For some. For others, it was stolen from the gods. Which might attest to the value they placed on it...
According to the world view you adhere to I am either 'saved' or I am 'corrupt.' There is no middle ground. My humour is often lost on others. This was a self deprecating joke that conforms to your beliefs. I must be this 'corrupt old logician' if I don't believe as you do. There is no other possibility allowed.
This is why I wish you were teaching Sunday school rather than arguing with me here. I would much rather philosophically wrestle with some male counterpart than deal with a beautiful bright female spirit like yours or Alamo Girl. It doesn't seem fair somehow, but the guys are all wimps hiding behind ideas they can't defend and you ladies are letting it all hang out there. I have to admire both of you for that. I love you both in a way you will never know.
And this constitutes evidence, let alone proof – why??? What is the ground for your belief that the “source isn’t ‘out there?’” Do you argue that human insight is useless to human existence?
There is insight, and then, there is insight. There is your insight that it is 'out there' and then there is the Zen insight that there is no 'out there.' Which insight do I believe? You cannot give any evidence of an 'out there' but I have only evidence of a 'here-now.' No matter where you go, you are here-now. All else is deduction, and subsequent, induction. Give me evidence, other than insight which can be contradicted by other insight, that there is an 'out there.'
Why do you say that we would disagree, LogicWings? What evidence do you have in support of that allegation?
Touche' my dear. It is a deduction. From what I have learned of your beliefs, I have concluded so. I could be wrong. Care to define justice? Or do I have to go first?
No howls of protest from me, LogicWings; for you have basically defined the entire idea of goodness – as divinely intended – in the foregoing statement.
Thank you, by your statement I am, at least, not so far 'off the mark.' But my definition of goodness has no 'divine intention' in it. It is pure reason.
Have you ever considered the possibility that the reason that truth is a “practical issue” is because it has a divine (or “mystical,” in your words) source?
Of course, I started there. That is the whole point. That idea doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. The inclusion of 'reason' and 'divine' in the same sentence is a contradiction in terms. I wish it wasn't so, but it is. This is my point. You hold your position in contradiction to reason, but keep trying to use 'reason' to make your point. You can't have it both ways. Either embrace 'reason' or give it up and say, 'I believe this because I want to' and stop trying to find reasons for faith. There aren't any.
If this is not so, then why would innumerable generations of human beings by now continue to be interested in problems of truth?
Because 'truth' is what we survive by. "Truth" is concepts and thoughts that are coherent, are in line, represent, describe, explain, and help a person live, in REALITY !!!
Not Jesus on the cross, not Adam and Eve, not Original Sin, - - - - eating enough tomorrow to survive until the next day. Not being killed by Saddaam. Going to work and earning enough that I don't have to beg at the trough of the public dole to feed my kid. Reality. Reality. Reality. That which you cannot evade, or in doing so, you will die. And as I said before, there is truth and there is truth and there is truth. The Zen Buddhist (which I studied for a long time) believes he knows 'truth' just as much as you do. But somebody is right and somebody is wrong, you cannot both be right at the same time. And then there is Hindus and,God I could go on for hours. I WANTED to know, I been through all this stuff. What if you are all wrong? What if the answer is under your very nose but you are all just too blinded by your beliefs to see?
Circular reasoning???? Yegads, man! If you want circular reasoning, go check out Georg Hegel.
Been there,done that. Mediocre at best.
This is probably the hardest part for a skeptical secularist like yourself to entertain, let alone credit as to having any good purpose. Yet it is precisely this point that I would invite you to try in your meditations.
Don't be so quick to judge me, little girl. I am not a 'skeptical humanist', as if those words have any meaning. You don't know me that well. I have had many years thinking 'out of the box' and you are still inside one of the many boxes that I left years ago.
Well, if something “simply is,” that suggests to me it didn’t get there “out of its own powers.”
Suggestion to you is not evidence to me.
Then again, I think Aristotle was right when he said effects have causes; thus creatures have creators. Just stands to reason, I say.
So now you want to use reason, which you rejected as insufficient to understand deity, to prove deity? So which is it? Reason vs Religion? The name of this thread. You, because you reject reason, can stand on either side of the issue whenever you wish. You can reject reason when it doesn't support your cause and embrace it when it does. Will you be my attorney when I go into court and plead that I didn't steal anything because stealing is a concept based upon evidence and no one can prove that anything that ever happened is true because we don't know the mind of God? There is no where to go from here. Other than, if you believe God will heal your son from diabetes and He doesn't and the child dies, you didn't conform to the laws of reality. Happens every day.
God is “beyond logic” in the precise sense that He is the Source and Standard of logic.
Then God is the source of the very means against Him. Funny, because you are at the point of the founding fathers in their understanding of God.
Reason, the only oracle of man. Reason was considered the ultimate gift from God.
How far we have come.
I must stop for now, LogicWings.
But it is late for me too. And I have more too say, But I will relent. Until tomorrow.
According to the world view you adhere to I am either 'saved' or I am 'corrupt.' There is no middle ground. My humour is often lost on others. This was a self deprecating joke that conforms to your beliefs. I must be this 'corrupt old logician' if I don't believe as you do. There is no other possibility allowed.
LW, I got the joke without you having to explain it to me. As to my “worldview”: What worldview, exactly, do you attribute to me? What, exactly, are these beliefs you attribute to me?
Skipping over some “mushy stuff” [:^)], you -- an apparent devotee of meditation and contemplation -- next observe:
There is insight, and then, there is insight. There is your insight that it is 'out there' and then there is the Zen insight that there is no 'out there.' Which insight do I believe? You cannot give any evidence of an 'out there' but I have only evidence of a 'here-now.' No matter where you go, you are here-now. All else is deduction, and subsequent, induction. Give me evidence, other than insight which can be contradicted by other insight, that there is an 'out there.'
IMHO, LW, you here set up a false dichotomy between my “out there” and your “here now.” There’s not an “either/or” choice to be made between them. My argument maintains that both are "normal" modes of human cognitive experience. Taking a hint from Plato, I see these two, not as irreconcilable opposites, but as two tensional “poles” between which human conscious experience normally takes place and unfolds. Man does not live entirely within the time order of the physical universe is the very point to be made.
And I suspect you already know that – and ought to acknowledge it. For, getting back to that “mushy stuff,” you clearly expressed admiration for a certain individual (please just leave me out of this entirely) that you could not possibly admire unless you were capable of a certain “spiritual vision.” For what you admire in this person are quintessentially spiritual qualities; and, absent spiritual vision, you would not have been able to recognize them. (I see them, too.) So there’s hope for you yet, kiddo. ;^)
If you want to get a handle on how to reconcile the “out there” and the “here now,” I highly recommend the following excerpt from my favorite pre-Socratic – Heraclitus – as a theme for your next meditation:
Those who speak with the mind must strengthen themselves with that which is common to all…. For all human laws nourish themselves from the one divine [i.e., the Logos] – which prevails as it will, and suffices for all things and more than suffices. [Fragment 114]
Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it – at least if they are judged in the light of such words and deeds as I am here setting forth. My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep. [Fragment 1]
At other points, Heraclitus helpfully adds: “The invisible harmony is better than the visible.” [Fragment 54]. “From all is One, and from One is all.” [Fragment 10]. “But though the Logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.” [Fragment 2]
And let’s not overlook this fateful warning: “Character is destiny.”
As for Zen: Arguably, Zen deliberately gets rid of the “out there” simply because it is a system that is designed to rationalize ultimate principles in terms of human reason exclusively.
Marx was right: Ideas have consequences. And men are accountable for them; for only men have the freedom to act on their ideas.
And yes, there is judgment, LogicWings. If you want to “go first” on that topic, please do be my guest. :^)
God bless, bb.
For some. For others, it was stolen from the gods. Which might attest to the value they placed on it...