Would Jesus condemn or condone Yahweh for his crimes against

I’d be surprised if Phyllo hasn’t encountered it before. I certainly have. It appears every now and then. Are you sure you are not taking disagreement for never having encountered it?

I don’t think I encountered it in the beginning philosophy class I took. But I certainly heard people saying it. It’s the kind of meme that circulates and not just in academic circles or in the educated class. There are many forms, some seeing all acts as selfish - iow that there is no actual care about anybody else. Joker and his later avatars would bring that one up occasionally here.

I would tend to think there are no selfless acts, though I would want that term defined. But that’s different for me than saying that really it is only self-care or some of the other ways all acts have been described.

I know what you mean. I have to take breaks from people in general to regain my center.

Rober Price did it in this debate at 2:09:30

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjYmpwbHEA[/youtube]

You think Paul didn’t write Galatians?
That’s right.
Wow!
If you think my views are wildly insane then there’s no point in going on [sets mic down].

Misalignment of ethics I reckon. That’s a shame because I was waiting to hear why he thought Paul didn’t write Galatians.

Hmm… you may be right. Maybe I am assuming that because he disagrees, that he’s never encountered it, and I may have been right purely by luck because if he had encountered it, I think he would have said so by now. Probably the reason I just assumed he never encountered it is because people who have heard it before usually (exclusively) concede that there are no selfless acts. It’s not by indoctrination either since after eons of thinking on the subject, from Aristotle to Nietzsche, there doesn’t seem to be an example of a selfless act or even how an act could be selfless. So I think that one day in a classroom of debating whether selfless acts exists would be sufficient to convince pretty much anyone and therefore if someone is not convinced, then he must not have encountered it before. I think you caught me in a legitimate assumption though, so you deserve credit for that! :slight_smile:

A selfless act is an act that doesn’t ultimately benefit the one doing the act. The best objection was the guy who said he reflexively ran to the aid of someone in an auto accident and he insisted it was selfless because he didn’t have time to even think about it, but reflexes aren’t acts (if reflexes are acts, then what isn’t an act?). So if an act is selfless, then it’s not an act and if it’s an act, then it’s not selfless.

I’m not appealing to popularity to show the statements are true, but to show the statements are notorious. The fact that you can’t get your head around that doesn’t bode well for your capacity to understand deeper concepts.

Mathematicians accept 1+1=2
Philosophers accept there are no selfless acts.

In no way does acceptance imply truth. Truth is independent of acceptance and both are separate arguments.

  1. I’m asserting popularity to justify my being surprised, which you distorted as some form of arrogance.
  2. I’m asserting all acts have a selfish motivation, which is self-evident from inspection of every and all acts until we encounter one that is not.

Those are separate arguments and you either can’t see that or refuse to.

[i]“How could something originate in its antithesis? … The unselfish act in self-interest? … Such origination is impossible; and he who dreams of it is a fool, indeed worse than a fool; the things of the highest value must have another origin of their own.” -Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil

First, any being who would be capable of purely selfless actions only is more fabulous than the phoenix. It cannot even be imagined clearly because from the start the whole concept of “selfless action,” if carefully examined, evaporates into the air. Never has a man done anything that was only for others; and without any personal motivation. Indeed, how could he do anything that had no reference to himself, that is, with no inner compulsion (which would have to be based on a personal need)? How could the ego act without ego? nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/frie … b645f.html

There’s no such thing as altruism. No such thing as a truly selfless act. We always get paid, one way or another. HAHA LUNG, Mind Control: The Ancient Art of Psychological Warfare

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest. PETER WATTS, Blindsight

Biologists, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have all held that “altruism” is never what it seems. That all apparently selfless acts are self-centered is known in the sciences as ‘universal egoism’, which according to the prominent psychologist Richard Gross, "is the dominant ethos in social science including psychology. […] Sociobiologists consider that acts of apparent altruism turn out to be acts of selfishness in disguise". There is such agreement amongst psychologists and specialists that it seems “altruism is an impossibility”. humantruth.info/altruism.html[/i]

Independent of the truthfulness of the claim, EVERYONE believes it… except you. You’re taking on the entire science and academic community in effort to support your sinking dogma no differently than apologetics against evolution… and it will remain a dogma until you provide some substantiation that neither I nor Nietzsche, nor Rand, nor Aristotle, nor Kant, nor Watts, nor anyone I’ve ever seen or heard of, could conceive.

Or maybe people online are trolls? I’ve provided infinitely more justification here than I ever could offline.

Then your observations are either more or less perceptive than a long list of fancy-pants philosophers: either you are genius to such extent that even the smartest people can’t see what you see or you’re not equipped to see what everyone else can plainly see. Take your pick.

Don’t take it personally, but you’re painting yourself as a troll with such admission. Repetitive and habitual dogmatic dismissal without rationale is the very definition of trolling and “not matching my observations” is not rationale.

So either come up with some example of a selfless act or concede selfless acts do not exist so that we can move on from this, otherwise your continued objections on the basis of “not feeling right” are impeding progress.

I could extrapolate and say that’s what alan says because he says “there is no dancer; just the dancing.” And he criticizes the english language for dividing nouns and verbs which is, apparently, different from the chinese language. Evidently, dancing is a thing rather than what you do. I don’t know chinese, so I’ll have to take his word for it, but it makes sense considering the opposite points of view of west and east.

But removing the self does not disturb my argument that no selfless acts exists because if there is only the love and no lover or loveee, then there is just the Self and we’re back to no selfless acts.

There is no mechanism to care about someone else because in order to do so, you’d have to BE them.

Why should I care if someone falls off a cliff? I am not them, so it has no effect on me. But if I were a Corsican Brother, then I might have a mechanism to care and that mechanism is the direct suffering of consequences as if I were them (by magic). Now, someone falling from a cliff might bother me if I can relate in such a way that I also suffer direct consequences (empathy), but I only care about the guy falling off the cliff because of the damage it will do to me. Maybe I’ll have to live with myself for not helping prevent the fall. Maybe imagery of the event would be traumatic. Maybe I’d be worried about public perception. Maybe the only reason I’d try to save the guy is to win some recognition as a hero so that I could then claim it’s nothing and anybody would have done the same. Who knows, but it could only be about me because there is no other mechanism for motivation.

My heart goes out to the animals gofundme.com/tammie-hedges-legal-battle I don’t want to help them because I care about them, but because I don’t like feeling bad knowing they are without homes after having previously had homes. Domesticated animals don’t belong in the wild.

I care less about the people because they’re too likely to be pricks who’d cut me off in traffic and cling dogmatically to failed arguments online and just generally not playing fair nor being considerate even though they have the capacity to. At least animals can cite cognitive impairment as excuse for lack of consideration.

You keep bringing reality into the conversation as an objection, but if we’re going to talk about reality then there is nothing to talk about. There is no mother, child, you, or me, and not only is there nothing to talk about, there is no one to talk about it. So either we describe (cut something out of something) abstractions and relate them to other abstractions or we stare at a wall in realization that there is just the staring without a wall nor an onlooker.

Assuming you find it more entertaining to contemplate things rather than melt out of existence, then from a point of view in this universe, a mother can only care about her child because she cares about herself and, in some way, harm to the child will cause harm to the mother.

That doesn’t mean evolution is teleological

2. Evolution: Social Species are Programmed to do Good
Social behaviour that benefits others is a feature of genetic programming in all social species, and its success as an evolutionary strategy has made it "a part of the behavioural repertoire of social animals, so it can be expected to develop much further in intelligent and intensely social animals, like our human ancestors"4. The neurological rewards are what you seek when you do seemingly “altruistic” things. Those who do good often are addicted to the drugs released in our brains; they do it for the rush even if they don’t know it. This isn’t a bad thing, of course, the only negative aspect is that they think they do it for the general good when in fact they do it for the neurological high that it brings. An ideal model of unthinking genetically inherited social behaviour is that of ants and bees and other worker insects. At this extreme we see that even the most selfless social behaviour can be genetically predetermined.
humantruth.info/altruism.html

That pretty much says it all.

We put ourselves on pedestals.

How is the thing that does the controlling and the thing that is controlled the same thing?

Some folks see freedom in slavery.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Faith is letting go of everything.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyTgVmsQs5U[/youtube]

By that are you saying salvation is a function of knowledge?

As I said, though, keeping the commandments are evidence like fruit on a tree is evidence as to what kind of tree it is. The act of keeping the law doesn’t cause salvation, but salvation causes a propensity to keep the law (whatever the law is). IOW, if doing an act would save you, then in order to do the act, you’d already have to be saved. I don’t think any religion can have action for its basis, “lest any man should boast.”

Reminds me of this Alan Watts bit:

[i]We’re always trying to find a way to be one up.
So how do I not do that?
Why do you want to know?
Well, I’d be better that way.
Yeah but why do you want to be better? You see, the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t.

We aren’t better because we want to be.

Because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Because all the do-gooders in the world, whether they are doing good for others or doing it for themselves, are trouble-makers. On the basis of, “Kindly let me help you or you’ll drown”, said the monkey, putting the fish safely up a tree.[/i]

Any act of improvement (law keeping, acts, works, acquiring knowledge, etc) will be full of conceit, “lest any man should boast”.

Salvation is a gift and you don’t have to do anything to get it, and actually, doing something to get it is the only way to get rid of it lol

After we find it, then what?

We may be back to no selfless acts, but not to caring about others boils down to caring about yourself, which in that wording indicates the stuff in your mind emotions and body over here. Not this self that includes both what some think of as themselves and what they some think of as the other. When it gets worded as it really is about you caring for you, that does not have the same connotations as THERE IS CARING with the universe conceived of as one SELF. They mean the same thing to you. But it will not be taken that way and really shouldn’t be by others. Since putting it as it is really about yourself includes a self here and the other person there. There is a difference between asserting that there are no selfless acts and asserting that really it is all about caring for oneself.

I find this mechanism exists.

Well, not in my experience and I do not experience it as damage.

I don’t experience empathy this way or about consequences. It is a kind of intimacy in the moment.

I don’t find mammals to be like this as a rule, though some are and all are in some circumstances.

OK, my empathy for animals has to do with them. I may ALSO become concerned about my feeling bad.

You’re the one talking down at me as if you and the philosophy 101 students have the ONLY TRUE KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING.
[/quote]

[/quote]
I feel like I am in a chair. I do less well than many species and certainly individual members of species, that are generally not considered pedastal worthy.

I did not respond to Watts stuff here. And I will point out that you are judging people who hold the position different from yours here for something like the sin of pride.

I wish you could keep it about your thoughts on the subject and not your thoughts about our motivations.

Notice the phrasing :
“Never has a man done anything that was only for others; and without any personal motivation.”

“Indeed, how could he do anything that had no reference to himself, that is, with no inner compulsion

Here as well :
“No such thing as a truly selfless act. We always get paid, one way or another.”

I didn’t say anything which contradicts it.

I said that I see nothing wrong with getting something from the act. Every act is some combination of ‘interest for self’ and ‘interest for other’ - the Ying-Yang of motivation. (I have written it at least 5 times by now.)

Water is water even if it is not perfectly pure.

Caring for others is still caring for others even if you do get something out of it.

Love is still love even if you get a benefit.

Serendipper is completely hung up on the idea of 100% selfless act. He only has 2 categories - 100% selfish and 100% selfless. And he has to stuff every experience into one or the other.

Yes, I tried to get at this by saying there is a difference between saying there are no selfless acts and saying that really when you care for another it is caring for yourself.

I also think he introduction and instrumental element in things like empathy, and that this is a category error. I don’t feel empathy so that X.

Evolution may have selected for empathy because it led to X.

But that does not mean that that I am feeling for you when you lost your wife so that X.

I do not feel empathy to prevent myself from feeling guilty if you die. I do not feel empathy to. I am that creature that feels empathy.

Yes I concede that distinction. If there are no selves or others, then no one can have a selfish motive except the Self (capital S, brahman, ground of being, universe, whatever).

Can you describe it? The way I see it, the only way you can care about someone else is if an effect on them affects you, which makes it about you instead of them. And now that I think about it, even if you were them, it would still be about you since you are them. There seems to be no way out.

You are the internal and everyone else is in the external world. You have “feelers” extended into the external world to gather info and you can only respond to that info, so there is no mechanism to respond to info that doesn’t cross your feelers. IOW, if I drop dead later tonight, you’d have no mechanism to know it. If you heard the news, you might not like the way the news made you feel, so it would be about you and not me.

The other day I was witness to a cat fight. One female is scared of another female which always provokes an attack, so while the attack was ensuing, a third female ran to the aid of the scared female and then I had 3 cats going at it until the scared one managed to break free and run, leaving the two shredding each other. What prompted the 3rd cat to come to the aid of the scared cat? Why would she care?

Your empathy is a sense organ that detected pain no differently than if you touched a hot stove and pulled away. I suspect you’re pedestalizing empathy as something higher than merely another mechanism to feel the world.

This takes us back to Goethe “Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” And so empathy perceives other forms of pain and truth.

I thought you’d like that :smiley:

She can only care about herself. For instance my mom was more worried about me hurting myself than how she was hurting me by locking me in a metaphorical cage for my own protection (and why she turned me into a rebel). She didn’t care about me, she cared about herself and her inability to deal with the fact that I might get hurt if I went outside.

LOL not literally, silly!

This reminds me of Alan giving account of Jesus who admonished those who prayed in the front of the group to be seen by the group and admired for their fervent devotion. Upon hearing that, the worshippers moved to the back of the group only to find they were all, once again, back in the front row LOL! You get it? In trying to be humble, they were expressing their pride.

We’re always trying to find a way to be one up.
So how do I not do that?
Why do you want to know?
Well, I’d be better that way.
Yeah but why do you want to be better?
You see, the reason you want to be better is the reason why you aren’t. We aren’t better because we want to be.

Start at about 2:00

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd7ntfETdRM[/youtube]

I think all I wanted is for you not to generalize all eastern thinkers, but just take Watt’s points point-by-point as if they were anonymously stated. I didn’t want you to avoid him like the plague.

And you’re judging me as judgmental. We can’t escaping judging people (as far as I can tell).

But the subject is our motivations. How are we to discussion selfless acts without motivations?

And you have categories which are completely arbitrary or perhaps randomly delineated and therefore inherently undefinable and therefore nonexistent.

The categories are 100% because there is 0% mechanism to care about anyone else. If you disagree, you must provide rationale to demonstrate the mechanism by which any being could care about another being that isn’t already explain by selfish motivation. Saying “It doesn’t match my experience” is not rationale nor demonstration. Until then, you’re being dogmatic in holding beliefs that cannot be substantiated.

So your thoughts here are really about you. They are what is triggered when you think about me. They are not about me.

Jumping to a death scenario, yes, that is trickier. But if I am watching you suffer and I feel compassion for you, this is not just compassion about me.

I’d have to know the cats. I had a dog who would get in between me and my girlfriend. He get upset if he thought someone was looking to aggressive. It was very annoying when it was me. :smiley: And I loved when he thought it was her, shifted to sit in front of me and made sounds of disapproval at her. Of course some animals will do this for members of other species they don’t even know.

You would then, mean, feel yourself. If that is the parallel. And being on the recieving end of this ‘sensing’ is nothing like being looked at, or smelled. I can tell it is about me and that, often, feels good. I feel the other person there with me. It gives me strength. Sometimes it takes away self-judgments that are hallucinated on my part - that I should ‘take it all in stride’ or whatever platitude or self-expection I might be feeling alongside the pain I feel.

Well, you’se thinking some ideas, but now I understand they are not about me but about you. :smiley:

I feel like I am in a chair.
[/quote]

I was being metaphorical. You are stating that I am pedastalizing. Which I take to mean, praising my behavior, claiming false goodness or specialness. (though again, this would all be about you, not even SELF) But I don’t experience this pedastalizing. I see other mammals with very strong empathy, supposedly simpler or lesser beasts. I am used to this. I see animals forgive, or let go of grudges. I have seen a dog seconds after having porcupine needles pulled from his nose, comfort me since I was upset that I had hurt him so much getting them out. (a few second before he wanted to rip my throat out and if he wasn’t wrapped in a blanket, oh, oh.) But he dropped that immediately. If I get into the moral praise aspects, I do not feel especially special. Nor does it seem that fantastic, me always having been immersed in mammalian empathy of various kinds. I have a categorical disagreement. Maybe I am wrong, but this shift to my motivations, is just a mind reading claim.

I guess I’ll just keep saying that no, that is not my experience. I think I am talking about what is, perhaps incorrectly. And here you are going ad hom - I do understand that it is a general ad hom, likely including you, but an ad hom nonetheless. The reasons why I might want it to be the way I am saying it are no the topic. You are off topic.

I think I did that, and in any case, I have no problem avoiding responding to Watts’ arguments or assertions.

my point with saying that you were judging people as having the sin of pride, was not me saying I do not judge people and am better than you. I was pointing out 1) that you are not accepting, even, what is outside you. You are judging that as bad in some way, rather than simply demonstrating acceptance. And 2) you are off topic. The topic is not me or us as far as potential motives for believing X, the topic is ‘is X true?’

The motivations for the act or for empathy can be on the table. The motivation for holding my position on what those motivations are or are not or the motivation for holding the position I have on what the nature of empathy are not on the table. They could be the subjects of another discussion, but here they are ad hom. Because they are not the topic but it is an attempt to say why I believe what I believe, instead of showing that my belief is incorrect.

Perhaps your motivation for believing, for example, that it’s all about yourself in empathy is because you had a shitty mom. But you still might be right. I still need to deal with your arguments. It’s off topic.

If you think that your philosophy is sufficient, then you will hang on to it no matter what I say.

From my experience, it does not adequately describe human interactions.

Take it or leave it. I don’t really need to do or demonstrate anything. I’m not preaching here.

I suspect you’re using “about” in two different senses which then get conflated. My thoughts here are about me (the motivation to have the thoughts is from me), but are not about me (the thoughts themselves have to do with something that is not me).

My impression of the world has to do with how I’m put together, but it also has to do with how the world is put together.

I just wanted to illustrate a bad happening X happened to me and then show you have no mechanism to be affected by it until you gain knowledge of it and at that point it’s the knowledge you wouldn’t like.

I thought the cat example was interesting because cats aren’t as smart as dogs and generally aren’t pack animals. From my philosophy, the helpful cat was assisting the other cat because that was the best scenario for it. It’s like if we were walking down the street and someone attacked me, you’d have to help me fight or else possibly lose a friend (assuming you couldn’t be friends with the attacker), so you’d have to protect your interests (ie me).

Yes I think you understand. We are a center of awareness within the universe that is receiving external inputs. I don’t want to lose my hand because that would hurt me; I don’t want to lose you because that would affect me; I don’t want to see animals suffer because that would affect me. It’s all the same: some information comes in and the center of awareness judges it good or bad. It’s the relation between the internal and external that results in a declaration of good or bad.

Eyes need light in order to see colors and I need something to think about in order to think, so it’s more than just me, but the relationship between me and the external.

I have no doubt that you’re feeling empathy, but I’m trying to say that empathy is no different than any other sense faculty. The attempt to separate empathy as something different than merely that is itself a pedestalization of empathy.

I don’t see how it’s off topic.

Ok fine. I give up.

Acceptance is a virtue now? So I should accept foul smells and all manner of offense with open arms lest I reject something and get labeled “judgmental”? No, I reject that.

I don’t see how we can discuss the topic without examples of the topic.

Well, I’ll take a cue from your playbook and simply say I disagree and cite my experience as evidence. Hey that was easy :laughing: I’m invincible now because who can refute my experience. :evilfun:

No, that’s you, not me. To wit:

That’s obviously false as evidenced by your continued replying on the matter. Had you really held that notion, you would have stated so days ago: “Here’s my 2 cents. Take it or leave it.” But you didn’t. You tried every argument you could conceive and finally, after being totally exhausted, you paint the picture as if you never really cared.

I have all of academia and some of the greatest minds on philosophy on the side of my argument and your retort is simply “well, it doesn’t match my experience” which = “nothing nor no one will ever convince me!” That’s dogmatism.

What a powerful thing you’ve stumbled onto. Heck, I don’t need a brain at all, but can simply say “that doesn’t match my experience, so I win!”

There is no god.
That doesn’t match my experience, so you’re wrong.

There is no free will.
That doesn’t match my experience, so you’re wrong.

There is no objectivity.
That doesn’t match my experience, so you’re wrong.

Claim: X
I’m going to disagree with whatever you say in order to have an adversary who I can then defeat by simply saying their claim doesn’t match my experience. All hail me! I am the smartest person here by simply having the hardest head! :bow-blue: me :royalty-king:

Brains are antiquated. Who needs brains when it’s the amount of bone in the head that matters. That is precisely why it’s impossible to argue with conservatives.

Sure, there’s a mechanism. I see the person in pain, I feel for them.
Some people do not have that mechanism.
Reptiles tend not to.

Plants can feel other plants (the extent to which a plant can feel), but the reason it reacts is the same reason it reacts to its own threats. The plant has no way of differentiating self from other, it just does what the chemicals tells it to. The fact that we think we are different from plants is a pedestalization of ourselves. We’re smarter, sure, but not more divine. The plant is a sensing creature just like insects and animals and we’re all dimensionless points looking out at the world. Being a point looking outward means we can only care about the point and what causes pain to that point.

They now know that trees will share water with other trees that are not doing well in times of drought. Even across species. Trees inform other trees of parasites and other kinds of threats. Dying trees will send their nutrients to other trees, again also across species. I haven’t argued I am divine. I don’t put us on a pedastal. I am trying to describe what I think is. Maybe I am wrong. But every time you add in hallucinations - like ‘divine’ - or other words that imply I have emotional goals, you are ad homming implicitly.

And why am I capable of pedastalizing X, if I am not capable of empathy?

IOW why bother labeling something negatively, this would also just be chemicals telling me what to do.

Now you may say, oh, sure pedastalizing is just you doing what chemicals tell you to do. But then there is no need to give it some term with an implicit lowering.

There is only energy and matter. (As far as we know.)

And those two ‘things’ form the infinite variety of the universe.

Within it we find patterns of caring, love, empathy, indifference, selfless action, selfish action, …

It’s possible to conceptualize existence at many levels of abstraction. But if you conceptualize at a lower level of abstraction, you lose useful information.

For example, if you conceptualize the universe as energy, then you can’t find a cat in a room. The cat blends into the background because it is merely energy ‘within’ energy.