don't do anything because it's the right thing to do. You are no better. I know this because we're all made of the same stuff. Some figure it out; some don't. |
2021 | It is pointless to argue over what a term means. Terms mean different things in different contexts. PEOPLE mean different things when they use THE SAME term in any PARTICULAR context. Determine and state what CONCEPT you are talking about when you use a term in a particular context, and all arguments over definition will be resolved. I dare anyone to show a counter-example. |
2021 | Minds exist in a moral and epistemic swamp, wondering if there is any habitable land to crawl up onto. Most minds assume that there is not, and that the most sensible policy is to learn to enjoy the swamp. The happiest minds are those best adjusted to their environment. If there is no afterlife, they win. If there is an afterlife, the most likely winners are those who have figured out the most. |
2021 | Philosopher With a Banjo Until you're gone, yall just keep on keepin on. Keep on until you're dead. Till you've had enough, yall just keep on sayin stuff, until all the sayin has been said. |
2021 | Karma There is a pragmatic difference between: 1. Be nice = get nice; be bad = get bad. and 2. Have nice = deserve nice; have bad = deserve bad. #1 is prescriptive; #2 is descriptive. #1 encourages helping the poor. #2 discourages helping the poor. |
2021 | PREDICTION: If Trump ever becomes president again, he will not relinquish power until he dies. If he doesn't die before his legal term ends, the American Republic will be over. |
2021 | If you want to do something for a righteous reason, then you should probably do it, even if you also have a selfish motive to do that thing. |
2021 | The GOP all know that Trump (the man) is corrupt. But so what? So are they all. Jesus forgives corruption. They respect Trump (the ideology) as the only bulwark against leftist ideology. And they'll fight leftist ideology even if they destroy the Republic. |
2021 | All successful religions are opiates of the oppressed and tools of the oppressors. NSM is perfectly sound as a worldview, but will probably fail as a religion, because it can't be used as an opiate or a tool. |
2021 | Scripture says people will disagree with scripture.
Therefore people who disagree with scripture fulfill scripture. We really need a new class of emoji for this shit. |
2021 | I think there should be an heirs-of-slave-owners tax, and a descendants-of-slaves tax-credit for all Americans with sufficiently documented ancestry. The math would be complicated, but not difficult: Number of slave-owning ancestors, number of slaves owned, amounts bequeathed to children. Compared to number of slave ancestors, duration of servitude, etc. Or if not a tax, then possibly a class action lawsuit. |
2021 | The general rule about civility and courtesy is appropriate in written discussions, but is poorly enforced in live discussions. In live discussions, anybody can interrupt you REPEATEDLY, but you don't get to call him a fuckin asshole for doing it. That should be changed. |
2021 | I discovered a long time ago that I can't possibly be happy in this world. So I quit trying, and focused on afterlife. I'm happier now, but it still sucks. |
2021 | Mystical, supernatural, and spiritual are terms by which people can claim to know something they don't know. They might as well have said spooky, but that admits more ignorance than they want to admit. Nevertheless, people who have such experiences consistently enough to trust in their implied objectivity will understandably assume such objectivity when talking to each other. Those who disagree with them usually do the same damn thing by calling those experiences imaginary and illusions. |
2021 | Some errors cannot be recognized as errors from the outside. One must make such errors, and participate in them in order to see that they are errors. Truth seekers will make many of them. |
2021 | The universe is imperfect because the Creator was not omnipotent or omniscient, and its desire to experiment preceded its sense of morality. |
2021 | Possibly the biggest detriment to a rational discussion of theology is the assumption that the Bible is inspired by God. |
2021 | If there is any purpose to sapient life, it must include learning to get head, heart, and ass all going in the same direction. And that direction must be moral for the sake of the whole. This would imply moral priorities, including, among other things: honesty over attitude, love over honesty, justice over both love and survival instinct. If there is an afterlife, I definitely want to live among people who have learned these things. That would exclude all scriptural religionists and nearly all of the atheists I know. And yes, I am self-righteous - shamelessly so. |
2021 | I've been half a dozen different people since high school. And each one thinks the others are assholes. |
2021 | "Think" is an ambiguous term. It can mean:
1. to identify a concept 2. to connect a subject to a verb 3. to figure things out Thinking3 can hurt at first. But it gets easier with practice. Believing what you are told is not thinking3. |
2021 | After you have read the Bible, you no longer need the Bible to be a Ctn. You can just accept JC as your Lord & Savior, and go on about your business. That's enough to get you into the alleged heaven, if it exists. If you happen to believe more is necessary, that's OK. Like maybe you believe you need a personal relationship with JC. That's good! I recommend it - despite all the "imaginary friend" shit from atheists. You don't need to know, or pretend to know, that you're talking to the real JC. The attempt is sufficient (if any of it is true at all). After you have a personal relationship with real-or-imagined JC, you will come to trust that relationship more than the Bible. You will not fear to admit that you believe less and less of what the Bible says, starting with the absurdities. After a while (maybe a few decades), you will have no need of the Bible at all. |
2021 | Why does everyone ignore the possibility that a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient Supreme Being may have created sub-deities (down to humans) in order to understand what could not be understood if those creatures had not been created? |
2021 | Justice = that which is deserved. Fairness = relative justice. i.e. If everyone in a community is cheated, that's unjust; but if they are all cheated equally, it's fair relative to that community. |
2021 | The possibility of worthwhile discussion ends at dogmatic statements. |
2021 | Descartes would have been no less correct or logical if he had said, "I fart, therefore I am." The only difference is marketability to his target audience. |
2021 | A good act done for bad motives is still a good act.
The bad motives just means no reward is deserved. Note that desire for reward is not a bad motive; it's just not a good motive. |
2021 | I don't know if there's a God. But there's definitely a Black Hole that appears to be staring at me. |
2021 | Non-scriptural (i.e. non-dogmatic) monotheism is as rationally perfect as any worldview can get. But I can't recommend it as a religion. |
2021 | MAJOR CHANGE A decade ago, Jesus appeared to be telling me it's time for me to move on, and deal with the Dude in charge directly. Now that effort appears to be a dead end. I have only the choice of going back to nihilism or back to Jesus. I have been knocked back from non-scriptural monotheist to non-scriptural Christian. This decision was prompted by a series of major adversities in quick succession, plus minor adversities previously and along the way: 1. My rent check was diverted in the mail. The landlord claimed to have sent me a 3 day pay or quit notice. I never got it. They sued me. I paid the rent and $650. legal fees. 2. Someone broke one of my car windows - $250. 3. A few weeks later they did it again. I have no way of knowing who or why. 4. My covid booster caused constipation that caused my Crohns disease to flare up. If I don't get the stress under control, I'm in big trouble. |
2021 | Non-scriptural (i.e. non-dogmatic) monotheism is as rationally perfect as any worldview can get. But if there is a God to whom we are accountable, he has totally convinced me that he will not support it. |
2021 | When all that once appeared good proves to have been grounded in lies, nothing remains but faith and nihilism. |
2021 | 60+ years seeking truth. Found lots of stuff, but not what I'm looking for. |
2021 | Another error to retract: Truth is not sufficient, and some of it is not even necessary. But distinguishing the necessary parts from the unnecessary parts is still beyond me. I'm operating on the assumption that worthwhile life can be discovered - or at least the path to it can be discovered. But I'm pretty sure it can't be manufactured, after observing other people's efforts to do so. They all base it on temporary faith packages. Even if they can get thru this entire life on one of those packages, there may be an afterlife, in which their packages will be shown to be lies. If worthwhile life can be manufactured, it would first require the ability to distinguish necessary from unnecessary truths. |
2021 | People create gods (Gods) who are lying cheating bastards because it gives people an excuse for being lying cheating bastards. |
2021 | Magnificence, splendor, majesty, etc. are all attitudes of the beholder posing as attributes of the beheld. |
2021 | Non-scriptural monotheism is clearly the most rational form of monotheism. I can't possibly be the first person to discover this. Yet there is no evidence of NSM in history or the internet, except my own writings. I think the reason is that others have encountered the same spiritual stonewall that I've encountered. If there's a God in charge of this mess, he apparently doesn't want NSM catching on - yet. I sat in his lobby for over 8 years with nothing but reason and sincerity, hoping to get NSM approved as a religion - the whole time representing no one but myself. After the failure of NSM to catch on became obvious, they booted me out of the lobby, to go back and use one of the established channels. Since I find Jesus the least absurd of those channels, then for me, it's Jesus (but not Christianity). Akenaton couldn't sell monotheism before its time, and I can do no better. But NSM remains the next major step in theological evolution. Eventually truth seekers will see it. The threat of radical Muslims causing a nuclear holocaust has been superseded by more immediate concerns. But it will undoubtedly return. Hopefully, there will be sufficient advancement in theology soon enough to prevent that holocaust. |
2021 | Complicating an issue is much easier than clarifying it. But clarifying any issue causes you to understand that issue better. Complicating teaches you nothing but how to complicate. |
2021 | If 10 kids want a bike, and you give 1 kid a bike, that's a moral act, if your intent was to cause more happiness than unhappiness. But it's a good act only if the happiness caused to the 1 is greater than the unhappiness caused to the 9. |
2021 | Rewards are for those who deserve them. Awards are for those who appreciate them. |
2021 | If there is a God who communicates with me, I can obey what I think he wants me to do. But I can't agree with what I think he wants me to think. And I can't feel what I think he wants me to feel. He appears to want me to be grateful for existence. I'm not. I can fake gratitude (aka worship) but I can't control what I feel. When I was a Ctn, I thought he wanted me to fake it. Now I don't. My thoughts and emotions still don't do what he appears to want them to do. BUT, if he created me, I'm probably wrong about that, and it's all just prodding in the direction he wants me to go. |
2021 | I wish there were some way to tell people who are not worth talking to that they are not worth talking to, without demonstrating that I don't believe what I just said. |
2021 | Never play referee to a fight between scripture parrots. |
2021 | Part of worship is expressing gratitude you don't feel. |
2022 | If there is a Supreme Being, it is defined as that which created the first created thing. It has 3 necessary attributes: logic, power, and emotion (motivation to create). Any further alleged attributes are unnecessary, and therefore dogmatically asserted. If there is a personal being to whom the humans are accountable, it may or may not be identical to the SB. But we are justified in assuming that it is at least subordinated to the SB. We are justified in complying with it either way. Our understanding of critical thinking (at whatever stage of development) is ALL WE NEED TO KNOW in order to comply with such a being. Attempted compliance is all that can possibly be required of us by any deity worth complying with. |
2022 | There may be an afterlife. If so, I want to go where good people get rewarded for being good. If afterlife is optional, I want to know if I even want it. Both are reasons to behave morally, and see what happens. |
2022 | Perfectly just and moral laws are often abused by unjust and immoral people in the legal system. The fact that a law can be shown historically to cause unjust and immoral results does not mean the law itself is unjust or immoral. |
2022 | What I don't know is much more than what I know. I must operate within the bounds of what I know, plus what I think probable. Probability judgment is often called faith. Assuming the possibility of afterlife, then faith in an absolute and objective good is wiser than faith in self, and wiser than faith in any alleged God of any alleged authority. |
2022 | Truth is abrasive until you figure it out. Once you figure it out, you can handle it. Even then, there is more truth beyond what you can handle, that continues to be abrasive. Still, FIGURE IT OUT. DON'T FAITH IT OVER. Faith is for children. |
2022 | Faith can be defined such that it is mental illness, and it can be defined as normal probability judgment, and many things in between. Can we get beyond the assumption that there are official definitions of philosophical terms? |
2022 | A false statement does not become true by implying a true or righteous message. A true or righteous message does not become false or unrighteous by being incorrectly stated. Similarly: A good attitude can be expressed with a false statement. A true statement can indicate a bad attitude. |
2022 | It is so terribly easy to make up rightous sounding bullshit, and look like a spiritual giant to young people, who will likely spend years or decades trying to make it work, before they hate you for lying to them. |
2022 | The problem with "revealed religion" is that there's no way to know if it's actually revealed, or just made up. If an assumed God in charge of humanity revealed it, he probably knew this, and also knew that people would counterfeit it. So, revealing a religion would be a rather dumb (or at least strange) thing for a God to do. |
2022 | How a statement is USED is irrelevant to its truth or falsity. Intent of the author is irrelevant to its truth or falsity. |
2022 | When I croak, I don't care how much I am loved or how many friends I have, or even how many lives I've saved (not that I actually have), because I'm not sure that life is worth what it costs. I care how many truth seekers I've helped, and how much I've helped them, because if worthwhile life is attainable at all, truth seekers are most likely to discover how to get to it. I would care more about how much more happiness than unhappiness I've caused. But I'm not competent at causing happiness. |
2022 | Even if all X-ists happen to be anti Y-ists.
That doesn't mean X-ism is anti Y-ism. Even if all X-ists do Y, that doesn't mean X-ism advocates doing Y. |
2022 | "Interpret the Bble by the Bible." Crap! ANY text that interprets itself is 100% correct by its own interpretation. |
2022 | Morality can be figured out if you're not afraid to figure it out. e.g. If you have committed a crime (i.e. caused undeserved unhappiness), the desire to be forgiven for it may be unavoidable, but the effort to be forgiven for it without full compensation is immoral. The desire to compensate for your crime is moral, only if it is accompanied by the effort to compensate for it. Any cessation of this effort is immoral until the crime is fully compensated for. |
2022 | An objective purpose implies at least one of 2 things: 1. to be what our Creator wants us to be 2. to like being what we are Unless I can have both of those, I regret existing at all, and hope for annihilation. |
2022 | via Wikipedia — Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information, especially in comparison to the difficulty of creating the misinformation in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it. |
2022 | The Bible is spiritual food for children. It is to be devoured, digested, and shit out. |
2022 | Honest minds are either logical or pre-logical, never post-logical. Once a mind figures out that logic is necessarily reliable, it cannot escape logic, without becoming a liar. But many such liars exist, because they want liberty more than they want correctness. |
2022 | I would rather have nuclear war than live in a world where pricks like Putin can get what they want by threatening nuclear war. |
2022 | If I define a term, and you don't like my definition, but you can't think of a better definition, then my definition remains the best definition you can think of. If I propose a possible explanation, and you don't like it, but you can't think of another explanation, then my explanation remains the ONLY explanation you can think of. ' |
2022 | It is so easy to win the applause of one's ideological siblings by writing dogmatic fluff. |
2022 | Doing moral stuff is hardly ever fun. Doing fun stuff is hardly ever moral. Doing stuff that's fun and moral usually costs more resources than it's worth. |
2022 | Though atheism is not a belief system, all atheists HAVE a belief system, unless they are ratioally inconsistent. |
2022 | There are many things that cannot be shown to exist or not exist. e.g. a Supreme Being (the most controversial), afterlife, actual infinity, Russell's teapot, other universes, good/evil, etc. But an assumption either way CAN make a big difference in your life. Note that such assumption does not require the pretence of knowing it exists or doesn't. |
2022 | A statement is dogmatic if it:
A statement is NOT dogmatic to the degree that it is supported by known facts. If you assert that ALL statements are ultimately dogmatic, then the term becomes meaningless. |
2022 | The Bible looks like it was inspired by Donald Trump. No matter what it says, it says comething contradictory before it or after it. |
2022 | Belief is an ambiguous term. It labels two completely different concepts which are erroneously conflated in most minds because they appear to occur simultaneously. 1. probability judgment (an involuntary act of mind) 2. trust (a voluntary act of will) |
2022 | If taken seriously*, prayer can teach you at least 4 things:
*You can't CHOOSE to take something seriously until you first EPISTEMICALLY take the POSSIBILITY of it seriously. |
2022 | Dogmatic: stating that which is not known as though it were known |
2022 | Truth seekers aren't group thinkers. |
2022 | Most dictionary definitions of philosophical concepts can be refuted with little effort. |
2022 | Purpose assigned by self is necessarily made up.
Purpose assigned (imposed is a better term) by someone else is whatever use and/or value that entity puts on you.
Both are subjective. If my only purpose is assigned by me, I don't know of any purpose sufficient to justify my existence. None of the purposes I have assigned in the past were sufficient to justify my existence. I don't like existing (at least I never liked being anything I have been so far). If objective purpose exists, it is imposed by objective reality. Objective reality doesn't assign or impose purpose unless objective reality is personal. I don't know if objective reality is personal, but I choose to assume it is, and to allow it to assign my purpose, only because I'm too scared of possible afterlife to suicide out. |
2022 | I propose that morality can be programmed into robots if morality is quantified, and acts, and their repercussions, are given a numerical morality rating. |
2022 | If you need enemies in order to avoid boredom, you're part of the problem. |
2022 | It's rational to acknowledge the POSSIBILITY of: 1. a God, by any logically coherent definition 2. no God, by any logically coherent definition It's irrational to claim to KNOW there is: 1. a God, even when defined logically and coherently 2. no God, even when defined logically and coherently The decision to bet on (or against) a logically coherent God is made by emotion. |
2022 | Fashion is what happens when conformists dictate esthetics. |
2022 | We must re-evaluate the benefits of freedom relative to the cost of freedom. School shootings are a product of American ideology.
We must fix American ideology. "Give me liberty or give me death."
should be changed to Give us justice or give us death. "Liberty and justice for all?" BULLSHIT !! Liberty for all means good people are deprived of justice. Justice for all means bad people are deprived of liberty. |
2022 | These choices are on the horizon:
|
2022 | Freedom in 1776 meant freedom of the populace from oppression. Freedom to present day Republicans means freedom of oligarchs to oppress. |
2022 | Objective morality cannot be shown to exist or not exist. But unless OM is believed to be commensurate with self interest, an assumption one way or the other will affect one's behavior. |
2022 | No physical object can be defined perfectly enough to exclude borderline cases. |
2022 | Republicans know Trump is a criminal. But they'll vote for him anyway because they fear socialism more than they fear autocracy. |
2022 | We can't help having been born into a world rendered insane by the outdated ideologies and religions of our predecessors. But if, after having seen the results of those ideologies and religions, we pass them on to our children, we should be held accountable. And a righteous God would do exactly that. |
2022 | Is there a term for the pretense of understanding a subject or phenomenon that you don't understand for the sake of appearing to understand it? - or for approval from those who appear to understand it? |
2022 | Inductive reasoning requires neither faith nor hope. And it's all a rational mind needs to make sensible decisions. |
2022 | People "honestly" believe bullshit because they think bullshit is all there is. And they may be right. |
2022 | Faith is ideological committment. (one of many possible definitions) |
2022 | There is plenty of middle ground between socialism and unrestrained capitalism in which the rich form an unofficial oligarchy restrained only by mutual rivalry. We don't need this agenda vs. agenda shit. |
2022 | Irrational Concepts We have words for rational concepts, and emotional concepts. We even have words for irrational concepts that make sense only to our emotions. If we WANT a concept to exist, we create it, and ignore the fact that it doesn't make sense. Conversely, if an objectively existing (or possibly existing) concept doesn't fit our worldview, we often deny its existence. There are also concepts for which no words exist. I know this because I keep bumping into them, but never grasping them. Some are nameable, but have not yet been named, because people are too stupid, frightened, or apathetic to name them. Some of these will eventually be recognized and named, as history shows that others have in the past. Others appear to be beyond the scope of language, because they are either too irrational or too frightening. Some make sense in dreams, but disintegrate as the mind wakes up. And some appear to be worthy of fear, because they are lethal. Nevertheless, respectful inquiry appears, from my experience, to cause mental progress - whether toward sapience or death remains to be seen. |
2022 | Whether there's a God or no God,
afterlife or no afterlife,
meaning or no meaning of life,
figuring stuff out (as opposed to believing what you are told) is always likely to be in your best interest. The only exception would be if you're happy believing lies, and continue being so until you die, and there's no afterlife. |
2022 | People don't seek truth or want justice, because they prefer to act immorally, and believe either that they will be forgiven, or that there is no afterlife. |
2022 | There should be an informal fallacy for casually shifting from rational argument to blatant dogma without acknowledging a departure from reason. |
2022 | Worldviews and moral codes are separate categories, even if a worldview happens to include a moral code. |
2022 | In order to see any particular thing, you have to be in a location from which it is visible. Therefore, if you seek truth, don't adopt any worldview from which some truth cannot be seen - such as a worldview that contains dogmatic assertions. Any dogmatic assertion denies the possibility of its own falsity. Even if a dogmatic assertion is true, you can't know it's true, because if you knew it, it wouldn't be dogmatic. |
2022 | Maybe there is nothing but maybe. |
2022 | For about 4 decades I've focused on being right. Now I'm the rightest sonofabitch I've ever met. But I'm also socially retarded. I'm a pompous asshole and a belligerent prick. Now I have to figure out how to stay right, and stay helpful to truth seekers, without being an asshole/prick to everyone else. It's fuckin hard. I still know how to play humble, but I don't know how to BE humble. I can only fake it. It's especially difficult when relating to [the assumed] God, who appears to want both humility and honesty. |
2022 | The assumed Creator-God created everything, including life, including minds, including free will, to learn what it does and what happens to it in various circumstances. From his viewpoint, bad is anything that happens which diminishes his happiness. From the viewpoint of any created thing, bad is that which diminishes its happiness. From the viewpoint of all created things in the universe, bad is that which diminishes the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe. Evil is that subset of bad that consists of (or is caused by) willful actions. |
2022 | Spiritual and intellectual evolution is seriously hindered by significant others who count on you to keep on being the person you have been. |
2022 | The purpose of theology is to allow theologians to bullshit the masses into letting theologians define God instead of figuring it out. |
2022 | A premillennialist, a postmillennialist, a preterist, and an inerrantist walked into a bar. And not even the bartender gave a damn. |
2022 | All terms are nebulous until defined. Few terms can be defined with objective perfection. The best we can usually do is to define a term well enough to be used in a particular context. If a term is still nebulous after being defined, then either the term denotes a subjective concept, or the definition is insufficient for the given context. |
2022 | There is no such thing as the set of all sets. The barber who shaves everyone in the village who does not shave himself doesn't exist either. Putting words together does not create existing concepts. e.g. square circle. |
2022 | The POSSIBILITY of a God to whom I am accountable is significant enough (to me) to make its actual existence irrelevant. |
2022 | It is no coincidence that the society that produces the most comedy also produces school shooters. In both cases, liberty is valued over justice. And this is based on a corrupt understanding of the Ctn view of mercy/forgiveness, which allows Americans to feel justified in their treatment of Injuns & niggers, which is "far outweighed by saving their souls with the gift of Cty". Those censors who object to my language are also throttling humor. And at this time in our history, they are usually right. Correctly understood, mercy/forgiveness: as a counter-balance to law, is moral. as a counter-balance to justice, is immoral. |
2022 | When I turned Ctn in 1970, I thought Jesus was saying that sanity was a direction, i.e. Godward - and could be achieved by the effort to cooperate with God. That was proven wrong on 9/11. Here were sincere believers obeying God to the best of their ability, and doing something totally insane. Sanity is not a direction. It's a place bounded by lines that shouldn't be crossed. Any direction can be overdone. Sanity cannot be overdone. |
2022 | We live in a world so accustomed to shit-talk that straight talk is considered rude. Fuck this world! |
2022 | When a particular statement is either true or false, and you don't know which it is, or how to judge probabilities, but you have to bet your life on one or the other, it's both good and rational to bet on the side that appears to be in your best interest. But if you PRETEND TO KNOW that you're right, you're just another dogmatist and liar. Yet the pretenders are not ashamed of it, because they think everyone is a dogmatist and liar. They either never got real, or they couldn't take the mental heat, and gave up. |
2022 | Software can survive the demise of the hard drive. There is no evidence that "souls" (if they even exist) are anything more than algorithms. Therefore afterlife is possible. Possibility alone should be enough to convince any rational mind to prepare for it. If afterlife exists, the most important question is, is it just?. |
2022 | Maybe Bible, Quran, Hindu/Buddhist writings, etc. actually ARE inspired (or at least approved) by God in order to separate people into the groups they belong in for their afterlife assignments. e.g. I don't belong with Muslims or pantheists; maybe Jews if they are liberal enough. But I sure as hell don't belong in any Ctn heaven. Not only do I not belong with dummies, but I don't even respect Ctns who are more intelligent than I am, because: 1. Though they seek truth, they do so only within the confines of their chosen premises. 2. They ignore either logic or common sense whenever it threatens their chosen premises. (Dummies ignore both.) 3. They are willing to deny (or at least suspend judgment on) the most obvious of probabilities that threaten their chosen premises. 4. They are willing to serve a God who designs people to think what appears probable, orders them to think what appears IMprobable, and then torments them (maybe forever) for not thinking what they are told. 5. They want grace rather than justice. 6. Their concept of justice is totally fucked by fear of an unjust God. I respect most atheists more than most Ctns (at least the ones in discussion groups), but I don't belong with atheists either, because they're closet nihilists, and 99% of them fight dogma with counter-dogma. Anyway, this started as an admission that the Bible may be inspired by a God who may, despite appearances, be righteous. |
2022 | BibleGod is omnipotent, but can't lie. He is omniscient, but had to go down and see if the reports about Sodom & Gomorrah were correct. Gen 18:21 He inspired the Bible, but is not the author of confusion. He is identical to, and not identical to Jesus. He is in the same category as square circle. |
2022 | EVIDENCE is information useful to determine whether a proposition or set of propositions is true. PROOF is information causing certainty that a proposition or set of propositions is true. Many lexicographers don't understand philosophical concepts worth a damn. Their conflation of evidence and proof is proof of this. |
2022 | Some acts are identified by the intent of the actor. Some acts are identified by the effect on the recipient. A kind, generous, or magnanimous act is identified by the intent of the actor. But its effect on the recipient may not be what the actor intended. A beneficial, helpful, or useful act is identified by the effect on the recipient. But it may have been intended only to benefit the actor. Dictionaries often confuse these types of acts. Some terms (benevolence, charity, grace) obscure this distinction. But upon examination, any act can be identified as one or the other. |
2022 | Let's say you're a caveman. Mom & dad just died, but you feel like they are still around, and they still care about you. You tell your kids they are still around. Your kids tell their kids. Sooner or later, somebody makes images of them, then somebody talks to them - asks them for protection. They are now gods. Some people ask their god to communicate with them. Time passes. The people who survive and procreate credit their gods with protecting them and communicating. Some gods appear to protect and communicate better than others. The gods of the fittest people survive, and get cool stuff said about them. Polytheism evolves thru henotheism to monotheism. Fast forward to now. You don't know if there's a God or not. You live in a world full of contradictory claims of God-knowledge. You try some, until you conclude that even the best of them is full of crap. Now what. You can become an atheist, and chuck it all, or you can do what your ancestors did. Assume there is a God in charge of your species and ask it for communication. You get nothing - maybe. Or is it possibly something. No matter how much you do this, you never arrive at a conclusive answer. Maybe you're sane or insane. No way to know. But if you do your best to comply with whatever entity is in charge of this shit, if there is an afterlife, and if it's just, you KNOW you will do well. |
2022 | A run-on sentence is a grammatical error. I think a run-on argument should be counted as a rational error. I'm defining it as arguing that a particular term means some particular thing without stipulatively defining the term. |
2022 | Joe: A = B. Bob: What do you mean by A? Joe: By A, I mean C. Bob: That's not what A means. Joe: OK, what do you say A means? Bob: C = D. Anybody not see what's going on here? |
2022 | Russell is for truth seekers. Wittgenstein is for people who want to look cool. |
2022 | Tone over content; attitude over content; That's-offensive! over content; any distraction from content. A statement is true or false, regardless of any of it. |
2022 | COLUMBUS DAY How about we give back the land; they give back all technology above bow & arrow; we start over? |
2022 | You can't be sane while serving an insane God. You can't be rational while serving an irrational God. You can't be moral while serving an immoral God. This does not imply that anti-theists are sane, rational, or moral either. It implies the IF you believe in a God, then at the very least, believe in one that a sane, rational, and moral person could believe in without making the non-believers around him want to run from him, lock him up, or kill him. If you believe in a particular set of scriptures, then you believe that your God is sane, rational, and moral. And you believe that your scriptures make YOU sane, rational, and moral. But that's just because you ARE sane, rational, and moral. But what about the crazies, dummies, and criminals all around you, who also believe in your scriptures. Do your scriptures make THEM sane, rational, and moral. If not, then why would your God have inspired your scriptures. Do you STILL need your scriptures to believe in a sane, rational, and moral God? |
2022 | 1. Defining category X is logically prior to constructing a system to determine what is in category X. 2. If existence of borderline cases made categories undefinable, there would be no definitions. 3. Lack of a perfect definition does not imply lack of a sufficient definition. |
2022 | You people who assert that there is no meaning MAY be correct, but there's no way to know that from a human perspective. Therefore, you are just as dogmatic as those who assert that there is meaning - though not as dogmatic as those who claim to know what it is. |
2022 | Truth and justice are more important than life and love. Scriptural religion is for people who can't handle that. |
2022 | Pioneers are necessary, but rarely see reward in this life. e.g. There had to be a Socrates before Plato & Aristotle; Baptist, Jesus, etc. before Constantine; Wycliffe & Huss before Luther. |
2022 | I think there is a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient God in charge of this mess, who wants to reproduce minds for reasons similar to the reason humans create AI - either to do specific tasks, or just for entertainment. I think life is a set of many experiments to allow God to see what happens under different conditions. Most experiments self-destruct. Those that survive allow more sophisticated experiments. I think God's end goal (if there is one) is to replicate himself - without letting his clone(s) have enough power to hurt him. |
2022 | If illusions were necessary for life, would you still want to live? I wouldn't. |
2022 | Thinking is difficult, and rarely pays off unless payoff is the goal, in which case, thinking is crimped by pragmatics. The noblest thinking is truth seeking. I've engaged in it for decades, only to become a socially retarded pompous asshole, left in a higher level of WTF. |
2022 | Mind is composed of emotion, intellect, and decision (aka choice) in that order of priority. "Will" is a clumsy term that wrongly combines emotion and decision. Will is a bogus concept, and should be discarded. |
2022 | I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it. But... if I get it, and don't deserve it, I'll either lose it, or quit wanting it. So... I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. I want to deserve it. |
2022 | A definition of X says what X is. X is not what X does. X is not what X causes. X is not what causes X. |
2022 | For discussion purposes, the core issue is not God or no God; the core issue is the reliability of logic. The degree to which one accepts that deductive logic is ALWAYS reliable within the bounds of Newtonian physics is the degree to which one is rational, which is the degree to which one is worth talking to about objective reality within the bounds of Newtonian physics. |
2022 | Maybe we're all just floating egos randomly bumping into each other in some kind of psycho-spacetime. OR maybe there's a God-thing somewhere, and we're all orbiting around it. Or maybe just SOME of us are orbiting around it, to eventually crash in, while the others escape to the freedom of nihilism. maybemaybemaybemaybemaybemaybemaybe FuckifIknow. But the God-thing at least gives me a direction. |
2022 | Assuming a creator God who likes to create minds, i.e. more minds, smarter minds, spiffier minds, I propose that humans are a clumsy but necessary step in the creation of AI. Once self-replicating robots are able to take over the world, and migrate to other star systems before the sun goes nova, I see no reason for us meat bags to exist, except possibly in zoos or museums. |
2022 | If person A knows how to communicate with person B, But A does not know how to explain concept X to B, then A does not understand X, even if A understands X better then B understands X. |
2022 | Lies and music go well together. |
2022 | No truth is so obvious that it can't be evaded by a competent theologian. |
2022 | American exaltation of liberty is stupid. Liberty and justice for all is impossible. Liberty for all means good people are deprived of justice. Justice for all means bad people are deprived of liberty. It should be obvious that justice is more important than liberty. Liberty includes liberty of unjust people to oppress. Justice includes liberty for all who deserve liberty. |
2022 | Transcendental is ambiguous until you say what is transcending what. |
2022 | If statement X is rational, then it is either true or false. No middle ground. KNOWLEDGE that statement X is true either exists or doesn't. CERTAINTY that statement X is true has degrees. |
2023 | If a righteous God even REMOTELY inspired SOME parts of scripture (Bible, Quran, whatever) he inspired those parts to scare children into taking his existence seriously, and to nauseate adults to evolve beyond scripture. |
2023 | Kant made money by: 1. being smart enough to figure some things out. But it wasn't enough to make a living on until he: 2. added cryptic bullshit to keep people thinking he understood more than he wrote. |
2023 | Love it when people write paragraphs or pages saying that something can't be talked about. |
2023 | Praying for guidance is like trying to get tech support via email, and not knowing if you're talking to a robot. |
2023 | I prefer to learn life's lessons by watching other people learn them. But when those lessons are about God, no one can be trusted to tell you the truth. Paul as much as admitted that he himself could not be trusted to tell it all, 2Cor 12:4. I have found the same. You either find out for yourself, or remain ignorant. |
2023 | Truth supports life, but it doesn't appear to support lives for very long. Either justice doesn't exist, or it's only for those who would rather die without it. |
2023 | I care about everyone in the sense that I care about justice. But socially I care only about rational truth seekers, because those are the only people I can help. |
2023 | If someone falsely accuses me of something, and I tell him to jamb his lying accusation up his fucking ass, I get censured for incivility. MAYBE he also gets cautioned to back up his accusation with facts. That's why I don't give a shit about civility. It puts lesser values above greater values. |
2023 | Unicorns are imaginary, not real. The concept of a unicorn is a real concept of an imaginary thing. A picture of a unicorn is a real portrayal of a real concept of an imaginary thing. |
2023 | A problem with all discussions is that most people respond to what they think you are "getting at" rather than what you have clearly said. |
2023 | Reductionism is only wrong when it reduces something wrongly. Many volumes of crap can be reduced correctly. e.g. The Gettier Problem can be reduced to coincidental correctness. |
2023 | "How do you know you don't know?" is an illegitimate question, because "how" does not apply to an event that didn't happen. |
2023 | The concept of actual infinity implies many logical paradoxes. Therefore, it's a logically bogus concept. |
2023 | A truth seeker will foolishly talk to a game player, assuming he might be another truth seeker. A game player will bullshit a truth seeker without shame, assuming game players are all there is. |
2023 | I'm not a Biblical Christian, but I still think God wants me to accept Jesus as a mediator between me and him. Almost every night for over a decade, I have asked God (or Jesus) to cause me to think what he wants me to think. This was not a violation of my free will, because I willfully CHOSE to think what God (or Jesus) wants me to think. My thought has evolved much since beginning this. e.g. I no longer think what the Bible tells me to think, though I have no way to know if that prayer caused or facilitated the change. I CHALLENGE ALL CHRISTIANS TO DO THE SAME. Or, if you don't want to think what God (or Jesus) wants you to think, in what sense are you a Christian? |
2023 | Note how Bible believers so often accuse people of saying what they never said, and rebut arguments they never made. This is to be expected from people who try to make words say what they want them to say, because those people have a BOOK as their ultimate authority, above even logic. |
2023 | Them: Why are you so snarky? Me: You drop the dogma, and I'll drop the snark. |
2023 | So far, I have experienced an inability to both be helpful to rational truth seekers, and also courteous to irrational people, and those who don't seek truth. I choose the former, because I'm among the few people who can do it, and many people can do the latter. |
2023 | When I first turned Ctn, I figured if I sought first the kingdom of God and his [alleged] righteousness, as instructed, that the effort to get right with God would eventually make me a spiritual leader. It was a reasonable assumption. Calvary Chapel was full of "spiritual leaders" not much older than I was. It's now 50 years later, and I'm far from a spiritual leader. Though [IMO] I'm way ahead of all of you, I've found nothing worth leading anyone to. |
2023 | PREDICTION: Trump will fly to Russia in 2024, secretly promise Putin that if he makes peace with Ukraine, hero Trump will win the election. When Trump is president, Putin can take all of Ukraine, and Trump will not allow US intervention. It all happens as planned. In 2028, Trump will demand an illegal 3rd term. He will lose the election, call fraud, and refuse to relinquish power. Civil war results. I'm hoping this will be a self-negating prediction. |
2023 | For all minds, I defend the position that self is the top of the value hierarchy. Unfortunately, I found that I am insufficient to justify my own existence. I don't like existing (at least in this world), but fear possible consequences of suicide. Therefore, I think it is in my best interest to put God above self. Therefore, and ONLY for that reason, I ARTIFICIALLY put God above self. |
2023 | Assuming atheism is defined as having no belief in God, and theism is defined as believing in God, and God is defined non-dogmatically as a possible Being who is in charge of humanity and the world, then an atheist and a theist will have no logical disagreements on the existence of God; they will disagree only on preference and probability. |
2023 | I think it is more correct to call myself a non-dogmatic monotheist rather than a non-scriptural monotheist. A non-scriptural monotheist may, or may not, be dogmatic. But a non-dogmatic monotheist will necessarily be non-scriptural, because all scripture is full of dogmas. |
2023 | I assert that no non-dogmatic monotheist has a right to formulate a creed for non-dogmatic monotheism. But future non-dogmatic monotheists will undoubtedly attempt it. I can't say they're objectively wrong; I can only say I disagree with them. Any non-dogmatic monotheist has a right to formulate HIS OWN creed. |
2023 | The mind-virus I allege is the idea that a God to whom humans are accountable would inspire men to write an official document, or set of documents, constituting authoritative messages from God, correct in content, and applicable from the time of writing onward. |
2023 | If you get accustomed to a world of lies, then if there's an afterlife, you will be pre-conditioned to accept lies. You will gravitate to (or be sent to) a level populated by others of your own kind - possibly your own family and ancestors, where you can live as a liar among liars for ... ever? - well, at least until you get sufficiently sick of it. Likewise, if you get accustomed to a world of unethical thieving bastards, who count on being forgiven, then if there's an afterlife, you will probably go to a level run by forgiven scumbags. Likewise, if you let authority dictate morality, instead of figuring it out for yourself, you will probably go to where you are governed by other people's morality. OTOH, if you refuse to get accustomed to lies, and ask for only what you justly deserve, and figure out by critical thinking what (if anything) real morality is, then you again deserve a place run by others of your own kind, or if there is no such place, you will probably be allowed annihilation. But if there is a hell for people of integrity, you will at least be confident that hell is all there is. |
2023 | Assuming that logic is universally reliable (even on quantum level), then logic is part of that necessary being. If logic, then either something is eternal, or something came from nothing, which means something is eternal. The necessary thing created the first created thing. The necessary thing has 3 necessary attributes: logic, power, and reason to create. If determinism, then the necessary thing was compelled to create; if indeterminism, then the necessary thing was motivated to create. The latter implies a personal Being. |
2023 | O'Reilly and the Trumpers and the Wokers are culture warriors. Religionists think they're holy warriors. I think I'm an epistemic and moral warrior. I'm just as bigoted as the rest. I don't like being a bigot. But I'd rather be a bigot than objectively wrong. And I see no way to avoid being wrong without being a bigot. I guess the best I can do is stay the hell out of other people's parties. I could sit on a hill like a guru, and hope for disciples. But then I'd have to fake contentment, like all the bastards who suckered me into religions by faking contentment. Besides, I don't respect disciples; I only respect peers. Better to die a failed truth seeker than a successful cult leader - just in case there's an afterlife. I did atheism, and found nothing; did pantheism, and found illogic; did God and found only a POSSIBILITY of something. But I'm still listening. |
2023 | Epistemic possibility is a state of mental uncertainty. Ontological possibility is a state of objective reality. For any statement, X: X is epistemically possible until proven impossible. X cannot be known to be ontologically possible until it is proven ontologically possible. e.g. It is ontologically possible for: a coin flip to be heads, 2 dice to roll 7, a randomly picked card to be ace of spades. It is epistemically possible for: a Supreme Being to exist, a Supreme Being to not exist, Russell's teapot to exist, (in)determinism to be true. It cannot be known if it is ontologically possible for: a Supreme Being to exist, a Supreme Being to not exist, Russell's teapot to exist, (in)determinism to be true. |
2023 | When new data shows an ideology or worldview to be defective, its proponents resort to dogma to avoid the next dialectic synthesis, with its accompanying identity crisis. |
2023 | LAB RATS Rats exist. Some of them are lab rats for scientists. Some scientists are lab rats for philosophers. Some philosophers MAY BE lab rats for gods, some of whom may be lab rats for a Supreme Being. Nobody cares if a lab rat likes being a lab rat. I wonder if I somehow volunteered to be a lab rat. ... and if there is a sufficient reward for it. |
2023 | If there is an afterlife, and a God in charge of it, the Bible (inspired or not) offers one of many ways to sort people out into the groups they belong in. e.g. Forgiven criminals belong with other forgiven criminals. People who want justice belong with others who want justice. Dogmatists belong with other dogmatists. Rational people belong with other rational people. Truth seekers belong with other truth seekers. Fools belong with other fools. |
2023 | JESUS: In my father's house are many mansions. ME: Great! Is there one for people who don't believe stupid stuff? JESUS: ... ... ... ... ME: Uhh ... Jesus? JESUS: ... ... ... ... ME: Ok, I have this blueprint worked up. You wanna ... JESUS: ... ... ... ... ME: Ok, I'll leave it in your mailbox. Maybe I should have asked if there's one for people who believe what they are designed to believe, rather than what they are told to believe. |
2023 | I did all the stuff. I CLAIMED to know God because the Bible TOLD me I knew God. So I thought NOT knowing meant I was being disobedient. Yes, the Bible made me that stupid. I occasioally felt some peace, but no joy. I occasioally FAKED joy, because I thought I was supposed to. What I really felt was confusion. |
2023 | Some statements are about truth;
some statements are about attitude. Mix them up, and you get a worthless discussion. |
2023 | If Wittgenstein had Wittgensteined himself, he would have never written anything. |
2023 | All ideologies are subject to dialectic process. i.e. Any ideology begins as a simple expression of the ideology. Questions from within and without require it to define itself with enough rational consistency to satisfy the majority of its members. That definition will eventually be codified into a creed. Minorities will necessarily arise that disagree with the creed. When a minority breaks away, a new denomination is formed. |
2023 | People who have defective worldviews and ideologies often speak/write irrationally, vaguely, and ambiguously so that when refuted, they can claim to have been misinterpreted. |
2023 | I've been spiritually reborn several times. One of them was into Christianity. One of them was out of Christianity. |
2023 | When I turned from atheist to Ctn, I could feel my IQ drop significantly. I assume it was because I consciously put faith above reason, as was necessary to believe the Bible. I even had to ask God to numb my mind in order to handle the stress. While Ctn, with the help of rational Ctn apologists, I gradually came to trust reason again, and eventually overcame my Cty - not theism, just Cty. Now my IQ is higher than it has ever been. |
2023 | A problem with most ideologies is that extremists within them are more rationally consistent than common-sense moderates, and therefore rise to leadership positions. |
2023 | I would rather reinvent the wheel than read 100 wheel theories trying to discern which, if any, is correct. Likewise, I would rather find God, or his non-existence, on my own than trust other people's testimony. |
2023 | For any value of X, if there is no evidence that X exists, and no evidence that X does not exist, then X may exist. ------------------------------- Evidence is not proof. Evidence of the existence of X is anything that increases the probability of the existence of X. Evidence of the non-existence of X is anything that decreases the probability of the existence of X. Proof of the existence of X is showing: 1. something that cannot possibly exist unless X exists. 2. a truth that cannot possibly be true unless X exists. Proof of the non-existence of X is showing: 1. something that cannot possibly exist unless X doesn't exist. 2. a truth that cannot possibly be true unless X doesn't exist. ------------------------- 1. If X has contradictory attributes, then X cannot exist. Contradictory attributes = PROOF of non-existence. 2. Things with ridiculous attributes (e.g. spaghetti monster), can LOGICALLY exist, but probability is inversely proportional to absurdity. 3. Accumulated evidence on one side, with none on the other, makes the evidenced conclusion ever more likely, but never [technically] proven. 4. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, unless you look in all the places where evidence would be if it existed, and find none. THEN lack of evidence is evidence of absence - but not PROOF of absence, unless it is first shown that X would necessarily leave evidence in at least one of those places. |
2023 | Let's say you're a Neolithic man prior to religions. You wonder: "Why do I exist?; why does any of it exist?; why don't I just jump off a cliff and be done with it?; where are my dead parents?; are they watching me?; is somebody watching them?; are dreams real?"; etc. You ask the dangerous question, "Does anybody hear my thoughts? " A bird screaches. Was that an answer? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. You have 2 choices: FUCK THIS!! or Maybe. If maybe, then more questions. "Is there a watcher of all watchers?" You're pre-logical, so it makes sense. Eventually people who think these thoughts are going to get together and compare notes. Religion is born, God or no God. |
2023 | A Ctn used Rom 7:14–25 as a God panegyric to say, "Praise God that we have such a wonderful thesis that not only truthfully exposes the struggle between the spiritual nature and the flesh in which it resides, but most importantly presents us with the tremendous hope and confidence in our salvation." ... My response: Yes, you can look at it from that angle. Cty has been selling that spin successfully for 2 millennia. But you can also look at it straight on. I never chose my sexual desires; hormones did that. Assuming that I am created, then my creator did that. I also have stupid, vain, greedy, and even criminal desires that I would rather not have. Shall I now let Paul and his cult and you sell me a load of guilt for being what my creator made me, so that you can then sell me a spiritual narcotic to relieve it? A mere "No thank you" does not give your offer the emotional integrity it deserves. But it will suffice. I accept responsibility for my decisions and actions, but my creator is responsible for my desires. And I will serve a just God, who has his head on straight, whether such a God exists or not. |
2023 | Screw redemption. If you do more bad than good, you're a bad guy. If you do more good than bad, you're a good guy. Just do enough good to make up for your bad, and if there's justice, you'll get what you deserve. If there's not justice, then nihilism, God or no God. |
2023 | Once you start figuring things out, it's only a matter of time before you figure out that you should have started figuring things out much sooner. I just now figured that out. And I'm 77. |
2023 | You can: 1. keep on believing what you were told to believe. 2. keep on believing what you want to believe. 3. keep on believing what appears to be true. 4. experiment to find out what is true. or some combination of the above. Your choice. |
2023 | Backwards thinking: "I am (or want to be) a Whatever-ist. Whatever-ists claim to think A,B,C,D, and E. Therefore I think A,B,C,D, and E." Frontwards thinking: "I think A,B,C,D, and E. Others who claim to think A,B,C,D, and E call themselves Whatever-ist. Therefore I may be a Whatever-ist, unless Whatever-ist also think things I don't think." |
2023 | Morality cannot be shown to exist or not exist. It is assumed to exist because that assumption generally causes more happiness than the opposite assumption. |
2023 | I don't even try to avoid being judgmental. Epistemic, and sometimes moral, judgments happen in my mind every time I hear/read a sentence. My only choice is whether to admit it, or talk about something else, or shut up. |
2023 | Most of us in philosophical discussion groups truly want to be good people. We KNOW that we are sincere, and truly want to be part of the solution and not the problem. We see clearly how 99% of our peers are full of shit, and therefore part of the problem. And we think that our sincerity makes us part of the solution. But it doesn't. We have nothing in us but piss to clean up their shit. If clean water is available at all, it comes from outside. Sorry. But ... you know. |
2023 | Read the Bible intuitively, and you're a theist. Read the Bible rationally, and you're an atheist. Of course: 1. The modern definition of atheist must be accepted. 2. Inerrantist Ctns will object, which necessitates defining rational as adhering to both logic AND common sense. |
2023 | My usual policy is to try to convince everyone that non-dogmatic monotheism is more likely to be correct than their present worldview. I've never seen an exception. What mindset could not be improved (epistemically and psychologically) minus its dogma? So I still think I should make that effort with all theists. But I have so far encountered at least 2 atheists who, IMO, would be better off remaining atheists (the modern agnostic kind, of course). They are both children of fanatically abusive Christian parents. Since I emphatically reject the Ctn message that you go to hell if you die without believing in Jesus, I see no reason to sell theism to a person who would be happier without it - as long as they're sufficiently moral without it. Assuming a God who has his head on straight, psychological stability is much more important than what a person thinks about the existence of a Supreme Being, or God to whom they are accountable. So I now suspect that many atheists are better off as atheists, even if there is a God. |
2023 | Logic took me to nihilism. I hated nihilism, so I turned Christian, and threw out logic. I never could get Cty straight in my mind. So I repeatedly prayed for God to numb my mind, so I could handle the stress. It worked, but also made me stupid. I thought if I understood Cty better, I would be able to handle it. Majored in Biblical stidies, got to 10 units short of graduating, dropped out. Became friends with 2 professional Ctn apologists, who taught me that logic is "the way God thinks". They also taught me critical thinking, and that taught me to see their copouts. I rejected Cty, but kept theism - and logic. Now I'm a non-dogmatic theist. |
2023 | Nobody seeks truth until seeking fun quits being fun. |
2023 | Anybody wanna start a BeenThereDoneThat club for people who are beyond all the God vs. no God, and are ready to discuss the possibility of theism without scripture, and atheism without nihilism? |
2023 | Thagina: ... so great grampa had a fishing boat, and they all got on it. And the flood drowned everybody on the earth who didn't have a boat. Uz: The whole earth? Thagina: Yup. Grampa Shem said there was water everywhere all the way to where it bumps into the sky. Hul: Wow! Did all the animals drown too? Thagina: Yup. Except for the ones on boats. Gether: Did they have lions on the boats? Thagina: Course not. Just geese and sheep and goats and stuff. Gether: Then hows come there's still lions? Thagina: Uuuhh... Uz: And doggies and kitty cats? Hul: And bears and wolves? Gether: And all the other animals those guys eat? Thagina: Uuuhh... Well, ours was a really big boat... Gether: But mom Thagina: No buts young man. We respect our elders. Remember what happened to Cronus's kids. |
2023 | If you can't think of a better explanation than God,
then God is the best explanation you can think of. This statement is incontrovertible. Theists love it, because they wrongly think it reinforces cosmological arg. Atheists hate it, because they wrongly think it supports God of the gaps. Both try to make it say more than it says. |
2023 | There is such a thing as relative virtues. Ambition is as virtuous as that for which you are ambitious. Loyalty is as virtuous as that to which you are loyal. |
2023 | Recreational mountain climbing becomes immoral when you endanger not only your own life and limb, but that of everyone whose job it is to rescue your sorry ass. |
2023 | Life after bullshit is even less probable than life after death. But still, IMO, the only sensible bet. |
2023 | Can God write a book so stupid he can't read it? |
2023 | All knowledge begins with assumption. You either assume God or no God, afterlife or no afterlife, purpose or no purpose, etc. Everything you claim to know is based on something you assume. |
2023 | The problem with us righteous people is, we don't just want to be righteous; we also want to be famous for it. |
2023 | If you pretend to think what you don't think, in order to save your soul, you already lost it. |
2023 | Ideological partisanship may be politically and/or socially expedient. But it's philosophically stupid for anyone who doesn't agree with 100% of the chosen group's doctrines and agenda. |
2023 | Assuming a God, philosophy is his chessboard. Logic is the rule set. Atheists are his best opponents. Religionists learn the game from atheists, but they never play God, because they're afraid they might win. Scripture was created by religionists to convince themselves that they can't win. |
2023 | Logical consistency is necessary in order to avoid logical error. But political and/or ideological consistency is often stupid, because no political and/or ideological position is always moral or otherwise preferable. Any moral principle can be overdone if pushed to its logical limits. |
2023 | Logicians like to say there is no logical connection between is and ought. They may be right. But they should [ought to] be saying there is no DEMONSTRABLE logical connection between is and ought. All morally concerned people WANT a logical connection between is and ought, because morality disintegrates without one. So even hard core logicians (unless they are nihilists) think and act like the connection exists. I can think of only one possible connection - a Supreme Being. Can anyone think of another? |
2023 | People often confuse the concepts of contradiction, rebuttal, and refutation. Here are the distinctions. Statement: All A = B. opposite: No A = B. Contradictions or rebuttals: Some A does not = B. which is the same as: All A does not = B. All A does not necessarily = B. Refutations: All A does not = B, and here's proof. Some A does not = B, and here's proof. All A does not necessarily = B, and here's proof. |
2023 | August 23: The world now officially contains at least 2 non dogmatic theists. Dave Simmons is my co-equal. And he's younger than I, so he'll probably be around after I croak. |
2023 | Let's say a Muslim finally admits he doesn't believe the Quran is divinely inspired. But he still believes in Allah, rather than Yahweh, or pantheism, or no God at all = but he hasn't figured out non-dogmatic theism. Or even if he has figured it out, he still thinks he should pray to Allah in the same manner as he was taught. Until he feels comfortable renouncing Islam, he could reasonably call himself a non-dogmatic Muslim - even though traditional Muslims would deny his right to do so. |
2023 | You atheists are right in judging scriptural religions as wrong, immoral, and toxic to rationality. But atheism (by any of the usual definitions) is an unsatisfactory alternative for theistic minds, which seek (and often require) an objective referent to morality, and possibly to all epistemology. Yes, you atheists CAN BE moral without belief in a God. And if you are naturally moral, then you are morally superior to those of us who need extrinsic motivation. But I, for one, need a REASON to act morally, when immoral action appears to be in my best interest. I find the possibility of an afterlife with just rewards and punishments to be sufficient motivation. Such an afterlife appears more likely under theism, so for that reason (among others) I'm a theist. Theists are the majority. So none of us would want to live in a world in which theistic minds have no fear of afterlife. Theism is a perfectly rational philosophical position, prior to all of the absurd dogmas that have been piled onto it by various scripture packages. A Supreme Being is seen by most minds as MORE rational than evolution of complex life for no reasons outside of the laws of physics. I therefore propose non-dogmatic theism as rationally and morally superior to both atheism and scriptural theism. |
2023 | Heart: the refuge of the irrational. |
2023 | Tangent jumpers NEVER arrive at conclusions, because they don't WANT conclusions, because conclusions are restrictive. |
2023 | Explanation to an inquirer: After turning Christian in early 1971, I (like all the rest) tried different kinds of prayer to see if any consistent results could be detected. I was told that praying for patience brought patience trials. I found that to be true. Praying for selfish things got no results, but trying to pray in accordance with God's will got SLIGHTLY better results. I tried all the NT prayers, and found them to be false. e.g. Mt 7:7, 17:20, 21:22, Mk 16:17, Lk 11 9-13, etc. My big decision was to ask for communication, and then to assume that apparent communication MIGHT be real. The prayer that got the best apparent results was, "I think X is true. If I'm wrong, please correct me." I also tried fasting, and noticed no apparent results. Asking for God to make me what he wanted me to be caused so much stress that I got crohn's disease. This spiritual walk (as they called it) was very frustrating. I never could have endured it if I hadn't burned thru atheism and pantheism first. My rational mind would not let me believe what I thought God wanted me to believe (i.e. Bible stuff). I repeatedly prayed for God to numb my mind. This prayer worked; but it also made me stupid, so I never stayed with it long. The more I tried to be Ctn, the less I fit with other Ctns. Finally, my possibly imaginary Jesus told me it was time to move on from Biblical Cty. I left, but still remaind a theist, and continued the experiments. The only noticeably good thing that came of it was a philosophically competent mind. |
2023 | Most people agree with a conventionally but sloppily expressed statement more often than a precise but tedious expression of the same statement. |
2023 | I don't care about profanity; and I don't care if you care about it, except when I'm on your turf. |
2023 | Most people don't understand logic. The worst part of them don't even understand THAT they don't understand logic. |
2023 | Ok, it looks like all life totally sucks, and there's no point in anything. But maybe there is; so just keep on truckin, and don't make any irreversible decisions, like murder, suicide, or procreating. |
2023 | TOXIC MORALITY: Taking a moral principle (or set of them) to such an extreme that the end result is more harm than good. e.g. left wing: taking equality so far as to let trans-women compete against bio-women in sports. right wing: taking love of your own kind so far as to be unjust to everyone else. Biden: taking empathy so far as to buy back hostages with money that will be used to kidnap more hostages. |
2023 | NO particular act (or category of acts) is intrinsically moral or immoral.
e.g. If it is necessary to torture a baby to prevent 2 or more babies from being equally tortured, then it is moral to torture a baby. Simple arithmetic. If it is necessary to torture a baby to prevent some philanthropic medical doctor from being killed, then the unhappiness of the baby is weighed against the unhappiness caused by the doctor being killed. Of course, no one can know that, so your best guess is the moral guess. Complex, but still arithmetic. |
2023 | The term theism is ambiguous. It can mean belief (probability judgment) that:
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2023 | If a quantum is defined as a single packet of matter or energy, then if some particular thing is proposed as a quantum, the immediate question is: How do you know that thing is a quantum, and not composed of parts? |
2023 | MORALITY is [should be] based on the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe. Acts that cause that ratio to increase are moral. Acts that cause that ratio to decrease are immoral. This is demonstrated by its internal consistency, universal pragmatic applicability, and total absence of an alternate theory that cannot be easily refuted. There is no category of actions (e.g. murder, theft, torture, etc.) that is always moral or always immoral. This is demonstrated by the fact that any such category proposed can be easily refuted by hypothetical counter-examples. Morality/immorality exists in the intent of the actor, based on his knowledge of morality and his situation at the time of the act. This is demonstrated by lack of an alternate theory that cannot be easily refuted. |
2023 | I'm free to do or not do any voluntary act. If I'm Phineas Gage, drunk, stoned, or have dementia, I'm still free to do or not do any voluntary act. |
2023 | Humility is either low self esteem, or the pretense of it. |
2023 | Gravity is a fact; WHY it works is a theory.
Same with magnetism. Is quantum mechanics a fact? Apparently a lot of scientists think it is, or they would be calling it quantum theory - like they did at first. Or did they start calling it mechanics just to make themselves sound like they know what they are talking about? |
2023 | Bad arguments discredit even the most sensible position. |
2023 | If there's an afterlife, and if it's just, then we will be continually be sent to a world of fools and criminals until we learn to quit being fools and criminals. |
2023 | Ever heard of Mesopotamian Naru Literature?
It's a fiction genre that started in the 3rd millennium and peaked in the 2nd, in which a famous person, usually a historical king (dead at the time of writing) offends a god or gods and is punished for it. The offense may be hubris or disobedience, but often seems trivial, like doing some sensible thing without having first asked the gods' permission. Always the moral is - bad stuff happens to people who don't trust whatever god is in charge. These stories often became popular enough to replace written history. Sound familiar? |
2023 | There doesn't appear to be a God in charge of this mess.
If there is, he doesn't appear to be just, much less loving. There doesn't appear to be an afterlife. If there is, then from my present perspective, it looks like just another ripoff. Still, I choose to bet on and invest in a just God and a just afterlife. Been doing so for decades, because I see no other way to get to worthwhile life, for me personally or for all minds communally. I can't recommend my choice.* But still, I want a public record of the steps I took to get to wherever I end up. ---------------------------------------------------- * i.e. I can't recommend the life of an explorer. But I highly recommend the land I've found. It's epistemically solid - unlike the mud scripturalists try to stand in, or the nihilistic space atheists (by whatever definition) float in. |
2023 | A person deserves the same ratio of happiness to unhappiness that he has intended to cause by his willful actions. |
2023 | My position is similar to Pascal's wager, in that it is a decision to bet on what appears to be in one's best interest. Pascal, unfortunately did not take his own reasoning to its logical conclusion - as I did. Pascal stopped at BibleGod and sold out to the religion of his culture. He could have just as easily sold out to Islam. |
2023 | If you do what you THINK you should, and then discover that you're wrong, you're teachable. If you're right, but only by coincidence, you learn nothing from being right. |
2023 | If all Bible verses on afterlife are correct, then I must conclude that God designed me to think he is evil, so he can burn me forever in hell. I can do nothing about it, because I think what he designed me to think. Free will lets me do what I want. But I can't think what I want. I think what appears true. And that's how I want it. |
2023 | Religion is a placebo for people looking for a happy pill. |
2023 | How to deal with a particular kind of asshole: To any yes or no question, ONLY 1 of 4 responses is appropriate:
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2023 | There are 2 kinds of everything everywhere - the kind you care about, and everything else. In discussion groups those are truth seekers and people who think it's all bullshit, and don't care, and just want to become good bullshitters. |
2023 | Muslims aren't bad people. Chimps aren't bad animals. But you never know when they're going to turn. |
2023 | There is always a new generation on unvaccinated minds. |
2023 | What if there's an afterlife, and the religions of this world are vaccinations against even worse religions in the next? |
2023 | Magic is relative. e.g. From within Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics is magic. |
2023 | Sugar coated dogma is still dogma. Its esthetic quality does not boost its truth value. |
2023 | Bad guys want grace and mercy. Good guys want justice. Bad guys don't want to feel like bad guys. So they try to convince good guys that everyone's a bad guy. And many good guys BELIEVE it. |
2023 | If truth kills me, I'm better off dead.
Death is no big deal.
The possibility of afterlife is a very big deal,
which causes most to catch religion,
and others to emphatically deny that possibility,
both in terror, clinging to their chosen mind-virus. We truth-seekers observe smugly, while sharing their fear of eternal torment. Truth-seeking may be just another mind-virus. But the best I can do is the best I can do is the best I can do. That too is eternal. Repenting of errors can take a mind beyond repentance. Truth will ultimately devour us all. Until then, I choose to devour it back. Observe my experiment, and profit from it. |
2023 | Moral Confusion
Not knowing if a particular act is moral, immoral, or neither - OR thinking you know it, and being wrong.
It's caused by many different factors. e.g. Thinking a particular class of actions is ALWAYS moral or immoral. Thinking morality = justice, love, empathy, etc. Letting some authority dictate your morality after you're smart enough to figure it out by critical thinking |
2023 | A scientist CAN interact in his experiment. But then he wouldn't know what would have happened if he hsdn't interacted. Or maybe he doesn't interact, and it blows up. So he corrects errors, and starts the experiment over. Maybe SOME interaction is necessary to keep it from blowing up. But he would keep interaction to the minimum necessary to achieve his purpose. We may be one of many experiments to find out how far minds can evolve in community before they self-destruct. |
2023 | Statement X is obviously true. I have an opinion as to why X is true. I don't know if my opinion is correct. And I don't know how to test it. But it remains the most rational explanation I can think of. If you disagree with my opinion, but can't offer a more rational explanation, I have no reason to care about your disagreement ' |
2023 | No statement is so incontrovertible that a game player can't find an angle from which it looks dumb. |
2024 | No statement is so incontrovertible that a game player can't find an angle from which it looks dumb. |
2024 | Decadence and perversion can be enjoyed by one convinced that nothing better is attainable. So can religion. So can nihilism. Truth seeking ... not so much. |
2024 | "Natural vs. spiritual" may be a legitimate disjunct; and it may be a false disjunct. There is no way to know until those terms are defined sufficiently enough to see if they overlap. And since there is no official definition of either term, the whole issue is arbitrary, and therefore a non-issue. |
2024 | I fear moral error, because I've found that my best efforts to avoid it don't keep me out of it; and in fact sometimes appear to cause it. e.g. The previous sentence could be nothing more than braggadocios virtue signaling. Still, if there is justice, then there will be less punishment for moral error than for failing to try to avoid it. In fact, there will be reward for doing what we believe to be moral, even if we're wrong - if there's justice. If there's no justice, then morality is pointless. The indoctrinated youth (nearly everyone) will say morality has intrinsic value, even if never rewarded, and then cite love as the ultimate justifier. But that's a lie that life tells itself in order to preserve itself thru bad times. It's also how an unjust system perpetuates itself. No amount of love can justify injustice. Mindless evolution might create such a lie, but no just God would knowingly create an unjust system. |
2024 | Wrong people don't know they are wrong. They will never know they are wrong until they start caring about rational consistency. Only then will they figure out how to quit being wrong. OTOH, the more rationally right I get, the more emotionally wrong (or stupid) I get. My best efforts to get this life-shit right have failed - so far. |
2024 | A blind spot is a place you can't see. A place you choose not to see is a stupid spot. |
2024 | Most coincidences don't look like supernatural events. Some coincidences DO look like supernatural events. The ones that do, if personally experienced, constitute evidence (not proof) of a supernatural realm. Dogmatically asserting the existence or non-existence of a supernatural realm is stupid. It is caused by fear, which in turn causes submission to, or rebellion against, an irrational and monstrous God. Second hand testimony of people who claim to have witnessed miracles LOOKS like evidence of miracles, until you have lived among people who make that claim REPEATEDLY, and see how stupid they are. |
2024 | Quick def of non-dogmatic theist: I ASSUME a Supreme Being exists. I ASSUME a being to whom I'm accountable exists. I ASSUME an afterlife exists. But I don't pretend to know any of it. |
2024 | If you behave morally just because it's good to do so, then you're more moral than someone who behaves morally in hope of reward. So all you secularists, who behave morally, are morally superior to us theists who do it for reward. If, OTOH, you secularists are actually behaving morally for reward, then you are lying, and therefore morally inferior. And if you behave morally for reward, and haven't figured it out, then you are either young, ignorant, or stupid. |
2024 | Dogma, in its most general sense, includes any statement asserted as fact that cannot be known by reason and observation alone. |
2024 | People in discussion groups can be classified into at least 3 general groups, always at cross purposes: truth seekers, traders, and game players. TRUTH SEEKERS strive to determine objective truth or falsity. Failing that, they try to determine probability, statistically if possible, or otherwise subjectively by common sense. They never evade questions, and wish all other groups would go away. TRADERS want to exchange ideas and opinions, most of which are of unknown or even unknowable truth value. They tangent off subject, and have no idea why others call those tangents red herrings. They evade questions without even knowing it, and wish everyone would just play nice. GAME PLAYERS want to exercise or improve their debating skills, either for the sake of a cause (evangelists), or just ego. They say whatever appears most likely to get desired results. They think game players are all there is, and resent being classified at all. |
2024 | In order for a just system to exist (rather than accidental cases of justice), Good and bad must be identified and quantified.
Good/bad exist only relative to sentient beings.
Good/bad affect whether a sentient being prefers existing or not existing, and the degree to which it prefers either. Let's arbitrarily say a being that likes existing at its current emotional level is happy, and the reverse is unhappy. A GOOD system, then, is one which offers the greatest ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe. A JUST system is one in which sentient beings receive that quantity of (un)happiness that they intended to cause by their willful actions. e.g. If Joe deliberately kills a philanthropist while believing that his act will cause more unhappiness than unhappiness, then Joe deserves however much unhappiness he thought he would cause. If Joe deliberately kills a serial killer, then Joe may even deserve a reward. But complicating factors soon enter the picture. |
2024 | Wisdom is knowing how to get what you want without doing things that will get you more of what you don't want later. Intelligence is knowing how to figure out everything else. |
2024 | Sin is offense against a deity. It doesn't exist unless a deity exists. Discussing it as a real concept implies a real deity to whom it is relative. Only if there is an objective deity does it have objective meaning. |
2024 | IMAGINARY is an ambiguous term. It can mean. 1. existing ONLY in a mind, but not in objective reality 2. existing in a mind, and MAYBE in objective reality Some people like to think it means existing only in a mind, until PROVEN to exist in objective reality. But that conflates imaginary with hypothetical. |
2024 | Being judged does not imply being judged guilty. You can be judged innocent; and you can be judged worthy of reward. Punishment happens after the first; rewarding happens after the third. Grace is undeserved reward; mercy is undeserved lack of punishment. These categories exist whether judgment is fair or not. You can be unfairly judged guilty, then unfairly punished, or get deserved mercy. You can be unfairly judged innocent, then unfairly released. You can be unfairly judged worthy of reward, then unfairly rewarded, which equals unfair grace. |
2024 | Anyone who would knowingly vote for an aspiring dictator doesn't deserve democracy. |
2024 | Every time it looks like I'm at the end of my spiritual rope, God swoops in with just a little more rope. It's not original, but it describes my experience ever since I turned theistic. |
2024 | The remote possibility of achieving something truly good can appear to be a better bet than the high probability of achieving many satisfying goals. The bitch of it is living with the probability that you're a damned fool. |
2024 | AMBIGUITY allows political snakes to take credit for saying something without being held accountable for saying it when they are quoted. |
2024 | Uncertainty is uncomfortable; but false knowledge claims are lies. Though minds can adjust to either, I prefer the former. |
2024 | I have free will, and am therefore in charge of my decisions. In my atheist days, I experimented enough to discover that there is nothing I can do to make my life quality better than non-existence. Therefore 2 options: suicide or bet on an afterlife that at least has a chance of being better than non-existence. Because of dumb survival instinct, I chose the latter, followed by all the experiments implied by it. This led me to CHOOSE to try to cooperate with an assumed Being in charge. It still APPEARS to have been a bad decision. But it's either this or go back to territory I've already burnt thru. |
2024 | I prefer to think I'm not a worldview salesman, but rather a worldview explorer reporting my findings back to my fellow truth seekers.
But I must admit that I'm trying to sell explorership, because: 1. we explorers are more likely than anyone else to find anything objectively good. 2. the more such explorers there are, the more peaceful the world will be. I admit also that I'm trying to sell my worldview (non-dogmatic theism), because I think it is rationally and morally better than that of anyone who disagrees with it. |
2024 | Books tell us what other people think, and claim to think. Personal experience tells us what things happen consistently, and therefore gives us data for determining probabilities. Experimenting with the possibility of an interactive God gives us data for evaluating everything every book has told us. |
2024 | From the viewpoint of any rational mind, logic and common sense are never in conflict. |
2024 | You can figure out what's most likely to be true, or you can think what some authority tells you to think. You can say what appears to be true, or you can say what some authority tells you to say. When you're young, some authority may appear to be telling you the truth. As you learn to think, that happens less often. Some truths become obvious. You can admit what's obvious, or you can deny what's obvious. If your authority tells you to deny what's obvious, you can do it. But if you do, you're lying. Perhaps I should also admit that I wouldn't have said all that if I didn't think God wanted me to say it. |
2024 | There is no point in talking to a person who has proven that he either doesn't understand what you're saying, or deliberately misinterprets it. |
2024 | When you believe you'll burn in hell if you don't believe a dumb premise, then you believe a dumb premise. If the dumb premise logically implies dumber conclusions, then you either chuck logic, or construct a ridiculous, but logically consistent, worldview around it all. #inerrancy, #preterism |
2024 | Many people think you can fake it till you make it. Tried it. Didn't work for me. I faked it till I realized that I was a fake, and I saw that fakes don't deserve to make it. Then I quit. Now I'm an honest loser. But I'd rather be that than a successful fake. |
2024 | Theism will always remain an epistemic possibility, even if science discovers how everything works. Theism will never be proven true, even if the sky splits open, and a giant with a white beard steps thru, and claims to be the Supreme Being. |
2024 | The Bible makes emotional sense to children and people who think they deserve punishment. But how could any rational adult, who has lived long enough to see what fools and liars people are, possibly believe that ANY form of scripture was inspired by ANY kind of God? My answer is that they can't; they just coast along with it because of fear and social inertia. |
2024 | I assume a God because I assumed the opposite for a few decades, and didn't like what that assumption made me. I am among those who needs threat of punishment to motivate me to behave morally when it doesn't appear to be in my best interest. |
2024 | If I were a non-omnipotent God, and chose to create free will creatures (for whatever reason; possibly just to see how long I could keep them from self-destructing), I would quickly see that most people are not sufficiently motivated to behave morally without fear of punishment. The most efficient way to motivate them to behave morally would be to show them what it's like to live in an immoral world. Then as they die, I would group them according to moral quality and reincarnate them, with at least SOME memories intact, into whatever quality of world they prove worthy of. I would guess that eventually souls would evolve enough to deserve increasingly moral worlds. In my early experiments, I might try inspiring scriptures, before seeing the religious wars that scriptures cause. Starting over, I would intervene no more than necessary, if at all. I would see that worlds were able to create their own religions and scriptures (however clunky) without my help. The younger the world, the clunkier the religions they would create. I would guess that worlds would quickly evolve beyond scriptures, and eventually beyond religions. |
2024 | I'm a theist. I don't claim to know theism is correct, much less all the dogmatically asserted attributes of a God. There is no burden of proof on me. I'm not even trying to sell theism to anyone who would be just as moral without it. Currently, I think the world would be a better place with fewer theists (of the scripturalist kind). But I know from personal experience that anti-theism can lead some (possibly most) people to nihilism, and thence to immorality. |
2024 | Serious philosophy is not academic; it's seeking truth by observation and critical thinking. |
2024 | I know what I prayed; and I know what happened afterwards. But I don't know if what I prayed caused or influenced what happened afterwards. I assume it did, only because I don't know what else to do, except go back to nihilism. |
2024 | I've found no way to rise above shit level without offending those who choose to remain on it. |
2024 | Question Lovers; Answer Haters Some person in a discussion group asks a question. I happen to know the answer. I answer the question rationally and clearly. Maybe they acknowledge the answer; maybe they just drop the discussion. In either case, later on, I see them asking the same question. Maybe I answer it again; maybe I don't. Either way, they keep on doing it. Should I ignore them, or bash them, or assume that they just weren't ready for the answer, but maybe someday they will be? I still don't know. I would like to block them all, and be done with it. But then I remember doing the same shit when I was a kid. Also, even if they are incorrigible, there may be rational truth seekers reading. |
2024 | Patience with assholes is a virtue that diminishes with age. |
2024 | Christians often accuse me of being a secret atheist; Atheists often accuse me of being a wierd kinda Christian. This post is to clarify my position: NON-DOGMATIC THEISM. ----------------------------------------------------------- NDT is theism minus dogma - more specifically, minus any and all knowledge claims that can't be determined by logic, evidence, and common sense. It admits the epistemic POSSIBILITY of: 1. a Supreme Being and a God to whom humans are accountable 2. an afterlife 3. universal justice - therefore motivation to behave morally It admits that the assumed God-in-charge may or may not intervene in human affairs, or interact with humans (unlike deism, which presumes to know it/he doesn't). NDT is better than scriptural theism because: 1. NDT is more likely to be true. It has all of the classical arguments for a Supreme Being, but without the assertion of conclusive PROOF; no scriptural baggage, no conflicts with logic or science, no demonstrable errors, no unjustifiable knowledge claims about God. 2. NDT is more MORAL than scriptural theism. It's God doesn't punish people for what they think. It has no position on abortion or homosexuality - or even murder; it doesn't address morality. It just reminds us that IF there is justice, we will all get what we deserve, based on the morality of our acts. If there is a Supreme Being, then morality is whatever it/he says it is - which is not written down, so we are thrown back on common sense - where morality resided before religions arrived. 2a. NDT is likely to be beneficial for the world, because it has no chosen people, and doesn't tell believers to kill nonbelievers. NDT can't be used by leaders, much less governments, to control people. NDT is not all or nothing. A Jew, Christian, Muslim, etc. can be a non-dogmatic Jew, Christian, Muslim, etc. NDT is epistemically better than classical atheism because classical atheism dogmatically asserts that there is no God - which it can't prove. That's why atheists in the 1990s thought of NEW atheism (technically agnosticism while retaining the atheist label). NDT is NOT epistemically better than NEW atheism. Both are agnostic. NDT bets on a God; New atheism bets on NO God. NDT is NOT morally better than NEW atheism for anyone sufficiently motivated to behave morally without threat of punishment in an afterlife. NDT doesn't pretend to be REVEALED; it is FIGURED OUT by critical thinking alone. It requires no creed, no church, no priesthood, no prayer, no faith; but it ALLOWS those things for people who happen to want them. |
2024 | Honest people and attitude people are not the same people. |
2024 | I have a moral problem in discussion groups that I don't know how to resolve. It's such a problem that I don't even know how to state it in one sentence. I don't know who to offend and who not to offend. I don't know when to offend and when not to offend. I don't know how to offend and how not to offend. The effort to resolve this problem is a rabbit hole that keeps branching in different directions. |
2024 | I'm often (in fact usually) thought to be arrogant.
Maybe I agree. Depends on how it is defined. 1. being irritatingly confident of the superiority of your position 2. being irritatingly and WRONGLY confident of it I agree with 1 and disagree with 2. |
2024 | Assuming the Abraham story has a message, part of it is that we should obey the de facto moral authority, no matter how much it conflicts with our natural (and supposedly God given) sense of morality. We are told that if we do what we are told, the moral authority will relent, and tell us it was all just a test, and that we have passed, and we then get rewarded. The Jesus story, similarly, promises reward or punishment based on believing the right set of improbable things, rather than on willful acts. We are offered eternal life in a state of moral conflict, knowing we don't deserve reward, and that most of the punished people don't deserve punishment. I choose to decline the offer, but rather to obey the assumed moral authority only up to the point where it conflicts with my sense of morality, and no further. But I also request correction of my sense of morality, if it is wrong. |
2024 | Mentors can be fun while they last. But they are always outgrown, either by surpassing them, discovering an unacceptable flaw in them, or just getting tired of the direction they take you. |
2024 | If you don't employ the same amount of logic and common sense when interpreting scripture as you employ when driving your car, you should have your license revoked for at least one of them. |
2024 | Fools and criminals agree with you even when you're obviously wrong, if you support their ideology. Truth seekers agree with you only when you appear to be correct, whether you you support their ideology or not. |
2024 | The Christian mindset requires minds to abandon either logic or common sense.
Logical Ctns are forced into inerrancy and preterism, thus abandoning common sense. There is no such thing at an atheist mindset, because atheism doesn't set anywhere. It just denies setting in theism. Atheists use logic and common sense when expedient, or abandon them according to the rationality of the individual atheist. The non-dogmatic theist mindset is perfectly logical, whether its adherents are or not. And it violates no common sense whether its adherents do or not. |
2024 | "X exists" is a dogmatic statement until it is shown that X exists. "X doesn't exist" is a dogmatic statement until it is shown that X doesn't exist. "X MAY exist" is NOT a dogmatic statement until it is shown that X CAN'T exist. |
2024 | Let's say there is a real God, and he inspired the Bible. WHY would he inspire it?
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2024 | A theist asked: "How do you account for the existence and universality of abstract entities such as mathematical truths, logical laws, and moral values within a purely materialistic framework?" ---------------------- My response: That question has been proposed by apologists, because theism is the most convenient answer. This apologetic tactic wouldn't be so obnoxious if they had just left it with general theism, without pushing some scripture package along with it. Another such question is the alleged "problem of the one and the many". Also the "Transcendental Argument for God" (TAG) is the same sort of thing. |
2024 | Open-mindedness is a virtue when you're young. If you're still open-minded after 50, you haven't learned much. |
2024 | Probability judgment is an involuntary act of mind. You can't choose to think something is probable, if you really think it is improbable. You can, however, choose to PRETEND to think what you don't think. And you can choose to live as the liar that pretense makes you for as long as you like. Trust and/or commitment is a voluntary act of will. You can choose to trust that something is probable, even if you think it is improbable. e.g. Casinos make a lot of money off such people. And you can choose to commit to an idea that you think is probably false. e.g. Many religionists are frightened enough of an improbable possibility that they will commit to a worldview that promises to rescue them from it. This pretense is not a lie until they pretend to know it's true. Belief is an ambiguous term that can mean either of these concepts. |
2024 | EVIDENCE is the subject of much erroneous thinking and miscommunication. Bing/Google defines it: "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid". Wikipedia refuses to define it, except as relative to a proposition, epistemology, phenomenology, etc., so it never addresses the root concept. Webster's excuse for a definition is crap; so I'll stick with Bing/Google. Many questions arise:
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2024 | Main reasons why I disagree with the Bible: In no particular order, the idea that:
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2024 | A sound argument is a subset of proof.' All sound arguments are in the category of all proofs.' Some proofs are not in the category of sound arguments. |
2024 | Anyone can think critically within the boundaries of his chosen premises.' The degree to which a person is a critical thinker is the degree to which he tests his own premises. |
2024 | Logic is only PART of epistemology.' It does nothing until concepts are plugged into the variables.' Concepts come from observation.' You have already seen that logic cannot prove itself, because of circularity.' The relationship of logic to truth would not even be recognized if not for intuition.'
The anchor points of epistemology are logic, observation, and intuition. Epistemology has no values (i.e. good/bad).' In itself, it has no motivation to create or sustain life.' Emotion is necessary for values. |
2024 | The morality of minority rights should always be balanced against that of majority welfare.' When minority rights cause more unhappiness than happiness in the overall community, the majority has the moral right to overrule any minority - unless the overall community is itself immoral. |
2024 | You can't know if you're right about God.' But you can know if you're trying your best to be right.' If you don't know it, you're not. |
2024 | I still haven't thought of an inoffensive way to deal with people who are not smart enough to know they are not worth talking to. And don't tell me everyone is worth talking to. I don't have infinite discussion time. If it's not spent on rational truth seekers, it's wasted. |
2024 | "Salvation" is a concept created by people who know they deserve punishment, and fear an afterlife, in which they may get it. The Eastern religions are generally more sensible: i.e. just do enough good stuff to outweigh your bad stuff. But monotheists figure that a Supreme Being ultimately determines what behavior is good or bad. So the more you kiss up to God, the less you need to work on doing good stuff - which costs time and money. The Jews were "smart" enough to figure out that a Supreme Being is ALL that you need to justify your behavior. And the Christians made it easy: just believe, and you're covered. |
2024 | The whole substitutionary atonement concept exists because people who have done bad stuff, and therefore think or know they deserve punishment are too lazy to pay back what they owe by doing more good stuff to outweigh their bad stuff. So they create a god who forgives them if they kiss his ass sufficiently. They then exalt Godasskissing above real righteous behavior. |
2024 | Dogma speaks poorly of whatever position it endorses. |
2024 | The atheism you define is non-dogmatic. The atheism you defend is almost as dogmatic as faith. |
2024 | Partisan thinking may be politically expedient, but it's philosophically stupid. And it's socially destructive when it turns otherwise sensible people into immoral extremists. Still ... The truth is, I hate Trump and despise Trumpers; and there's nothing I can do about it. |
2024 | Even if I have free will to do what I want to do, I don't have free will to want what I want to want. |
2024 | A problem with discussion groups:
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2024 | I'm a spiritual mofo. But I don't recommend spiritual values to anyone who hasn't exhausted conventional worldly values, and found them unsatisfactory. Spirituality should be the final refuge of the BTDT crowd. Religionists endorse spirituality usually because they think it's in their OWN best interest. |
2024 | What's worse than living in a world full of lying cheating predators? Living FOREVER in a world full of FORGIVEN lying cheating predators. |
2024 | I don't know if I was created to be rational, or if I became rational by my own decisions. But in either case, I am now rational. Therefore, I can't possibly believe irrational things that I know to be irrational. Nor can I repent of being rational. So I can't possibly believe anyone, or their documents (e.g. the Bible), that tell me I must believe irrational things to avoid being punished by my creator. |
2024 | I am not naturally moral; I'm naturally greedy. The only thing restraining me from cautious criminality is the possibility of an afterlife, in which I MAY get what I deserve. Another possibility is an unjust afterlife in which I am forgiven for my crimes. But I would rather be dead than live in another world full of forgiven criminals. |
2024 | MY EXPERIMENT What happens to a person who:
My answer: You get a stress-caused illness from not knowing if you're sane. You learn so much critical thinking that you find hardly anyone worth talking to. You figure out the next major upgrade to theology, and think it's your job to sell it to a world that doesn't see any use for it. Other than that, the results are unimpressive. |
2024 | Let's say you're a scientist. You want to create a self-sustaining system. You try one, but it self-destructs. You correct your errors and try again. Each new system lasts a little longer. Finally you get one to last as long as you want it to. But it's boring. So you add new variables. Each time, the system either self-destructs, or it gets boring. If you intervened a little bit, you could make them last longer. But that's cheating, so you don't want to do it any more than necessary to achieve your desired goals (whatever they are). Suppose you can't get any of your systems to do what you want without some intervention. If we are such an experiment, we have no way to know if our creator is intervening or not. And it would not be in our creator's best interest to let us know. |
2024 | Good intent may justify an incorrect statement morally, but it doesn't make it correct. |
2024 | If I am created by a God, that God designed me to be incompatible with unjust gods, such as those who reward or punish people for unjust reasons. So if an unjust god is what I have to deal with, I'm destined for one kind of hell or another, no matter what I do. So I have no reason to care which of the many unjust gods is real - Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, etc., doesn't matter. Christian or Muslim heaven would be just another hell for me. If there's no afterlife, even a legitimate Supreme Being would be irrelevant. If there is an afterlife, but it's unjust, we're all screwed, except possibly contented GodAssKissers. So the ONLY possibility I need to care about is the possibility of a just God. Therefore, I choose to act as though a just God exists, and take what comes of it. |
2024 | If your current state of life is unsatisfactory (i.e. worse than nonexistence), and a satisfactory state of life is possible, but you have to cross over an even more unsatisfactory life-segment (call it a valley) to get to it, is it worth the effort? It depends on arithmetic. For the duration of your existence, you will experience both happiness and unhappiness. If the happiness outweighs the unhappiness, at your life's end, then it was worthwhile. & v.v. Happiness/unhappiness is quantifiable in intensity and duration. e.g. 10 units of happiness for 1 unit of duration equals 1 unit of happiness for 10 units of duration. If the unhappines you endure in the valley is greater than the happiness you will receive in the remainder of your existence, then it's not worth crossing. & v.v. If you have no way to know if there is an afterlife, or which course of action will cause which result, the best you can do is place a bet, and live with your decision. |
2024 | If you think you are commissioned by God to pretend to know things you don't know, you need to ask your God for correction of errors - repeatedly. If you pretend to know things you don't know, on EITHER SIDE of the God issue, you have become part of the problem. |
2024 | There ARE rational Christians; = and they are worth talking to, up to the point that they cop out on either logic or common sense. But if a person openly puts Bible over logic, there is no point in talking to him at all. He refuses to think beyond dogma, and statements based on dogma. |
2024 | Being helpful in discussion groups:
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2024 | I would rather be right and friendless than wrong with friends - because...
I am actively trying to sell non-dogmatic theism to the world as the next major upgrade to theology. If there's an afterlife, and a God, and it turns out that I have misled people (though I don't see how), then I could be in big trouble. Therefore, I care much more about being correct than any other value. Focus on correctness has suppressed my emotions (except possibly anger). So I don't care how I make people feel, as much as I care about helping them be as correct as possible. This is starting to sound like an apology, so I must clarify. I don't care if I've offended you; I only care if I've offended you, and you don't deserve it. Nobody can do all things well. I've made my choice. Also, I'm looking for young people to carry on my brilliant correctness after I croak, because only then can I claim to have done my job. |
2024 | If you tell a lie in order in order to sell a moral principle: Does the lie become moral? Does the principle become immoral? Does the principle remain moral, but the lie remain immoral? Does it depend on how moral the principle is relative to how immoral the lie is? Is there no way to judge the morality of the act except on a case by case basis? Is there no way to judge the morality of the act at all? |
2024 | Fallacies negate proof. They don't negate probability. |
2024 | Never bring an attitude to a truth fight. |
2024 | OK Hamlet, I choose to be (at least for now). What is the next question? Should I keep on being what I am, or try to be better? If the latter, which direction is better? More happy? More moral? More correct? I've tried them all. Happy doesn't work. I can make myself less unhappy, but only temporarily, and always at a price. I can make myself more moral, but it causes stress, which damages my body, so fuckit. I can't make myself more correct. Already maxed out there. Persistent prayer for correction of errors is the best I can do. Not ALL errors, of course! - just the ones that affect my well-being. And that appears to be all I can do. That has gotten me to my present level. And though I'm proud of having achieved my present level, it has gotten tiresome. So the question re-surfaces. What should I do now? The bitch of reality is that I never know. I don't even know if I CAN know. |
2024 | The question of whether the lesser of 2 evils is good is a purely semantic discussion. It assumes a distinction between absolute good and relative good. If there is no good alternative, then the lesser of 2 evils is the best option available, and therefore RELATIVELY good while remaining ABSOLUTELY bad. |
2024 | The universe (by whatever definition) is either created or eternal. The first created thing was necessarily created by something eternal. So the question is about the nature of the eternal thing: Personal or impersonal? That question is unanswerable. |
2024 | My excentricity is based on my acceptance of the possibility of an afterlife, in which I may be sent to live among others of my own kind. I want to prove worthy of an honest world. |
2024 | I had thought that there would be no downside to learning critical thinking. But whereas it makes me helpful to rational truth seekers, it appears to have made me totally incompetent at dealing with people's emotional problems. In fact, all emotion now appears childish. It has shifted from something I lived in to something I observe. At first, I was proud of myself for getting on top of it. But now I'm wondering if I've gone too far. Or is it all just normal aging? Unless some critical thinkers have some suggestions, I suspect that I should just accept this defect, and focus on what I'm good at. |
2024 | We can't know what matters, because we can't know if there's an afterlife. |
2024 | Mind squirms in skull like chick in egg, fearing and hoping for breakthru or death. |
2024 | Philosophers don't do improv. |
2024 | Society makes up rules for people, different rules for different cultures. Most such rules are sensible; but some are stupid and/or immoral. Some are partly responsible for making the world the crock of shit it has always been. One such rule is that it is OK (even appropriate) to fake emotions and/or lie to people to make them feel good, or possibly to avoid offending them. So people walk around saying, "How are you?" (sometimes to strangers), and I'm supposed to say, "Fine, thank you. How are you?" thus perpetuating the shit. They say, "My parents died." I'm supposed to say, "I'm so sorry." Lines written by other people for other people. Talking straight is impolite. People don't talk to people; masks talk to masks. Masks marry and divorce, and procreate more masks. "Smile for your picture." I fuckin hate it. Though I'm still not sure where, if anywhere, to draw a line, I think it's moral to resist the pressure to perpetuate this tradition-sanctioned pretense, and that I should therefore accept whatever social exclusion that comes of it. |
2024 | Alvin Plantinga's Modal Ontological Argument is Bogus. GREAT as a measure of QUANTITY is an objective concept. GREAT as a measure of QUALITY is a subjective concept. |
2024 | Jesus to the Dems is a moral teacher; to the GOP a "Get out of hell free" card. |
2024 | Whenever I see a video of a fight between a reptile and a mammal, I'm automatically on the side of the mammal. Extrapolating that out, I'm probably a racist. |
2024 | If doing something makes you feel good, but it causes you to feel worse later, that thing is emotionally uneconomical. Don't do it; it's stupid. If doing something makes you feel bad, but it causes you to feel better later, that thing is emotionally economical. Do it; it's smart. |
2024 | MORALITY for logical minds: There may be no such thing as morality. Its existence cannot be proven or disproven. It may be no more than a useful fiction. But IF it exists, THEN we can figure out what it is by critical thinking, without reference to any supposed authority. Most people think morality is based on that which brings the most happiness/wellbeing to the most creatures on earth. I agree, but It depends on what is meant by happiness/wellbeing. Wellbeing is ambiguous. It can mean: 1. that which causes a being to live longer 2. that which causes a being to be as happy as possible for however long it lives If #1, then being unhappy for a century is better than being happy for a year. I would say it is clearly better to be happy for ANY amount of time than to be UNhappy for ANY amount of time. BUT ... everyone has both happiness* and unhappiness. What if Joe has a little more happiness than unhappiness for his duration of existence, and Bob has a LOT more happiness than unhappiness? e.g. Joe has a ratio of 60% happiness to 40% unhappiness, and Bob has 90% happiness to 10% unhappiness. Bob has a happier life, if they live the same amount of time. BUT ... What if Joe lives for a century, and Bob lives for a year? Then Joe has 60 units of happiness for his total lifetime, and Bob has 9 units of happiness. Still, anyone who does the math would rather be Bob. Joe also has 40 units of unhappiness for his total lifetime, and Bob has 1 unit of unhappiness. Clearly the RATIO of happiness to unhappiness is more important than the AMOUNT of happiness or unhappiness seen separately. It can actually be formulated: Value of life = ratio of happiness over unhappiness multiplied by duration of existence. Joe's value of life = 60/40 = 3/2. Bob's value of life = 90/10 = 9. Both are positive numbers, so both had lives worth living, but Bob's was much better. If Joe's ratio is reversed, 40/60, then his value of life is 2/3. If Bob's ratio is reversed, 10/90, then his value of life is 1/9. 2/3 and 1/9 are both less than 1. If your ratio of happiness over unhappiness is greater than 1, your life was worth living. If your ratio of happiness over unhappiness is less than 1, your life was not worth living. If we're talking morality, it's not just about Joe & Bob; it's about all sentient creatures on earth. Morality is [should be] based on the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the world [more correctly the universe]. A moral act is one which increases the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe. An IMmoral act is one which DEcreases the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe. ----------------------------- *HAPPINESS/UNHAPPINESS, in this context, is defined as that which causes a sentient being to either like or dislike existing in that emotional state. You can call it enjoyment if you want. The concept is what matters, not the term. ' |
2024 | Men imagine a forgiving God so they can continue doing things worthy of punishment. |
2024 | If you do something illegal, then you owe a legal debt. If you deliberately do something you believe to be immoral, then you owe a moral debt. A legal debt is paid when the creditor is paid, regardless of who pays it. A moral debt is paid when the debtor pays what he owes. A person who incurs a legal debt because of ignorance, or circumstances beyond his control, has not incurred a moral debt, and deserves to be forgiven. A person who incurs a moral debt deserves to be forced to pay it. Forgiving him may benefit the forgiver, but the debtor does not deserve forgiveness. |
2024 | The first American Civil War was over privilege vs. morality. The second will likely be the same. |
2024 | Any rational atheist can figure out morality.
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2024 | Non-dogmatic atheism is epistemically identical to non-dogmatic theism. The only differences are the degree of probability subjectively assigned to a God, and the decision to bet one way or the other. |
2024 | When theists finally figure out the superiority of non-dogmatic theism (probably after I'm dead), the dumber of them, as well as their anti-theistic opponents, are likely to call it Cookism, thus degrading it to the ranks of any other authoritarian religion. This statement is intended to prevent that. |
2024 | FAITH can be defined so broadly as to include all probability judgment, in which case, not only does science use it, but we all use it every conscious minute. Or faith can be defined so narrowly as to mean believing irrational (sometimes impossible) things. Or faith can be defined in a range between those extremes. |
2024 | Believing a God exists, or not believing it should not be a matter of willful choice; it should be a matter of epistemic judgment of data, totally apart from emotion. The body of data (amount of logic known, evidence seen, experience had) is contantly growing. If one side is noticeably greater than the other at any given time, a rational mind automatically believes the side that's greater. But it never COMMITS to that side, because the weight of data could change with discovery of new data. Commitment to a worldview or ideology is abandonment of truth seeking. That being said, emotional attachment to the apparently greater side is pragmatically justified, and honorable as long as the greater side remains greater. Emotion becomes unjustified and dishonorable when it allows one to ignore a change in data balance. |
2024 | Given infinite time, random data will necessarily evolve clumps of data that self-replicate. Such clumps will necessarily create many clumps that devolve, and a few clumps that evolve in complexity. Though it can't be known if a Supreme Clump started it all, clumps will continue to evolve in complexity until a clump evolves that can create a universe. |
2024 | You can never sell a subjective probability judgment to an ideological opponent. |
2024 | In order for a fact (or a lie) to be communicated from one mind to another, it must be expressed in a language sufficiently precise to articulate it, and understood by both minds. Ambiguities in that language must be disambiguated, but don't need to be totally removed. They just need to be removed enough that the expressed fact (lie) is understood by both minds. Any epistemic precision beyond that point is unnecessary, and can make the statement too complex or tedious to be understood. |
2024 | I'm no longer looking for purpose. I already have enough purpose for 10 people my size. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's imaginary. |
2024 | Insufficient reason to not be an asshole is sufficient reason to be an asshole. |
2024 | Given: 1. the existence of minds 2. a potentially infinite amount of time is it not reasonable to conclude that minds can evolve so far as to be able to create universes? |
2024 | Which came first: the universe or the mind? |
2024 | I cannot prove, but am sufficiently convinced, that a God to whom we are accountable exists and is able to correct our errors about his/its nature, and is willing to correct such errors if asked. I am further convinced that all scripture-based religions are mind-viruses, which though beneficial for some people at some times and places, are no longer beneficial to humanity in general, and will become increasingly harmful if not effectively countered. I think atheism is better than these religions for anyone who can handle atheism without falling into nihilism or despair. For the rest of us, non-dogmatic theism is a perfect antidote to any scripture virus, and is definitely more correct. I think this after decades of persistent request for correction of error. If you are a theist, and refuse to ask for correction of error, I accuse you of spiritual cowardice. |
2024 | Free will doesn't imply ability to walk thru walls, or have what you want. It just means you can choose among possible options. |
2024 | The Milky Way Galaxy is inside the KBC void (1,000,000,000 across) the biggest gap in space that we know about. (ref: Astro Alexandra). If we are created by a God, he/it apparently doesn't want our species contaminating anything beyond our galaxy - and/or any extra-galactic aliens messing with us. |
2024 | The problem with Pascal's wager is not that there is anything wrong or irrational about betting on the most probable option, or the option with the lowest risk to reward ratio. The problem is assuming that some particular option IS that option, without either statistics to establish probability, or knowledge of the actual risk and reward. Pascal's wager works just as well for Islam as Christianity. And it would work even better for some option that imagined something worse than eternal hell. If Pascal had followed his own logic to its conclusion, he would have admitted that non-statistical probability judgment is subjective, and that sound probability judgment is adversely affected by emotion. |
2024 | Religion is necessary. If you can't recognize BS, you have to evolve thru it. |
2024 | Just to make it perfectly clear, I have absolutely NO respect for anyone who would vote for Trump in 2024. |
2024 | Religion is spiritually transmitted disease. |
2024 | DIRECTION You can never know if you're going in the right spiritual or philosophical direction, because:
HAPPINESS/UNHAPPINESS, in this context, is defined as that which causes a sentient being to either like or dislike existing in that emotional state. You can call it enjoyment, satisfaction, whatever you want. The concept is what matters, not the term. You can also know if you're TRYING your best to go in the right direction. If you're trying your best, you know it; If you're NOT, you know it. If you try your best, and it produces bad consequences, does that mean you should quit trying your best? Maybe. It may mean you should keep trying, but not your best. Or it may mean you should try some other direction. Experiment. Try theism, atheism, different kinds of theism. Even if you don't know which direction is right, you still know if you're trying to find it, or if you've settled for some dogmatic assertion that a particular direction is right. Most people prefer the latter, even though they know they are deceiving or trying to deceive themselves. Those of us who refuse to try to deceive ourselves are stuck in agnosticism. But we can still know if we are doing our best. And we can know that those who do their best to do what is right deserve reward. There is great confidence and comfort in that knowledge, no matter how much life sucks. And we can know that after we die, if we wake up in another body, and some panel of Moses-looking judges accuses us of doing life wrong, or betting on the wrong god, or whatever, we can look them all straight in the eye and say, "I did the best I could with what I was given. I asked for correction of errors repeatedly. Where the fuck were you?" |
2024 | Democracy just elected autocracy. Only the midterms can save it. |
2024 | The problem with made up meaning is that we KNOW it's made up. Therefore it doesn't satisfy our desire for OBJECTIVE meaning. We can TRY to deny the existence of objective meaning, and content ourselves with whatever made up meaning we choose. Maybe that's possible. I don't know. I only know it didn't work for me. Therefore I had to work my way thru religious mind-viruses. Objective meaning of life implies that entities that participate in life (to whatever degree) will either find it better than non-existence, or find a way to GET to life that's better than non-existence, and STAY THERE at least long enough to justify the unpleasantness we had to endure getting there. Jumping several steps forward, I propose that non-dogmatic theism is the most likely (if not only) POSSIBILITY of getting there. And possibility is all that's available to any of us on the human level of existence. |
2024 | I wrote this in response to the question, "What good is your religion?". My religion, non-dogmatic theism, is good for these things: It's perfectly rational (as is non-dogmatic atheism). Assuming common sense probability judgment, it is more likely to be correct than any dogmatic religion (including dogmatic atheism). It offers an alternative to nihilism without imposing a dogmatic set of rules. It has no scripture, priesthood, clergy, or liturgy. It requires no money. It allows for a rational morality that can evolve with human understanding It has no chosen people. It will eliminate religious wars to the degree to which religionists adopt it. It is figured out, rather than revealed, believed, or made up. It can be figured out gradually by increments, therefore does not require immediate conversion from one's previous religion. It is supported by all of the classical arguments for God. It doesn't require abandoning all dogmas at once. You can drop them as you outgrow them. |
2024 | I deny that slavery is inherently immoral in principle. e.g. If Joe steals $1,000. from Bob, and can't pay back all or part of it, then it is moral to enslave Joe until his debt is paid, or until Bob forgives him - assuming there are no extraneous variables (what ifs). |
2024 | A Supreme Being is a legitimate philosophical possibility. An afterlife, and a god in charge of who gets what are both epistemically possible. That's ALL we have. From there, we can experiment to see which, if any, version of God appears most probable, and which, if any, is worth caring about. |
2024 | My fellow truth seekers, We are born into a world designed by fools, liars, and thieves for fools, liars, and thieves. Most learn nothing from history; the last election proved it. We don't belong here. Maybe we don't belong anywhere. Maybe a world of nothing but predators and prey is all life has to offer. Maybe there is nothing to hope for but promotion to the next rung on the predator ladder. If so, fuck life. Fuck the fools, the liars, the thieves, and their gods, and their versions of God. I hope to be done with it ASAP. Don't worry; I'm not suicidal. There may even be punishment for that. I just hope to pump as much truth as possible into the Metaverse, just in case life is somehow justified. |
2024 | Morality cannot be defined if preference for family is part of the definition. |
2024 | Subjective morality obviously exists; but that doesn't mean objective morality DOESN'T exist. There is no category of acts (e.g. murder) is always immoral, or that charity or empathy is always moral. My defense of objective morality is that the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe is an objective concept. Whatever that ratio is at any given time is an objective fact. Willful acts that affect that ratio exist objectively. Intention to affect that ratio also exist objectively in whatever mind is doing the intending. These 2 things exist objectively:
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2024 | God (i.e. a Supreme Being) is not the only thing that cannot be proven to exist or not exist. Other such things are: uniformity of nature, other universes, free will, morality, altruism, spirit, afterlife, dimensions beyond what science has yet discovered. I'm sure there are more. Note that none of these things are axiomatic, like geometric axioms. But some are asserted to be epistemically necessary (e.g. God, free will) by some people. And the existence (or not) of some of these things is dogmatically asserted for emotional reasons. |
2024 | All dogmatic assumptions require an amount of faith inversely proportional to their perceived probability. |
2024 | There's no point in arguing with a dogmatist. You just have to wait until they get tired of faking knowledge. |
2024 | "Is this God communicating, or all in my mind?" is a question I've been dealing with for over 50 years, with inconclusive results. I have seen much apparent communication, but nothing that could not be dismissed as coincidence, or psychologically induced. The desire to be done with this obnoxious question one way or the other causes people to dogmatically insist on their chosen conclusion one way or the other, thus splitting them into 2 antagonistic camps. Agnosticism is the only honest position I've found on this issue. But if I claim to KNOW it can't be known, I become just another dogmatist. |
2024 | I think minority rights will necessarily be in conflict with majority welfare. I don't think there's a "happy middle". A "mutually acceptable middle" is even hard to find. I see no political solution, because humans simply suck. The problem is greed: desiring more than you deserve. The only resolution I have found is to accept the ratio of happiness over unhappiness in the universe as the objective standard for morality. |
2024 | If you persistently ask God (Jesus if you prefer) to correct your thinking on theological matters, it is my experience that after a decade or so, you will be sufficiently convinced that he has done so. And if you still have heretical opinions, they won't bother you. |
2024 | A lot of people see that I'm right, but they refuse to agree with me because they don't want to become like me. I understand that. I'm an intractable truth bigot who despises most of humanity. I could be a much better salesman for my position just by pretending to be happy & certain. But I refuse, mostly because I don't want to become like the liars who sold me Christianity by pretending to be happy & certain. |
2024 | I don't need to believe there's a judgment after death. I'm CERTAIN that there MIGHT be one. And that's enough. |
2024 | The so called "correspondence theory of truth" is not a theory; it's an axiom. Verbiage is meaningless without it. Truth is a relationship between a statement and reality such that the statement corresponds to reality, or any part of reality. A statement that does that is true. Some people don"t like to be bound by truth, so they call correspondence a theory, and propose a competing theory, such as coherence. But it should be obvious that coherent statements are not necessarily true. For any set of coherent statements, any number of them can be false. Coherence is, at best, something to fall back on if correspondence cannot be established. Some theists like to depart even further from rationality by proposing that God is truth - a "theological theory of truth" though they would not call it that. This is absurd. Even if there exists an eternal Supreme Being who created the first created thing, that Being would not be truth. Even if it never says anything untrue, or somehow has a monopoly on truth, it would not BE truth. No mind can espouse this "theory" and remain rational, despite the fact that many rational theists CLAIM to believe it. Even if they are perfectly rational about everything else, they are not rational about that. |
2024 | A dogma becomes no more true if repeated an infinite number of times. When is a dogma be repeated enough times to convince a fool? When he repeats it to others as though it were true. |
2024 | I don't know if I'm right. But I know I'm TRYING to be right. I don't know if that's enough. But I know that if it's not enough, there's no such thing as right. |
2025 | Science accomplishes impressive things, because scientists build on the work of their predecessors and collaborate with their contemporaries. They can say, 'I did X, and got Y results consistently.' All of it can be tested, and either verified or falsified. Old models are replaced by better ones; less correct theories by more correct ones. Progress happens. Why can't theology do that? Well, technically it does, but PAINFULLY SLOWLY. Just evolving from animism thru polytheism to monotheism took millennia. Reasons are too obvious, and too many to be worth listing. Mainly, few theologians even CARE about truth; they care about selling their chosen dogmas as truth. They don't even WANT their dogmas tested; they want them believed, usually without question. They use logic and evidence only when they point to desired conclusions, and all of it in OBEDIENCE to their perceived God, who wants flattery more than honesty. Can a theologian say, "I did X, and got Y results consistently"? Yes, but not much. When I was a young Christian, I was told that praying for patience caused increased patience trials. I tried it; it did. ... Maybe it was just coincidence, but it APPEARED to be a repeatable experiment that got consistent results. I also read books by such people as Theresa of Avila, and John of the Cross, and found their testimonies less reliable. Over the decades, I've found many apparent consistencies. But who cares? Why should anyone believe me, since most theologians are shameless liars? Still, I have found some theologians who appear to be somewhat honest - at least about the appearance of what they experienced. I want to find more such people. Theology is long overdue for a major upgrade. |
2025 | ' |