Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Like the pivot on a set of infinite scales. Where do you separate them?
hatred for being an atheist
- Thread starter Hepheastus420
- Start date
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
That only happens in the empirical world. Each infinity 'knows' its boundary and has pushed through. Did I just say that out loud?
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Back to where they started.
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
To Mansions "houses" that were expressing the idea of dimensions. Cool sht
Beefbisquit
Well-Known Member
Impossible. I already stated that 'nothing' is void of space and time. In order for there to be 'nothing', there would be no universe, or even pre-universe. When talking about things in existence, we have to assume we exist, and we have to assume the people we are interacting with exist or else there's no point to any discourse. If someone hands you an empty bucket, you would be easily convinced that there is 'nothing' in the bucket. It doesn't mean there's no air in the bucket, or dust, or particles, or that there is a the philosophical, abstract, concept of nothing in the bucket. To pretend otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
When we discuss the 'lack of belief' that is atheism, it doesn't mean atheists have no beliefs at all, to pretend so is also intellectually dishonest. It only means the burden of proof has not been met to formulate a belief in the existence in god. Get it through your head, man!
Here you go again, redefining what 'god' means. The goalposts are just fine where they are, thanks.
If god is only a concept then he bears no weight on reality, and should be treated as such, i.e. no one should follow any religion or religious dogma because god is fictional. Also, if god is only an abstract concept, and doesn't exist within the tangible realm of the universe, why would anyone follow his moral code anyway? The consequences for disobedience would be fake, and so would the rewards for compliance. It would, by default, be man-made and would fall into the same 'non-cosmically objective' category that atheistic moral values are seated in.
Can't 'cop out'? Even if god, as you claim, is just a concept and not a tangible thing, that doesn't mean I have to have a belief in the ideology behind it.
If everyone in existence thought along those lines, that god is only a concept, it would eliminate theists and atheists, because there would be no claim to knowledge or claim of belief, about gods existence as everyone would agree he didn't exist. An interesting thought experiment, but it isn't congruent with reality and the claim that 'god exists' is very alive and well, hence the rejection of that belief, e.g. atheism.
Atheist literally means non-theist. If you are not a theist, for any reason, you are atheist.
If you hand me a glass of water and I claim the water is 'not cold', does that mean the water is hot? No, it doesn't. It's simply the rejection of the idea that the water is cold, it makes no further assertions about what the water is, or isn't. You are making an assumption about belief based on what someone doesn't believe, but it doesn't necessarily follow that non-belief is belief in the opposite.
Hepheastus420
Well-Known Member
Who said they have no beliefs? many of us said we don't believe in god, but what does that have to do with not having any beliefs?
I like facts because they stand true whether you believe them or not.. for everybody. I have beliefs.. I believe gravity exists, see?
I agree with you on this post.. Not sure why you think we're saying we have no beliefs.
Heisenberg
Well-Known Member
As my link explained: The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator.In my "eagerness to belittle"I see I was correct in assuming hypocrisy would be left at the door of your argument. Or perhaps you do see the hypocrisy, but like other intellectual narcissists, simply can't help yourself. "The Glacier" - or rather, how it came to be adopted as your moniker - certainly explains a lot.
The defining characterstic of the narcisist is that they only see the beauty in themselves. They may well have cause to admire their own endowments, but sadly, that fails to translate to the wider world around them. Isolated (though perfectly happy in their own company), and with a lack of empathy or any real connect to those around them, they appear to flounder in their own discourse: never quite addressing the needs of others, but rather, constantly trying to satisfying their own. After all, who is more important?
The world is indeed a sphere (it's not really a circle - that's a bit two dimensional), and hence what you are really describing is an ecosphere. This site is an ecosphere. An ecosphere within an ecosphere. And so, while it is all good and well to proletise about the interconnectedness of life (true), it's really just a homily that fails to address the social dynamics of this site and your own status amongst the fanboys.
Why is that important? Because for obfuscation to have its desired effect - much like your example above seems intended to do - you need to speak from an air of authority in the first place. Otherwise it's not obfuscation - it's just white noise.
It's an example of "let's throw everything out there" (you accuse me of "Gish galloping"? LOL! < not too old to use that) and hope it will suitably baffle the unintiated to the point of acquiescence.
That may work in circle jerk, but not in the wider ecosphere.
Anyway, enough of the ad hominem argument (only joking - the "belittling" never really ends, does it? Though I'm sure you don't feel belittled at all - so I'll use it tongue-in-cheek, seeing as you're not shy of it yourself . . .). Lobbing a few conflicting conceptual quotes does not an argument make. None of those ideas are yours and, as you have failed to quantify anything other than repeating the odd dated construct, you haven't actually explained what YOUR position is.
You seem to be insinuating - or asserting - that I am either an epistemological nihilist (an oxymoron, in my opinion), or simply someone who doesn't know how to read a dictionary.
I know what the literal definitions of words are (in their current meaning), so it's a bit of a waste of time trying to reiterate them (as most before you seem preoccupied with).
But what is so hard to understand about the dismissal of "God" - in whatever form (I'm repeating myself again) - as being an act of faith ("belief") in and of itself?
You say you have no beliefs (maybe you don't - you haven't expressly explained your own position). I say that is a belief itself. A "certainty" in the minds of those who prepose. You (they) are no different to those who profess to believe.
* I was going to address your other apparent pre-occupation with precultural Marxism, but as it's been many years - many - since I stopped reading Marx and started living him (admittedly post-cultural Marxism with Chinese characteristics), I'm kinda over it. I'm glad you enjoy Gibson. I'm not quite sure what classist socialist theory has to do with instrinsic belief systems, but I'm sure you will take the time to explain. Or maybe not.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Didn't click the link. Sorry. My bad.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Really? (Not forgetting, of course, "space-time" is a single entity - they're not separate.) Can you please explain to us all: what is left in the absence of space and time?
If space-time is ever-expanding - as modern physicists (and by proxy, you, I assume) believe - what is it expanding into?
Just because there is an absence of space-time, does that mean there is really nothing - the absence of anything?
If you can't define "nothing" - which you clearly can't - then how on earth do you even begin to rationalise its properties? Or lack of properties, as it were.
Please don't pretend you know what "nothing" is. You don't.
Hang on. I'm not about to tell you what YOU believe. But if the so-called "Big Bang" - or any other universe-creating phenomena - happened, how do you explain the absence of nothing? (You like that oxymoron?)Beefbisquit said:
How can you have "something" without "nothing" to compare it to?
^ This is exactly the same as your "apples" and "non-apples" analogy? So if you don't believe your OWN analogy, then perhaps you really do believe my theory in the possibility of nothing and something being the same thing . . .
It's the only other alternative, by your logic - isn't it?
You talk as if I don't get what you're saying - and yet you contradict yourself every step of the way . . .Beefbisquit said:
I never said atheists have no belief at all:
If you are denying there is enough proof to form a belief, then you are putting your belief into the lack of proof.Prawn Connery said:
Do you not get that? It takes an element of belief to deny a belief in the first place.
There may be ample proof to form a belief (or not) in the existence of "God", but you either choose to dismiss it (a belief), form an opinion there is not enough proof (a belief), or simply don't think (believe) you have enough knowledge - in which case you don't have enough proof to form a valid view that there is not enough proof and are therefore making a conscious decision to form a view in the absence of anything to quantify it (a belief!).
You don't know what "God" means any more than I do. Don't pretend otherwise. It's not convincing.Beefbisquit said:
EVERYTHING is a concept until it is proven (in your empirical world).
eye exaggerate is the only one who has mentioned empiricism so far - he gets it. And if someone else gets it, then perhaps I'm not as "off my rocker" as some here have suggested . . .
No they wouldn't. If you hold a concept, then you believe in its possibility (however likely or unlikely).Beefbisquit said:
That's what a concept is.
Bang your head all you want, because that's not what I'm saying.Beefbisquit said:If you hand me a glass of water and I claim the water is 'not cold', does that mean the water is hot? No, it doesn't. It's simply the rejection of the idea that the water is cold, it makes no further assertions about what the water is, or isn't. You are making an assumption about belief based on what someone doesn't believe, but it doesn't necessarily follow that non-belief is belief in the opposite.
Non-belief IS a belief. < You want to debate that? Because that's what I've been saying - ad nauseam - so I'm not quite sure how you reached the "opposite" conclusion . . .
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
INTERMISSION
[video=youtube;fo5c8Qplfco]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo5c8Qplfco[/video]
[video=youtube;fo5c8Qplfco]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo5c8Qplfco[/video]
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
You're reading into something that's not there.
I don't want to be churlish, because after what you've been through and sound like you will continuing to go through, you are obviously conflicted (and I mean emotionally, in regards to your family, not your position on being atheist - or whatever it is you now believe).
If it's any consolation, threads like this prove so-called atheists can be just as closed-minded and damning of beliefs as so-called theists can be closed-minded and damning of non-beliefs. That's why I originally wrote that people who take opposing views - and who try to propagate and/or defend those views - are really just one and the same. They use the same arguments, logic and rational to try to refute each other and can rarely bring themselves to see things from the other side. It's ego, pride, fallibility, the human condition - whatever you want to call it.
I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as fraud - Jung
Well, waddayaknow - that Postmodernism Generator works a treat . . .
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
^ that's fckd up, I am reading Jung beside this tab and I was just going to post some.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
[video=youtube;njJr09msGOo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njJr09msGOo[/video]
You're only one small speck in space
You're only one life, soon erased
Be there none left on Earth but you
One thing will still remain true:
Look around . . . You're only five yards from a fuckwit . . .
You're only one small speck in space
You're only one life, soon erased
Be there none left on Earth but you
One thing will still remain true:
Look around . . . You're only five yards from a fuckwit . . .
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
"The attitude called for in this approach is one of receptivity rather than intentionally directed activity—more yin than yang. What is generally referred to as ego functioning is to be avoided in favor of letting the thoughts think themselves. Rather than the active application of a particular theoretical framework, the strategy is more one of an unreserved attention to the unfolding of the thought at the essential core of the phenomenon.
This unfolding typically has the form of an uroboric process. It has many of the features of the dialectical process of thought described by G.W.F Hegel in his Science of Logic. In such a process, thought moves through a series of steps in which each step is found wanting in some respect and is therefore subject to a negation. The original starting point, the prima materia, is thus negated, but at the same time it is carried forward in a logically more complex or sublated form. Gradually, through a series of such iterations, including a “negation of the negation,” the logical structure or absolute negativity of the phenomenon is revealed, or as Giegerich sometimes puts it, it is “released into its truth.” At some point, the analysis may negate even its own negativity and in so doing consciousness posits itself via or as some “other,” an other completely independent of itself, that is, in the status of positivity. It should be noted that whatever “truth” is revealed is relative to its own dialectical unfolding; it is not a universal Platonic truth or a truth in the sense of a scientific finding. When there seems to be no more thought “thinking itself out,” the process has reached its completion; however, the understanding acquired may now constitute a new position, a new prima materia, from which the process may start over, perhaps with a different emphasis."
This unfolding typically has the form of an uroboric process. It has many of the features of the dialectical process of thought described by G.W.F Hegel in his Science of Logic. In such a process, thought moves through a series of steps in which each step is found wanting in some respect and is therefore subject to a negation. The original starting point, the prima materia, is thus negated, but at the same time it is carried forward in a logically more complex or sublated form. Gradually, through a series of such iterations, including a “negation of the negation,” the logical structure or absolute negativity of the phenomenon is revealed, or as Giegerich sometimes puts it, it is “released into its truth.” At some point, the analysis may negate even its own negativity and in so doing consciousness posits itself via or as some “other,” an other completely independent of itself, that is, in the status of positivity. It should be noted that whatever “truth” is revealed is relative to its own dialectical unfolding; it is not a universal Platonic truth or a truth in the sense of a scientific finding. When there seems to be no more thought “thinking itself out,” the process has reached its completion; however, the understanding acquired may now constitute a new position, a new prima materia, from which the process may start over, perhaps with a different emphasis."
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
LOL! Don't freak out too much. It was generated by that other Postmodernism Generator - the RIU Sprituality & Sexuality & Philosophy poster. To wit . . . I mean, fuckwit . . . yours truly.
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
Too bad, would have been nice to document such a happening happening
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
I'm glad you're more than five yards away . . .
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
5 1/4. AND the other quarter is pretty green as well
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Someone else here said we can't influence the things around us - that we can't just "think of something, and make it so". And yet, our entire life is proof of it.Too bad, would have been nice to document such a happening happening