on discussing god and religion

Is this an intellectual contraption or not?!!!

The only way in which any of us could fully understand either the optimal or the only rational manner in which to confront those objectivists who believe they are the embodiment of the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”, and those subjectivists who are hopelessly “fractured and fragmented”, is to grasp an ontological understanding of existence itself.

Well, that’s not me. Instead, I put myself out in the world and, existentially, attempt to explain how “I” think and feel when confronting conflicting goods given a particular context. And given some measure of autonomy

After all, for all practical purposes [in a No God world],what else is there?

Here I can be a pragmatist in that I recognize my thinking and feeling are derived more from dasein than from what I have come to believe philosophy or science is able to establish as in fact true. About anything from abortion or the rights of animals to human sexuality or genocide.

This part…

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.

…is still always there for me.

How, in a particular context, is this not applicable to you?

Again, in what particular context? Instead:

Same thing. How are our reactions to words like this given a particular set of circumstances brimming with conflicting goods not going to be the embodiment of dasein?

And yet any number of other people dealing with the same set of circumstances use their own tools to come to the same or different conclusions. And the narcissists/sociopaths can argue “fuck all that, what’s in it for me”?

My point is only to suggest that, sans God, there is no argument that mere mortals can make that settles it once and for all. Such that all rational human beings must behave in a particular way here because philosophically they are obligated to.

Or, rather, that the argument may exist, but I have not yet come across it myself.

On the contrary, the onus would be on me if I insisted all rational men and women are obligated to be or to feel fractured and fragmented because that is the only thing rational thinking dictates here.

I have no idea what this means. I merely point out that, given the “human condition”, we live in a world where individual people [biologically] have wants and needs. This is embedded in many, many different historical, cultural and experiential [interpersonal] contexts. So, given this, it’s only realistic to note that when behaviors come into conflict, people will wonder what the rules of behavior ought to be. Tao facilitate the least dysfunctional interactions. And, then, will they be predicated on might, on right, or on moderation, negotiation and compromise?

And I point out that had your life been very, very different, you may well have been one yourself. And even if historically and culturally the general consensus is that the sexual exploitation and abuse of children is wrong, there are those able to rationalize it because their whole moral perspective [in a No God world] revolves entirely around “what’s in it for me”?

And in fact the way you feel about the abuse of children is precisely the argument that pro-life folks makes in arguing against abortion. What abuse could be worse than shredding babies in a Planned Parenthood clinic? Or discuss and debate the consumption of animal flesh with PETA fanatics. Or the right to bear arms with NRA members. There are any number of folks regarding any number of conflicting goods who insist they too would never be “one of them”; and will “continue to struggle to minimize their acceptance.”

My point again are value judgments of this sort derived more from the manner in I construe the meaning of dasein in my signature thread or more from the manner in which these folks have been able to concoct the “perfect argument”?

Including the relationship between the “self” that you have accumulated existentially and your own value judgments.

Again, we need a context. A discussion regarding our own behaviors with respect to the existential juncture that is identity and value judgments. A discussion in which you can point out in detail how I am guilty as charged of all these practices.

But, by and large, you prefer to keep everything up in the general description clouds of abstractions:

Note to others:

What do you think he is proposing about me here? And let’s make it about something we can tie in to the thread. Something, in other words, that he and believe about the relationship between the behaviors we choose on this side of the grave, as that pertains to God and religion, as that pertains to what we anticipate our fate will be on the other side of grave.

But:

As that pertains to the manner in which I construe my self here as “fractured and fragmented” and the manner in which he construes his own “I” differently.

I raise all of those points above and this is what you come up with.

Another “clever” retort.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Okay, forget the pregnant woman.

Note a context that is more applicable to you. Explain to us why in discussing your own value judgments it is not important at all to intertwine your own “personal stories” with that which you have come upon philosophically in regards to ethics.

And then intertwine that in your beliefs about God and religion in such a way that your own personal stories here are in turn moot.

A weapon. As far as I can tell. It is also part of how he shifts the onus. Prove to me how you feel and act is how every rational person should. And, of course, there are people who think they can do this, if the other people all are rational, in that time they read the argument and around that particular issue. I mean, even his category ‘all rational people’ is irrational. And note the implicit trust that he would recognize such an argument. I mean, he reads argument X, and if it is utterly rational, even if it goes against his gut feelings and wants for life and the world, he will accept that argument and align his life with it. LOL. He has taken himself out of the equation - on the surface.

However what Iamb will do with something personal is not what needs to happen. And what we do here, is personal, our personal acts. Our choices. I think it’s good grist for the philosophical mill.

But telling him personal stuff is to turn yourself into a fly and land on that spiral of yellow-white paper hanging from the ceiling.

This was just the vaguest bit of crap ever. After a fairly complicated quoted paragraph, you refer to ‘this’ which is God knows what, using a term with ‘intellectual’ as if that is somehow clearly distinguishing it from other types of thinking or language and then adding ‘contraption’ a pejorative term in your schema (and in other people’s). It’s a trap. Ask me a vague implicitly critical question with no clear referent. It’s just fucked up communication and a lack of responsibility taking, as per usual. Your selective use of this ‘accusation’ and the concept’s incoherence…I am sure they escape you.

Bullshit. I do not need to be some kind of omniscient to deal with, including confront, objectivists. That’s nuts. I gotta fucking lie in my bed until I ‘grasp an ontological understanding of existence itself.’???

Prove that bit of idiocy. There’s your objectivism. Put directly and idiotically.

Stop right here. Stop whining for answers and look at your own answer.

Your version of
WE must X before we can live.

BEcause let me tell you, I have to deal with objectivists all the time. Government agencies, workplaces, companies, people in these places and without. You may be a bit on the hibernated side, but still, you must also. Unless I moved into the wood and live off land no one gives a shit about, I have to…I have to confront and deal with objectivists and others…to live.

There is your anti-life position that you breach most days including when you post here. You fucking shoot objectivist fish in a barrel.

I am alive, with incomplete knowledge and I would not say I grasp the ontological, etc. of existence, etc. But for you if I engage in life, there is something wrong with me. My contraptions and comforts. Now, yes, on occasion you will present a kind of wishing you could, but in general you actually think that we are supposed to demonstrate to all rational people - see my post above to Phyllo about that category - or we cannot deal with and confront objectivists. Well, no. I don’t give up and wait for this epipheny. And obviously neither do you.

You want perfection and complete knowledge before life and you resent anyone who decides to do the best they can to pursue their goals and preferences - those who couch them in moral terms and those who do not - and who do not collapse into being fractured and fragmented because they do not grasp…etc. It is an anti-life position which you think

bears
no
onus.

We do. It bears and onus.

The first sad thing is what you’ve done to yourself with this idea. The truly horrible thing is you try to propagate it.

This is all after one inch of your post.

You think putting forward a philosophical position as an objectivist means say X is true and I know it.

That’s a philosophically naive idea of what happens in communication and what language does.

You have been putting forward an objectivist position in a mixture of implicit and occasionally stated, and utterly undemonstrated ideas for, what a decade? Via who you assume bears the onus in many situations. Via assumptions that are implicit in your posts. Via what you think you need not answer. The weird assumptions in your categories.

It all presents an ontology and a set of morals. Anyone who pushes back on it gets a couple of responses: they are afraid of your ideas and/or to criticize your posts is not demonstrating the way every rational person ought to live and if there is an afterlife and/or they aren’t suffering enough so they have a contraption that comforts them that you do not have. You being, implicitly, the brave solitary man who faces what seems like the truth of our not knowing. And a man who can drive away the cowards with the clarity of his thought and reduce otherwise intelligent people to…failures to be clever.

Untouchable. Iamb and his posts and assumptions are off limits for criticism.

Alright metaphorically anorexic person, I accept, Iamb, that you are not going to change how you think of your problem and it’s source and the only possible solution. You are always going to think if you lose just a bit more weight you will feel ok. It’s been a couple of years at least since I realized that I am talking to your addiction as the AA types say. You found the objectivism that you will carry to the grave, because it is utterly closed. Fine.

But its proliferation. That I will likely react negatively to still.
And the rude self-contradictory way it unfolds in interaction with other posters here.

Obviouly not a person to come to in a crisis, because suddenly she will be dealing with his needs and pain. Of course she would wonder. A better friend might say ‘I don’t know’.’ and not dive into his or her own internal distressed phenomenology. But further note that one need not be either objectivist. And in fact objectivists themselves can be on a spectrum. They may judge abortions but not consider them a mortal sin, for example. They may think there are many factors. And then a non-objectivist does not need to say anything like either of those answers. And then one might not consider the situation one where one must produce the objectively demonstable answer for all rational pregnant mothers.

And then…this friend came to you…they might want to hear what you feel and think, whoever you are. And they are adults and can take this. Someone asks our opinion, we are not suddenly responsible for their choices.

She came to a talk to a person and she encountered a failed oracle or scientist of morals.

And Phyllo is somehow wiggling out of answering this abstracted woman who did not come to him, did not choose him to ask advice or hear her out, or be open with her. He is victimizing this poor non-existent woman guilt guilt

rather than simply not answering a very abstract question where, if answered, one will be required to demonstrate that the answer fits all different women who come to all different friends. An utterly convincing and demonstrably universally correct answer,

even if, all those women, in actualily chose individual, specific humans to ask or talk to.

How to make life harder than it already is.

If i open my mouth, it must be the perfect answer for the whole planet and I can demonstrate this.

And we are supposed to pretend avoiding such bs intellectual hallucinations as this ‘situation’ and those ‘criteria’ that must be met before we can confront objectivists or speak to pregnant women
are rational.

There’s a position that has not been demonstrated. The rationality of his assumptions. Which he just keeps flinging out, as if he, the immaculate, never bears and onus for this tripe.

And note: the way he presents this issue is not that he is not objectivist, but rather that he is a mix of opposing objectivisms.

He is victimized by these different worldviews that have disunified him.

It is implicit in the above that he is several objectivists or has several objectivisms in himself.

He cannot take responsibility for his own preferences and give an empathetic but honest answer to a woman who comes to him to hear what he thinks and feels. And answer that need not be objectivist, be it unified or ambivalent.

Great, another intellectual contraption.

What we need instead is a discussion in which we explore our own moral philosophies, as they relate to our thinking about God and religion, as this relates to what we anticipate our fate to be after we die. In regard to a specific context/issue in which our value judgments are explored both existentially and philosophically.

In other words, you are assuming that the arguments you make to the moral objectivists need be as far as you go. Even though as far as you are able to go encompasses and embodies only that which you think you know about the human condition here on earth. And is almost certainly not even close to all that can be known about it going back to the understanding of existence itself.

Sure, existentially, in any particular context, you can just shrug all that aside and be content with the arguments you do make to the objectivists. Why? Because they work for you. As though that gets you any closer to concluding definitively that neither the pro-life nor the pro-choice camps are thinking abortion through correctly.

Once again, this is your own rendition of me. And the fact that I don’t recognize myself at all here is my problem not yours. Indeed, I can almost imagine you getting all worked up as you zero in on me, hammering me like a nail into your own psycho-babble assessment of what is really going on here with me.

And, yet, as I explain over and again, what I am interested in exploring is how you deal with your own objectivists without becoming fractured and fragmented. Given the manner in which “I” do in regard to my own understanding of right and wrong at the existential juncture that encompasses identity, value judgments and political economy.

Again, If you recognize that…

1] your moral and political values are embodied existentially in the trajectory of your experiences out in a particular world understood in a particular way and…
2] philosophers and scientists seem unable to construct [deontologically] an argument that either reconciles or resolves conflicting goods derived largely from dasein and…
3] new experiences in a world of contingency, chance and change are always out there able to reconfigure “I” in the is/ought world…

…then how is your sense of identity here [in not being an objectivist] not a precarious fabrication rooted in a world where there are countless social, political and economic variables you do not either fully understand or control.

You “expose” the objectivists for what they are, but how do you explain to them what you are if you argue that value judgments are just constructed, deconstructed and then reconstructed existentially [from the cradle to the grave] sans God or some other transcending font.

From my frame of mind, it is simply preposterious after all this time for you to argue that “[y]ou want perfection and complete knowledge before life and you resent anyone who decides to do the best they can to pursue their goals and preferences”.

On the contrary, I want to grapple with a frame of mind [my own] that has thought itself into believing that perfection and complete knowledge is precisely the illusion that the objectivists come to embody because it allows them to situate “I” in the “real me in sync with the right thing to do”…and then to nestle down comfortably in the psychological consolation that this provides them all the way to the grave. And then, for some, on into Heaven on the other side.

The rest is just more in the way of you pinning me down here. A way that is ever and always up in the psycho-babble clouds, making absolutely no reference to a context in which you examine in detail why and how the points I raise in my signature threads are not applicable to you. Why? Because you see human interactions in a No God world sans objective morality in such a way that…

…that what? I still have no real sense of how your “I” unfolds in a way that is different from mine even though we both share these same two crucial assumptions about the human condition.

How can Biggus get a “real sense” of anybody when that task requires an understanding of existence itself.

Right?

It’s an odd blend of hubris and humility. He does recognize the changes he has gone through in belief systems and he realizes that he doesn’t know if this changing will stop. That takes a certain humility and courage. He is right that many people do not want to notice such things or to even consider the contingency of the convictions. The hubris comes in that he is supposedly seeking the argument that will convince everyone or he should not act in the world. And those who do and who are not so fractured and fragmented must be lying to themselves (using intellectual contraptions). His implicitly claimed superiority to objectivists - like shooting fish in a barrel - is a kind of more humble than thou superiority. More plagued than thou. More willing to face the plague.

But all of this rests on claims to knowledge. That one would suffer without what he is calling intellectual contraptions. That his being fractured is caused by a lack of intellectual contraptions, at least compared to objectivists. That there could be an argument that would convince everyone. That one can know things before interacting with them - ie. through practices, through participation.

His choices, judgments and reactions to the choices of others all reveal a very specific set of heuristics about how one ought to live.’ They are presented as humble. They are based on his crisis of not knowing. But his hubris shows through repeatedly in his appeals to incredulity. What else could he do? Of course he wants to know if a choice is one that every rational person on earth should choose. Of course. I mean, he actually uses statements of direct incredulity on such issues.

And we look at the effects…

he cannot participate in something new unless he knows that all rational people on earth should also participate in it or say it.

And that is a recipie for stasis. He would need not simply to find or be himself a kind of Einstein, but since the knowledge would cover so many fields, it would have to be a kind of Jesus also.

Iambiguous is waiting for Godot.

Then he will be able to act when Godot comes.

Oh.

I just thought that either he was not aware of doing it or he was aware of it but he was doing it to score points.

(“It” being the insistence that objectivists “mind the gap” while he ignores “the gap” in knowledge and understanding whenever convenient.)

Well, good chance it is one of those, lol. I don’t know.

As with noting the antinomy embedded at the heart of the determinism/free will debate, pointing out the gap between “I” here and now, and an understanding of existence itself, is merely meant to convey how that much more foolish the objectivist may well be.

Sure, in order to function at all in our interactions with others [in a way we find meaningful], we presume that we have some measure of autonomy; and, that, “for all practical purposes”, the ontological and teleological parameters of reality itself, while possibly having profound implications regarding anything that we think, feel, say and do, is simply beyond our grasp.

Like that makes it go away.

Note to others:

You know what I’d find fascinating?

An exchange on this thread between phyllo and karpel tunnel in which they explore each other’s assessment of morality on this side of the grave and mortality/immortality on the other side of it.

As that pertains to their own views regarding God and religion.

If nothing else, I can learn how an exchange of this sort might unfold in a manner that they completely avoid all the accusations they make about me.

Biggus is out of luck because I don’t even know what exploring “each other’s assessment of morality on this side of the grave and mortality/immortality on the other side of it” would involve.

Would I be finding errors in his morality and he in mine? And/or finding points of agreement?

Or would it be an “assessment” of societal morality? (Which is different from personal morality.)

Whatever “assessment” means, of course.

And what is the purpose of this exploration?

I know that on a philosophy forum we are supposed to be talking. Still … there ought to be a point to it. Otherwise, one might as well be silent.

He wants us to have an argument. Then we can embody his conflicting goods, not find a resolution, and demonstrate that there is no argument, or at least neither you nor I have one, that will convince all rational people that X is moral or the best path or how one ought to live. That’s part one of the desire.

No, he wants us to mirror what he claims he has inside, the fracturing and fragmentation he experiences internally. We would have that fight outside him. We would disagree. We would not resolves all or even any of our differences. There would of course be points of common likes and dislikes, but his interest is in the areas we would disagree, and of course those areas exist.

The grammar in this sentence, I think, is messy. But it’s disingenous. He can see such discussions all around him, in threads on all sorts of forums, including philosophy forums. If he wants to learn, as the sentence claims, than he has a great wealth to work with regardless of whether we engage or not in that same dynamic. No, what he wants must be something else.

We have been his most steady critics, on and off, for a while. Let’s get them to fight. As if this would shed any light on the many areas where we agree in relation to him and his ideas. As if this would show that our critique is off, because, look, they didn’t come to agreement. Look, I Iambiguous was right, conflicting goods are a gnarly knot, those two can’t solve all the problems or create the arguments that all rational people can follow (or one or both of them is not rational).

Notice he says ‘without all the accusations’: but the truth is many of our posts are actually much more than accusations, they take his situation, as presented or implied or sometimes even what I think it is actually underneath, and try to resolve it. Point out the contradictions and assumptions and ways he may be 1) causing himself more pain 2) not allowing himself more fruitful approaches to feeling better and 3) trying to spread ideas that are just as unfounded if not more so than those many of his objectivist targets believe in. He frames it all as ‘accusations’. And, of course, there are accusations in there. But I, and I think you also, have moved from questioning to probing to pointing out, to critiquing and then also yes, to accusing and labeling negatively and more. Once he refused to consider any of these critiques or disagreements (often as even valid or on topic), we certainly aimed more accusatory posts. We got a kind of dynamic with him, at least I did. But I still discuss the ideas, still over solutions, still critique specific points made, still try to lift out assumptions in his posts. He frames it as just accusations. And I can imagine it feels that way. But it’s not. And it ends up being facile and binary. They just accuse me, they make me the topic (a topic that generally is presented as to do with his fractured mind and his particular dasein) when in fact our responses are much more complicated and cannot be dismissed as just accusations.

But it serves his position of IGNORING everything that might shift anything that potentially be inspiration for reevalutation of his assumptions, methods and assertions.

To get us to fight. There’s a simple psychological, let’s get my ‘enemies’ to fight thing playing in here, I would guess, but I also think it is to generate what he thinks is evidence that our critiques are not well grounded. He is confused about what evidence our disagreements would be.

I admit directly that I know Phyllo and I will have differences of opinion about a number of things - some of which we be ‘things’ that some call morals and I would call preferences, and even this framing is something we would likely disagree on. I am sure there are others. I am quite positive that I do not have the perfect argument to convince Phyllo that he is wrong or should live like I live (and there are assumptions in there that I am just too tired to go into, but since I am not an objectivist in part his desire is even sillier).

None of this would take away the tiniest little nano-kilo from any argument I have made. In fact it supports many statements I have made. And then the fact that we have differences that we are not likely to resolve through rational discussion
does
not
say
a
damn
thing
about
the
assumptions I have critiqued in Iamb’s positions
nor
does
it
refute
what i have pointed out are the problems in the way he relates to other people.

So, on the level of it as ‘hey, let’s get you guys to fight’ childishness, while I understand the urge and I have had it myself in life many times, it’s nothing to respect.
And on the level of this somehow being evidence of anything relevent to points I have made, such a discussion would not be evidence any assertion I have ever made in relation to Iamb is incorrect. I don’t have the answer to solving conflicting goods or conflicting metaphysics. I know that. I am not looking for one.

He is. I don’t think there are such things. Experiences can shift such things, but words on a screen, nah. And even with experiences there is no guarantee and often time and curiosity and intention and more are necessary.

He uses the verb ‘avoid’. Coming from him that’s a joke. Critiques of him and his assumptions and actions is not an issue. Only what he wants to see happen is an issue. The King of avoiders. The King of not reassessing anything in his latest - and seemingly rather permanent - belief system - nihilism and the only possible resolution of it in his mind.

We have disagreed here in ILP and may yet again. But there is absolutely no reason, in the context of our criticism of him, to dance when he says dance.

And he can’t even be honest about why he wants it - to learn, lol.
And he doesn’t have, I am finally going to say it, the analytical skills to realize that it would not indicate, remotely, what he thinks it would.

A kid gets caught taking money from his father’s wallet.
Both parents get angry.
The kid says ‘Mom says you spend too much time with your friends on the weekend.’

Yeah, mommy and daddy have issues, but we’ve been talking about what you are doing and what you are assuming around honesty and property and respect and so on. Nice try Jimmy, sit back down.

And since I know Mommy and Daddy have issues and make no claim to an ability to resolve conflicting goods or metaphysics between all rational people or even consider finding such a thing a rational quest, us having such a disagreement in front of him demonstrates nothing relevent to my criticisms of his ideas, implicit and explicit, nor of his behavior.

He’s a deflector and, ironically, an avoider.

:-k

Do conflicting goods have to be resolved?

Ought the arguments that produce conflicting goods “go away”?

One can picture conflicting goods as being divisive and counterproductive.

But one could also picture conflicting goods as representing a useful diversity.

In a sense, it’s like not putting all your eggs into one basket.

Those with power will try to push their goods onto others of course.

Iambiguous has demonstrated on this thread for more than 5 years that he has a closed mind. So why are we still talking with him? What about his game of bait-and-switch is so fascinating?

Huh?!!!

I am presuming you both live lives that [like most folks] involve coming into contact with conflicting value judgments relating to different sets of behaviors revolving around any number of contexts. Or you get into discussions with others and the converstation gets around to any number of conflicting goods that pop up on the news. You are asked what you think about this or that issue.

Then, for some, the experiences or the discussions might involve speculating about the relationship between living and dying. And this will almost always involve one’s views on God and religion.

After all, does this sort of thing not happen to millions and millions of us around the globe over the course of living our lives from day to day?

Only most folks do not pursue philosophy here much below the surface.

But you two do.

So, on a thread that was created precisely for the sort of discussion I am interested in here, you will either go that route or, instead, wonder why on earth anyone would actually seriously consider doing it in the first place.

As though some might not construe that to be a really bizarre point of view in a philosophy forum on a thread devoted to discussing God and religion as they pertain to morality on this side of the grave and mortality on the other side of it.

My guess: There’s only one way to find out. With God [you] or without God [him].

Decide that between the two of you before you commence.

Sure, make my suggestion all about me again.

But: I created this thread with zinnat because I respected both his intelligence and his commitment to pursuing these relationships as they reflect a fundamental explanation for the existence of gods and religions down through the ages.

How ought one to behave “here and now”? And how is that related to what one wants his or her fate to be “there and then” after they have died?

The two of you will either explore this [with me or with each other] from different points of view along the God/religion spectrum or you won’t.

Indeed, if you choose to have this discussion between the two of you, I will agree not to make any comments at all about the exchange. I will simply follow it and use it as a way in which to grasp how you avoid all the accusation that you make about me on this thread.

Again: Are you or are you not going to examine in some detail the relationship between the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave, your thinking about death and its consequences, and your views on the relevance of God and religion in how this has played out for you given the life that you have lived so far.

That’s the whole point of this thread. Where does the part where I bait-and-switch come in?

We’ll need a context of course.

One in an a God, the God, my God world.
And another in a No God world.