Feeling Stupid. . . . . .

[_SPG]

A couple of years ago I got kicked off the Staylds group for calling out people who used logical fallacies, and admitted to using them and were proud of it, to defend the Mormon faith and encourage others to believe.

The conversations are embarrassing. At least they should be. When one knowingly has to use logical fallacies to make sense of their religion it should be over?

Personally, I think when one has devolved to where the only thing that can make faith or god work in this life is blatant logical fallacy theories and philosophy, its time to move on.

One of the most profound moments of the TV series "Bones" is when Zach (a highly logical if perhaps socially slow assistant) helped the villain Gormogon (a cannibalistic killer) because his logic was sound.

I've read through many of the published "fallacies" and found them very lacking in depth. I know that sounds egotistical, but I have my reasons. Faith has often triumphed where logic has failed. I considered myself logical, but I also admit that I look at things differently. People are talking Chess when the game is 3 dimensional chess. (Star Trek thing, I believe.)

Fallacies can be functional. Like, "Enemy of my enemy is my friend." Of course that is BS but is highly functional.

[_cwald]

I've read through many of the published "fallacies" and found them very lacking in depth.

I am sure you do.

I had a coworker approach me at the water cooler a couple of months ago and wanted to debate whether the world was flat or round. His arguments sounded very much like yours from this thread. SPG, do you think the world is flat if you believe it is? Is the shape of the earth relative?

This guy wouldn't use reason, logic or scientific facts...just simply wanted to argue because he wanted to believe in something that was absurd to most normal reasonable people. Sometimes I feel like these conversations about faith and god, and particularly Mormonism are the same.

ETA

OMG. Nevermind. Just found this in Tel Kingdom. Thank you for making my point without even trying.

SPG Wrote: A famous and popular fact. The Earth is round. But, the gravity the that shapes the earth is flat basically everywhere on the surface. So, the earth is flat or round, based on your point of reference. The magnetic field is kind of doughnut shaped. And even what we call round is more oval. And what is round in a 2 dimensional holoflax universe (based on government report?)

Everything we think is a fact, is just a group consensus. And a billion people can wrong, just as easy as one. Because it is often the "one" that educates the other 7 billion.

[_SPG]

OMG. Nevermind. Just found this in Tel Kingdom. Thank you for making my point without even trying.

LMAO I thought that Flat Earth comment might raise some eyebrows. Honestly, I wasn't sure what that was all about, but now that you point it out, your friend has a point. I have been saying this years ago. How we see the world is a matter of perspective.

You probably remember some of my arguments from way back. While reading some theories of quantum physics, some scientists were describing the earth as some sort of crazy 8 shape, where if you knew what you doing you could step from here to China.

So I used the phrase, "we used to think the Earth was flat, and then we used to think it was round." Basically meaning, our perspective changes even though we really, really, think that we are right about our current perspective.

So, you can say the earth is round, but I say you don't have enough perspective, or enough information, to make that claim. At best, it is a good guess and commonly accepted belief. There is, even within our current imagination, potentially other dimensions that would change how we see the planet.

My comment, that "gravity is flat" is a current physics concept, (I think) and is an expression of the amount of how the force is applied.

My point, and I think the point of your friend, is that there isn't just one answer for the shape of the earth. Perspectives are reality, and there can be many perspectives. For the People of America, the Earth is round. For the grey aliens, that seems to fold space, maybe it has a different shape. Just because you have a system and consensus doesn't mean your perspective is the only functional one.

[_SPG]

Historians have made strong arguments that the rise of Christianity in Roman and it's spread throughout Europe had a decaying effect rather than expansive effect. The renaissance is what it is in large measure for the accompanying enlightenment that involved coming up out of the smothering influence of extreme God-belief.

This was another bad argument that a little bit of rigor and inquiry would have helped prevent.

I'm not sure how the power of Christian religion vs Chinese religion applies to this. I agree that the Chinese have been the cultural and political power for the dominate part of human history.

But we have been talking about "influence" of Gods. Christians are really just pagans that wanted in on the promise of the Hebrew god. We were to be adopted in because salvation was based on being of the seed of Abraham.

The Chinese had gods of their own. They have Buddhism, but they came only 500 before Christ. They were great in their own way, but they also suffered from, and still suffer from, major political corruption.

The Chinese gods were more about power, blessings, ideals. The Christian god was largely about guilt and the management of it.

In the End, it was European Christians that influenced much of the modern world. Are we better, or are our gods stronger? The Chinese people are stronger in many ways, but we still dominate.

[_honorentheos]

I'm not sure what your post showed you understand the least: the history of the world or the history of religion in China. Maybe the history of Hebrew religion if the hints you dropped are in fact reflective of your views on the history of the middle east...I'm not sure what you think the state of religion was in the area around Palestine in 500 BCE but I suspect it would be an illuminating journey for your mind to find out.

Look SPG, I'm sure you're a decent person in real life. But you just keep saying things like they pop into your head and out your finger tips through your keyboard with no regard for fact checking yourself or exercising a degree of personal skepticism directed inward. This radical skeptic-turned-pragmatic theist bit is a step towards becoming solipsistic. One who levels all of reality and fantasy into the same thing become capable of differentiating only one thing separately: themselves. And that's a psychological terror ride to climb on.

[_honorentheos]

Thor is a process that occurs in human brains. That a process in the human brain can affect other processes in the human brain is neither magical nor mysterious. We give labels to these processes like Thor, Santa, and God and treat them as if the labels are real things, equating them to my coffee table, which exists regardless of brain processes. Confusing the two is not some deep insight. It’s just confusion.

Hey Res. I should say I don't really agree with this, either, to be fair. I don't think it's exactly correct to claim Thor or some other definition is a process in our brains in a way that "coffee table" isn't. I would argue the difference is how we develop the understanding of what it means for something to be a coffee table compared to something to be Thor. I can learn about coffee tables by running across one and observing it with no direct human explanation or even really needing to observe people using one. I can't do that with the concept of Thor. It takes people to tell us about Thor, associate this concept with other concepts and sensory stimuli, etc., for us to develop a generally comparable understanding of what the concept of Thor might be that we can then share and derive cultural benefits from if that were our thing. It becomes a mental process only when certain mental processes are stimulated by sensory inputs that trigger "Thor" or "coffee table". What happens in our brains with the two is much more similar, which provides folks like SPG the basis for the woo-woo of the Deepak variety: "Eternal stillness co creates unbridled balance" . That was what the internet gave me to enlighten my mind when I clicked here: http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/

Simply put, the woo-woo comes from real issues with the mind and how we create reality through those processes but then confuse this with the different means of informing those processes. in my opinion, anyway.

ETA: Along those lines - https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how ... us_reality

[_SPG]

I'm not sure what your post showed you understand the least: the history of the world or the history of religion in China. Maybe the history of Hebrew religion if the hints you dropped are in fact reflective of your views on the history of the middle east...I'm not sure what you think the state of religion was in the area around Palestine in 500 BCE but I suspect it would be an illuminating journey for your mind to find out.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of things that I understand less. My point was while was a stable and powerful, compared to perhaps the Europe BC cultures. My extensive knowledge of China religious history might be limited to Kung Fu and subtitles, but it was my understanding that even though there were many factions, many people had common beliefs.

Look SPG, I'm sure you're a decent person in real life. But you just keep saying things like they pop into your head and out your finger tips through your keyboard with no regard for fact checking yourself or exercising a degree of personal skepticism directed inward. This radical skeptic-turned-pragmatic theist bit is a step towards becoming solipsistic. One who levels all of reality and fantasy into the same thing become capable of differentiating only one thing separately: themselves. And that's a psychological terror ride to climb on.

honorentheos, you are being really generous thinking I'm decent, but I appreciate it.

I had to look up the word "solipsistic" but you nailed it. The only thing we can know is self. When you see a dog, you are not really seeing a dog, you are interpreting data coming to your senses and there are hundreds of points where you could mess it up. And once the idea gets to your brain, its not the real dog in there, it's your concept of the dog. And basically, what appears to be a dog out there, is really just your interpretation.

So knowing self, is really all you can know. But, this is why people like me can easily claim that we are God, because there is a place within us all where we sort of connect and become one. I will not go into the many experiences that I have had that supports this, but I think that much of the Biblical teachings point to this.

I have created theoretical models that explain some of this. For example, there was the experiment that government did on some monkeys living on islands. The monkeys were starving, so humans brought in sweet potatoes. The monkeys hated the dirt on yams, but one day an elder she-monkey walked into the water and washed it off. Very quickly, all the monkeys on the other islands were washing their yams. I think they labeled this the M-force, (and I'm sure you will correct me on something here) and it was concluded there was some sort of subconscious link in the minds of the monkeys.

There are thousands of examples of humans discovering groundbreaking ideas at the same time in different places.

All of this, what if there is a conscious core within us that isn't really ours, but rather we are child of it? What if it is eternal, but has requirements of us if it going to sustain us eternally? I've seen first hand what happens when the conscious/subconscious barrier slips and what is in the depths comes up. It's crazy down there. But, it's in all of us. If you dug deep enough, you would find the thoughts of your neighbor in there. Maybe you created them, maybe you read them. But our feelings about others are based either on an actual subconscious link to them, or a recreation of them in our mind. Either way, it's not actually them, it's our interpretation of them.

And the psychology terror ride? That's not what scares me. It's my own inability to manage actual trauma. Sort of has me on places like this BSing with people.

[_Dr Exiled]

For me, belief in church nonsense would be fine if tangible money weren't demanded in return for promises that won't be fulfilled until after death. This is the heart of the church con and the heart of the harm it causes. How many have lost their retirement savings based on empty promises of future world glory?

Believe whatever, but don't demand money in exchange for santa claus or flat earth or the "secret" or Mormonism. Also, don't shove the nonsense on the rest of the world, unless tangible proof can be given to show that there are tangible benefits other than simply a state of mind. If I recall, slavery was justified by some by saying that the slave masters were actually good for the slaves and that the slaves were actually better off in slavery than having to take on the responsibility of freedom.

As far as feeling stupid, yes. I also feel a little guilty, ashamed, and a little angry at being forced to spread this nonsense abroad to people that needed to hear how to solve real problems like hunger, instead of p.r., dare to believe nonsense. They didn't need to hear about some magician who riffed on the Bible and tricked a bunch of people to follow him into his sex cult.

[_SPG]

For me, belief in church nonsense would be fine if tangible money weren't demanded in return for promises that won't be fulfilled until after death. This is the heart of the church con and the heart of the harm it causes. How many have lost their retirement savings based on empty promises of future world glory?

Believe whatever, but don't demand money in exchange for santa claus or flat earth or the "secret" or Mormonism. Also, don't shove the nonsense on the rest of the world, unless tangible proof can be given to show that there are tangible benefits other than simply a state of mind. If I recall, slavery was justified by some by saying that the slave masters were actually good for the slaves and that the slaves were actually better off in slavery than having to take on the responsibility of freedom.

As far as feeling stupid, yes. I also feel a little guilty, ashamed, and a little angry at being forced to spread this nonsense abroad to people that needed to hear how to solve real problems like hunger, instead of p.r., dare to believe nonsense. They didn't need to hear about some magician who riffed on the Bible and tricked a bunch of people to follow him into his sex cult.

Exiled, I totally feel you on this. I'm not part of the church though, probably for the reason you mention. I believe in the separation of Church and State, and collecting tithing is too much like collecting taxes. I believe church should provide support to its members, especially its needy members, but the church has one of the world most impressive welfare systems, again, too much like the state.

I can get some of the benefits of church by coming here and talking. But not all of them. I don't have physical community to associate with. The one actual church member that I knew in this area never invited me over to dinner, or even into his house, though he was in mine often enough.

I still value the church. I feel the desire to protect it. But, the "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" is violated with tithing. God is about spirit. Caesar is about state. Taxing the members is really, really far into the Caesar of things. I mean, seriously, a government that can tax its people has been really strong.

As for feeling guilty for selling products you wouldn't use yourself, don't. Very few ideas can stand as an island in a sea of conflicting and opposing ideas. For what its worth, when I find out someone is a Mormon, my "like them" factor goes a lot. I might give a pastor or minister the same like level as most Mormons get. Why? Average Mormons are typically more conscious of the effort to gain salvation.

[_kairos]

Rather than feeling stupid-you are not- you have found your way out of Mormonism and that my freinds is indeed a significant accomplishment!

Sadly there are so many who will never find their way out for lots of reasons and church leaders past and present are responsible to the God I believe in Who says, Woe to them!

just not feeling stupid!

k