I challenge anyone to connect the dots between that and the whole point of this thread…to explore substantively the day to day existential relationship between the behaviors that one chooses on this side of the grave as that relates to what they would want the fate of “I” to be on the other side of the grave.
Go ahead, ask him: Why, given that, is he even here? To, as so many others have attempted, make me the issue instead?
Of course you’re the issue on this thread. This thread is all about your moronic view of religion.
[-o<
A mental contraption praying to a meaningless void.
Well, show us how it’s done. How do you choose behaviors now to have the life you want on either side of the grave? And what makes you think those behaviors are better than others, for you or in general?
That you would actually reduce the points I raise on this thread down to this speaks far more about you of course.
If I do say so myself.
My own particular “I” is hardly just a mental contraption. Like your own, it is the embodiment in a flesh and blood human being out in a particular world understood in a particular way.
Only I have come to recognize my own frame of mind here in the gap between what I think is true and all that I am not privy to going back to an explanation for existence itself.
Also in that gap is the realization that I can’t possibly know for certain if human existence is either essentially meaningless or ends in the void that is oblivion. Instead, I can only offer up my own thinking about these things here and now and seek out the reactions to that [and the thinking of others] in places like this.
Hope that helped.
Huh?
You choose a particular behavior in a particular context. One in which another challenges it based on a conflicting moral narrative derived from either a conflicting religious narrative or from a conflicting secular No God objectivist agenda.
Okay, why did you choose this behavior rather than another? How is that related or not related to the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in my signature threads?
How, if you are religious, do you connect the dots between the behavior you chose and that which you construe to be the fate of “I” on the other side?
How, if you are religious, do you actually go about demonstrating that what you believe about the existential relationship between morality and immortality is in fact true?
My whole point is that in being “fractured and fragmented” here myself, there does not appear to be a way to demonstrate one set of behaviors as being better than any other set.
Unless, of course, it can be demonstrated that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist.
Or for those who “here and now” subscribe to a No God world [like you and I] how are they not fractured and fragmented themselves given their reaction to the points I raise in my signature threads.
Given an actual context.
Unless of course I am still missing your point. Being, for example, an asshole.
I agree about the uncertainty part. I thought your clause “if human existence is either essentially meaningless or ends in the void that is oblivion” was interesting. Is there a difference? Could there be meaning on this side of the grave if there is oblivion on the other side? You seem to think not.
Right, I’ve gotten that. But you keep choosing a very narrow range of behaviors and have seemed utterly uninterested in trying anything else, even if it has some scientific support and could be managed even if your movement in society is restricted.
In that situation where you feel/think there is no way to demonstrate which one is best, and this would include whether your own current ones are best or good, AND you have made the same complaints about being fractured and fragmented for a while, this might be an indication that trying other behaviors might be worth a shot. Presumably you have some criteria that keep you coming back to the same behaviors and lead to you refusing anything else.
If you have no way to know if your behavior are not the best approach (for you or in general) AND you have the same assessment of the problem in yourself, it seems odd to me that you won’t consider any other secular or religious behaviors.
So, how did you decide it was not worthwhile to try anything else other then your current behaviors? What criteria do they meet that others do not?
If it is merely a crap shoot, why not try ones with some scientific backing? Do your behaviors to improve life on this side of the grave have scientific backing?
What goals, for this side of the grave, would you like to reach if you had a way to do it? And what makes you think your current behaviors will contribute to this?
The larger context is
we all make choices and there are patterns to our choices, so you should be able to answer the question you pose to religious people. I get it, they are often more certain, but still you are certain enough to have stuck with your program for years and refused to try anything else.
So presumably there is either some improvement in things you’d like to improve or you expect these to come before you die.
On what grounds have you determined their was either improvement or the potential for it to come soon via your behaviors?
Demonstrate means more or less prove. Obviously you haven’t demonstrated to yourself or others that your behaviors are the best to improve life before the grave. If you are still fractured and fragmented perhaps trying something else would help, even if one cannot prove it, now.
So, show us why you choose to maintain your behaviors rather than trying others.
Meaning in its broadest sense, i.e. what does anything that we do mean, seems clearly to applicable to all of us objectively in the either/or world. In any number of contexts.
If I note that Donald Trump is now the president of the United States, how many here will ask “what does president mean?” or “what does United States mean?”
If I note that a coronavirus pandemic has inflicted most parts of the world, who here will ask what any of those words mean?
And what they mean empirically here and now doesn’t change because people die and either experience or do not experience an afterlife.
It’s just that on this thread, the discussion revolves around the words we use to denote our moral values, and our God or No God narratives. And how the two get connected “in our head” given what we think the words in our arguments mean. And then the extent to which we can demonstrate that what they mean to us in our heads is in fact in sync with the way the world actually is.
Facts are facts. They mean this or that. It’s just a matter of our capacity to communicate them to others.
We’ve been over our own renditions of this again and again. If objective morality is important to someone in order to reconcile or to resolve conflicting goods on this side of the grave, and if immorality is important to someone in order to stave off oblivion on the other side of it, there are hundreds and hundreds of folks on this side of the grave who claim the capacity to provide both for them.
How about you?
You could choose to live along side them one at a time. To see if they are on to something here as well. Cross one group off the list and move on to the others.
My own capability here in this regard is, however, considerably more limited.
Instead, there are places like this where those who embrace both objective morality and immortality [mostly through a God, the God, My God] might be able to persuade me on this thread that they do have the capacity to demonstrate how the behaviors they choose here and now will provide them with a reconfiguration of “I” there and then.
Let them convince me here that what they believe is actually probable and I will do whatever I can to become a part of them.
That’s why I created the thread. In regard to morality “I” am fractured and fragmented. In regard to immortality, I don’t believe in it.
On the other hand, the question I have for you always revolves around how your own “I” reacts to this:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
In other words, how are “you” not as fractured and fragmented as “I” am, given a particular context.
As for the “scientific backing” behind that which I aim to explore on this thread, provide me with some links.
Instead, in my view, you just go back up into yet another “general description intellectual contraption”:
As for why I choose the things I do or do not do here and now, I’ve tried to explain that to you given my own set of circumstances. You don’t buy it. Perhaps in part because you don’t really have a clue as to what it means to be me in my set of circumstances.
Okay, we’re stuck then.
Right, I’ve gotten that. But you keep choosing a very narrow range of behaviors and have seemed utterly uninterested in trying anything else, even if it has some scientific support and could be managed even if your movement in society is restricted.
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I don’t think so. I don’t think you have ever said why you don’t want to try anything else and/or if this depends on your sense that your behaviors improve things or not for you. I don’t know why you choose the behaviors you do and if you think there is any reason to believe they help you before the grave or are better than options you turn down. I am not sure why you’re not interested in other behaviors.
My behaviors change over time. I also feel no need to find the set of behaviors that EVERYONE should choose. I would never wait for that criterion to be met before trying something else if I was drawn to it. For example in the last few years I was looking around for a way to break some social fears that was also expressive. I found an activity, a theatrical one, that was both incredibly challenging for me in terms of social fears, embarrassing myself, revealing myself, losing control, but it was also extremely fun. At the same time it seemed like it might teach me not to have the social fears or at least reduce them. And it has.
I certainly did not expect anyone to prove it would work. I was drawn to it. It felt like the right challenge. Underlying even unpleasant feelings and good feelings, I am draw to things that feel right. This is my challenge/interest. I feel that. So, I make choices based on that.
I honestly cannot imagine trying to plan out my life based on things that would convince everyone and should convince everyone that they should engage in it. First of all I don’t think we all need the same things. Secondly, I don’t think such proofs will come along for most of our behaviors. And that’s what you were talking about: behaviors.
It is more limited, yes. That’s the impression you’ve given for health reasons. But many spiritual, psychological and religious behaviors are accessible even to the housebound. So, while you cannot go through the list as well as I can, you can hit some of the list. And since it seems that whatever you are doing has not changed your sense of being fragmented and fractured, unless you have some reason to believe it will suddenly or accumulatively be effective, you might as well try things.
But notice that your assumption is that the only way to approach a list is to aim for crossing off the whole list. If you can’t do all, do none. And you have no possible criteria to narrow the list down. But there would be things on the list that would be less appealing, some more. Some have some scientific backing, some less, some none. Personal preference as to what the processes (read: behaviors) seem to be like and entail, coupled with a look at the evidence, (and then whatever your health restrictions and mobility restrictions limit and priortize) you have no need to toss a coin.
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If what you are doing does not seem probable to help you before or after the grave, then this is a poor criterion. What you are doing has not changed your feeling of being fractured and fragmented. Of course, if you think it will PROBABLY work, then you can demonstrate this here, just as you are asking them to. But if you can’t then the onus is also on you. Trying something else that might work makes sense, since what you are doing is not. It doesn’t have to be probable, since it seems to me your choice of behaviors is unlikely.
You are already making a choice of a set of behaviors that have no evidence, as far as I have heard, that they will probably or even possibly reduce F & F before the grave or after.
You’re not outside the universe looking in, waiting to have someone demonstrate you should follow their advice. You are inside the universe, already engaged in behaviors and they aren’t working.
You can keep doing them until you die of course, but it seems like an extremely poor strategy since your current behaviors do not remotely meet your own criteria AND they have been tested for quite a long time now. Other sets of behaviors have had success over much shorter periods of time. Not the complete success you are looking for, perhaps, perhaps not. But from those first improvements, you might be better able to choose even more wisely.
So, no, we have never gone over this. You have never justified your behaviors and why you think they are better than other options out there. You seem to think others bear the option, but in terms of your fragmentation and being fractured, you already have skin the game and you already have behaviors.
So, why not show us how it is done and explain what some or all rational people should choose the behaviors you have chosen. Why they are better than options you could try but do not?
I’m sorry but, from my frame of mind, we still need a context in which to flesh out all of these points by way of describing our reaction to particular behaviors in conflict given that, to the best of my knowledge, neither one of us believes “here and now” in either God or an objective morality.
Now, from my vantage point, I would like there to be a God because I don’t particularly want to tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion. And, No God, that’s the only option. And, in being fractured and fragmented, I would look forward to being convinced that, using the tools of science or philosophy or any other enlightened font, one would in fact be able to differentiate moral from immoral behavior.
But that’s just me. My own unique embodiment of dasein.
And, given that, along with my limited capacity to go out into the world and interact with those who have thought themselves into believing in both objective morality and immortality, I can only make contact with their arguments in places like this. And then judge for myself the extent to which they are able to close that crucial gap between what they believe in their head about all this and what they are in fact able to demonstrate that all reasonable people are obligated to think in turn.
With you though my interest revolves more around how you either do or do not see yourself as embodied in this frame of mind:
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
Why? Because in being the embodiment of it myself, I am not now able to think myself out of feeling “fractured and fragmented”.
Philosophically [whatever that actually means here] it is an entirely reasonable frame of mind to me given a No God world.
All these points? It’s fairly simple. As far as I can tell you have one main behavior to try to improve your life before the grave, your fracturedness and fragmentedness and to find out if there is a God. I am asking you why that is a rational behavior that most people (in your condition) should also do, and what evidence you have for that. That is what you ask people to do: ask them to demonstrate (to all rational people) that their behaviors lead to God, the afterlife, or make them feel better before or after the grave.
I am asking about a very specific behavior and a very specific context. It is certainly more specific that Buddhism or Christianity, for example, both of which, include a wider range of activities. Yet, you have asked member of these sets of behaviors to demonstrate what I mentioned above.
So, how is your behavior improving your experience before or after the grave. How is it reducing F&F? And if it isn’t why do you persist? If it is could you demonstrate to all rational people that this is the best or even a reasonable behavior on your part to improve your experience (or reduce your experience of being fractured and fragmented) before the grave? (for someone whose movements are restricted if you like - though that argument must include why you cannot have people come to you and help you participate in their suggested behaviors, because they would come)
Right, but as has been pointed out despite being housebound or limited in movement you could still participate in religions that have a God, or Buddhism via meditation and people would come to wherever you are to help you understand the practices.
Right now you have been engaged in a behavior for years and still you are fractured and fragmented. You have good reason to believe the behavior you have chosen is not working. Let’s say one of these theists convinces you online that their set of behaviors work, well, you’ll still be housebound or limited in movement. So, either you won’t be able to participate in the religion - which seems the logical conclusion give the excuse you are giving for why you don’t do this now - or you are wrong you can participate now.
Further, you could start checking things off that list by engaging in practices while continuing to ask people what you do online. Adding other behaviors does not exclude your current as yet utterly unjustified behavior. I do appreciate that you gave some rationale for why you do not choose other behaviors, but you have given this before and it doesn’t hold up, since you still have other options and can try other behaviors.
But you don’t choose to try anything else. And I addressed the irrationality of this and also of your ‘I can’t check everything off the list like you can excuse’ in the previous post, and others have pointed out why the justification you present here does not hold in the past. You could indeed actually try some of these other behaviors via participation,w hich is recommended by pretty much every religious, spiritual, psychotherapeutical system on earth. Some with evidence of at least some benefits before the grave, which your behavior lacks. You have no evidence at all that it helps and some evidence that it doesn’t via your long participation already. You’re still fractured and fragmented which is often your central complaint.
So, the above post and the one before it outline some of the arguments around my question.
But here it is in simple form. Show us, including objectivists among us, that the behavior you have chosen (which is posting here in the way you do) is the one that all rational people should engage in to improve their lives - in your case that it reduces F&F and that it improves your experience before and/or after the grave.
IOW that it is better than other behaviors to solve those issues, including the solution where you continue to post here, but also try the practices of other approaches with the help that would in fact come to your home.
Please do what you ask of others.
I have no idea what this has to do with the point I raised. This is just more intellectual gibberish to me. And still no context.
I don’t know how to make the explanation for why I created this thread any simpler. I don’t believe in God. And from the assumption that we live in a No God world, I speculate further that there is no font – science, philosophy, nature etc. – available to mere mortals in order that they might concoct the equivalence of God’s omniscience and omnipotence in establishing an objective morality able to be enforced re one or another rendition of Judgment Day.
But, sure, I say, let’s hear from those who are religious here. How do they go about connecting the dots – existentially – between the behaviors they choose here and now and what they anticipate the fate of their soul to be there and then.
And then, next, given what they do believe is true here, how do they go about demonstrating that what they believe someone like me should believe too. Why? Because it is the obligation of all rational and virtuous people to believe what they do.
Now, in my signature threads, I try to explain why, given my own reaction to God and religion, the actual sequence of experiences in my life, coupled with my attempts to explore all this over the years intellectually, academically, philosophically, theologically etc., have resulted in my own particular “I” “here and now” being “fractured and fragmented”.
I am not arguing that if others do not think like I do they are not being rational. I am only attempting to explore how the lives that they lived – re dasein – coupled with the things that they have come to think from relationships, schools, books, films and any other source of information and knowledge, resulted in them feeling considerably more in sync with “the real me” in sync further with “the right thing to do”. And thus not nearly as fractured and fragmented as “I” am. As God and religion are relevant here.
Huh?
When are you going to focus in yourself on a very specific context, relating to very specific behaviors that come into conflict because people do come to very different conclusions given the very different lives they have lived and the very different ideas they came across.
What then are the serious philosophers to make of that in regard to this or that set of circumstances?
And around and around we go. You want me to seek these folks out and then spend hours of what little time I have left exploring their agendas one by one. Whereas I prefer to come into venues such as this one and note the extent to which [on threads like this] religious folks are able to convince me that they can in fact demonstrate that what they believe is true…before I am willing to invest that time.
Meanwhile you are in turn confronted with a world in which objective morality appears to be absent and one in which your own oblivion is coming around eventually. So why aren’t you out there doing what you want me to do yourself?
Well, maybe you are considerably younger than I am and, existentially, circumstantially, death is farther down the road. Or maybe you don’t feel nearly as “fragmented and fractured” as “I” am in a world bursting at the seams with all manner of ghastly conflicts that revolve around the fact that through God or No God it can’t determined what really is right and wrong behavior.
Instead, you are far more content with staying up in the stratosphere of intellectual contraptions. That and making me the only issue here.
To wit:
Note to others:
Anyone here actually spot a context in all of these ponderous cerebral contraptions?
Or maybe he will just go back to concluding that I am little more than an “asshole” here.
Iambiguous, I get it: you don’t want to look at yourself and your choices in any critical way, just the choices of others, even though your problems are likely affected by your behavior rather than the behavior of others.
Context: your behaivors posting here as an approach to solving things like F&F.
Your criterion for other people’s behaviors is that these must be the ones every rational person should engage in.
This criterion is never applied to your own behavior
You make excuses, for example, that you have limited mobility, which has been long pointed out is not a good excuse.
You cannot look critically at your choice and dislike when others point out the irrationality of choosing something with no evidence to support it (posting here in the way you do) RATHER THAN something like meditation, which has some solid evidence that it reduces suffering in people.
You know the specifics of the above and your threads are littered with as concrete examples of this set of patterns as could possibly be produced in any context, certainly. for example a discussion of, say, abortion. So it is obviously a concrete context and one, yes, CONTINUING your own making of yourself as the issue. As you do when you present any issue. You present the issue as a facet of your problems, then dislike when people continue the issue related to you.
Given your dislike of considering that your own rigid re-choosing of a method that has failed for a decade to help you, you frame my posts as not giving a context.
Further, you do yourself always make others the issue - the specific details of this can be found throughout your threads - they are using mental contraptions, they are soothing themselves, and so on - but find it problematic if your behavior is made the issue despite the fact that we are talking about your F&F, for example, that solving this (and other problems of yours) is central to your own framing of every issue.
I accept that you will not change. Enjoy the pyrrhic ‘victory’ of not looking at your own behavior to see it might be contributing to your own problems.
Iambiguous is using one of the oldest demon tricks in “the book”…
If people cannot trust themselves, then he has no accountability whatsoever.
Literally quoting iambiguous (in translation), “words are just words talking about words. When you talk about the peach, it is not actually the peach itself. When you talk about me, this has nothing whatsoever to do with me!”
Iambiguous uses the post modern argument incessantly to avoid accountability.
Another way iambiguous uses his arguments to avoid accountability is to state that we could have only done what we did and will ever do.
Iambiguous also argues that because he didn’t know everything when he was younger, that nobody can know any truth (that’s narcissism).
Pardon me, if, from my point of view, given my set of circumstances, I don’t think you get it at all.
I have absolutely no idea what this has to do with the points I raise on this thread – connecting the dots existentially between the behaviors one chooses here and now, connected further to a particular moral narrative [God or No God], connected finally to a particular understanding of how what one does choose here and now impacts on the fate of “I” there and then.
Meditation? How on earth does that fit into it other than as a tool to sustain a more tranquil “I”?
More intellectual gibberish. Someone either believes or does not believe in God. If they believe then there will almost always be a scripture available to guide them to the promised land insofar as how they are expected/obligated to behave here and now when confronting their own behaviors in regard to abortion.
As for the No God folks – you I’m presuming – I’m still waiting to encounter your/their own rendition of the points I raised on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
In other words, to explore how your/their own existential reaction to abortion has not left you/them in turn as “fractured and fragmented” as “I” am.
Then just more of the same: making me the issue.
Again, only when you are willing to explore these accusations more substantively by focusing our arguments in on a particular set of circumstances…a “situation” such that you can then point to specific instances of them…am I likely to come closer to understanding what on earth you have actually convicted me of here.
On the other hand, this may well be just your “condition” yammering on and on and on. 
But, just out of curiosity, how do you connect the dots between the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave and what you anticipate your fate to be on the other side of it.
Given particular contexts.