While I see much merit in Lord J's observation that "The Answer" does not lie in any one religion, I am much depressed by the idea that "The Answer" doesn't even exist. "The Answer," of course, is something powerful, unseen and unquantifiable that links all conscious beings together, and something that deeply satisfies us once we've finally found it.
Perhaps this is possible, given a creative applicatoin of the word “links.” I might take that to mean, for instance, that Civilization itself is “The Answer,” and that we shan't have gotten it right until all humans have the means to pursue their full potential. Alternatively, I might take it to represent the cognitive process: Most humans have the means to think rationally, if the obstacles of ignorance, ego, and material need can first be surmounted. By respecting this ability of lucid thinking which is common to humans, we can then pursue otherwise disparate experiences from relatable vantage points.
What I wouldn't be willing to accept, of course, is that this “Answer” of which you speak is some supernatural entity or mystical force. But, since you didn't argue anything like that, I shan't pursue the matter. =)
However, when it comes to the last part of your Rumi quote:
I then looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him;
He was nowhere else to be found.
Daniel Krispin made an interesting point on the subject of looking within oneself to find answers:
Keep in mind that if there is absolute truth (speaking hypothetically), and it exists apart from one's self, then looking only inside oneself will avail nothing.
He is, of course, referring to his Lutheran god as the “absolute truth,” which he labels as an exception to “looking inside oneself.” Even though it is hypocritical of him to be making such a point, there is something important here: Meaning is something which cannot be discovered. It has to be created. We each do this for ourselves. It is one of the ways by which we rationalize the world.
Within limits, that which is created conceptually (i.e., meaning) is no more or less valid than that which exists objectively, such as the computer before your eyes, in that each can influence our thinking, which in turn helps us to establish for ourselves an identity.
However, when created meaning begins to lay claim to objective truths, then it becomes a big problem. That's why Krispin himself is not suited to speak on the matter: His religion is one of the world's most successful examples of human inventions pretending to dispense real-world truths.
Thus, we must always be careful to bear in mind that, when we look inside ourselves and find meaning, it is only relevant for us, and not necessarily the rest of the world, because there are truths out there—objective, absolute truths, such as the molecular composition of water and the motion of the planets, and, more abstractly, the historical influence of money in politics—which do not answer to any human proclamations about how the world really works. In short, we cannot pretend that reality conforms to our wishes. Any meaning which we do create for ourselves must come second to that, or else our existences devolve into a precarious balancing act of claiming to know more than we actually do, and being knocked down to size by the forces of reality on a regular basis. Christianity has profited very handsomely over the ages by performing just such a balancing act quite well.
In any case, to get back to “The Answer,” it would be my position that the universe provides no such thing intrinsically, but that, given the wide potential of human existence and the equally wide wonders of the universe, neither can such an “Answer” be ruled out—unlike the premise of god—because there is the possibility of a manufactured solution. We can't create god, but we can create, for instance, a website dedicated to Chrono Trigger, and dwell there lovingly.
How about 'purpose'?
In my personal lexicon, “purpose” has a different meaning than “meaning.” Purpose is the “what” in life; meaning is the “why.” A subtle but important distinction. In any case, purpose is even more individual than meaning is, because each of us must experience life according to our own predispositions. The diversity of the human condition guarantees an nearly as great diversity in human purpose, from person to person, and over time.
But if there is an Answer, it does lie in one, overarching, thing. That is, there can only be one Answer, one Truth. Relativism in that way is doomed, and I suppose the only redemption for it is that it seeks not to dismiss any one point in the fear that doing so will dismiss what will turn out to be part of the Truth. I believe this; you believe that. They are mutually incompatible. If one is indeed Truth, but we cannot be certain which, it is safer to say 'what you believe is right, but what I believe is right, too.' Kind of covers all your bases. However, there must always be one Truth to things. Either something is or it is not.
Interesting how you go from describing a possibility to assuming that it is true, in just a few sentences, with no supporting argument of any kind. Interesting, like a car wreck.
Nietzsche. To Faust, Nietzsche might ask you 'who's to say there is purpose?' He would call all these religious teachers, all the poets, teachers of purpose to try and give us drive to do anything.
Nietzsche rejected metaphyiscs (or intended to), and Christian values along with it. But what you are implying here is that Nietzsche was nihilistic himself, which is one of the grossest and most pedestrian mistakes people make when reading him, abetted because he himself assented to that label and wrote about the subject extensively. Nevertheless, Nietzsche was as far from being a nihilist as you are; he was by all measures positivist and in the end was not so different in his stance than Aristotle was. Frankly, you are not making any sense. I advise you go reread your texts.
Uber thanks for the explanation of Nietzsche, Dan. I never quite understood the "nihilist" aspect of his philosophy, but now I think I have a better grip on it.
No, in almost all likelihood you do not. Taking notes from Daniel Krispin on any subject of depth is risky business. I would advise you simply consult your local college library or philosophy department on the subject. They might direct you to some suitable literature. For the life of me I can't name a book that does him justice, for I have yet to read a book on Nietzsche that was as good as the discussions on him that I have had with trained philosophers. But that doesn't mean that such a book isn't out there.
The thing is, no one has any right to bash religions at all.
On behalf of the billions of people who have been slaughtered, oppressed, or denied all opportunity, down to the slightest comfort, by the image of Christ or in his name, I beg to differ with you.
You would also, apparently, beg to differ with yourself:
Religion IMO brings hope for people, but also pretty much corrupts peoples thinking. I prefer to stay out of religion as i've seen what it does to people and it hasn't done anything good that i've see from my own eyes.
So, in other words, no one has any right to bash religions...except you.
There's nothing wrong with ANY religion, it's just how the people use it and treat others, that's what usually ends up terribly wrong.
Believers often use this excuse to insulate their religion from liability for the atrocities committed by its precepts or in its name. You obviously understand the “in its name” part, as there are certainly people whose actions are not easily justified by any sane reading of a given religious doctrine, but you completely neglect the case where people commit wrongs
by the tenets of their religion.
Maybe Ramsus' post will be like the Chrono Cross, healing all dimensional problems.
I doubt it. This is his story:
Rather, I am given this single moment that is the present, and endeavor to live it with unquestionable justness and righteousness, that I should treat all honestly and fairly and with compassion and understanding, while doing all that is within my power to improve the condition of my fellow man. Beyond that, I only know what I feel to be true, and I dare not waste time putting that into words.
It's a good story, told honestly. Many people would be off to have such an outlook for themselves. Nevertheless, Ramsus speaks with an elegance borne of simplicity. His philosophy as told here is little more than an activist reading of the Golden Rule, a rule that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Thus, with irony, he serves in the military—an organ whose internal culture and functional purpose are both premised upon “do as we say,” the very opposite of the Golden Rule.
His personal journey continues. Someday, he'll find the words to explain it. For now, however, there are no words because the ideas themselves are vague. It's no surprise, then, that he chooses to “not waste time” by trying to explain himself. Ramsus is a well-grounded person, and well-reasoned, and certainly quite forceful when challenged, but what he is proffering is in no way substantial enough to “heal all dimensional problems,” and I guess he would be the first to agree.
In short, and as much as I hate to say it, if you take Ramsus' contribution as a feel-good summation to this topic, you'll be shortchanging yourself. The topic isn't supposed to end on a good note, because the underlying disagreements between all of us continue. We're not going to solve religion and existence here on the Compendium. The best we can hope to do is exchange ideas with one another—and they need not be pleasant or unpleasant ideas, unless we think them such—so that the best of us may make a good argument for the succor of those who desire something more fulfilling than what they have now.
I'm surprised at how fast this topic has exploded. It speaks to people's interest in the world beyond the world of the present moment. I, for one, consider the number of posts in this topic much more satisfying than any one, feel-good post such as Ramsus', or philosophical post such as my own. If there's one thing that I know about expression, it's that nobody can do another person's thinking. We each have to think for ourselves, or we will be subject to those who we blindly follow.
In so many words, that is the problem I have with religion, and with subservience to a god. What god would discourage free thought? Yet that is what all the gods have done...for those deities were invented long ago, and cannot defend themselves against the rigors and dogmas enacted in their name. Who would follow that?
Ah, of course...Daniel Krispin.
So if you want to give me a response, a cogent response, feel free.
Goodness knows I have tried. It only ever seems to make you angry, though. Angry or frustrated. Today we see you in angry mode. If I were to keep replying, eventually you would succumb to frustration, and give up. That's how it always goes with us. Do we need to bother again? Sadly, I suppose we do. You never make this any easier...
It's always 'Krispin is this' and 'Krispin is that'... you sound like one of those bloody demagogues. All I said was a 'what if' and you shoot it down with your typical, dogmatic, bluster of rhetoric.
I did say that Krispin represents delusion, and that Krispin doesn't believe in humanity improving itself. The latter you yourself have admitted in the past, and even in this thread under the guise of other words. The former obviously is not a delusion to
you, but merely is my own reading of religious dogma. You yourself speak of “inescapable chains,” yet to the nonbeliever those chains are entirely invented. You speak of absolute truth, yet provide no insight as to how you arrived at it—and in fact you yourself said that such insights are necessarily circular. In other words, you claim to have insight to a Supreme Truth which Binds Us All, yet you cannot (or will not) offer any defense of your claim. Delusion? Delusion. That's what a delusion is: When you're living inside of it, you think you're right. Those of us outside see the delusion for what it is.
And what's this about calling me a demagogue? I've noticed a formula in your strategy, a three-pronged defense maneuver that never changes:
1. Accuse your opponent of making personal attacks—often while committing personal attacks yourself;
2. Appeal to the wisdom of authority figures both ancient and contemporary, without displaying some understanding their teachings or offering any derivative arguments of your own;
3. Obscure the debate with irrelevant tangents, logical fallacies, unskeleted conclusions, and plenty of the same personal attacks which you claim are the fault of whose teachings you claim to understand.
Dare we go over that, piece by piece? Sure, if it'll help further your understand. Of course it will do no such thing, but at least the effort is worthy.
And yes, now I'm getting ad hominem. You think you are greatly concerned with 'ideas' when, in fact, you've fooled yourself: all you are concerned about is beating the people who think wrong things. Because that's all your arguments ever devolve into. Indeed, though you argue with great passion, I've yet to see much of a cogent argument from you.
Conveniently for me, you come right out and say you are making a personal attack, which of course invalidates much of what follows. More interesting, from my point of view, is to try to determine which of several personal attacks is meant by you to be the hardest-hitting. Is it that you know of my fondness for ideas and thus claim that I haven't got any? Is it that you would dismiss as egotistical my efforts to provide perspective to others? Is it that you know I value clarity of thought and openness of mind, and thus incessantly repeat that I am a muddled dogmatist? Or is it that you know I stake my claims on the strength of my arguments, and, so, instead of doing me the courtesy of replying to those arguments directly, you invariably resort to attacking them on the meta level by implying that they collapse or melt or blow away with the wind, without actually explaining
how that might be?
It may be that you fear the integrity of my arguments, and thus feel compelled to attack the messenger. But I doubt it. It seems more likely that you believe every word you write...in which case, you would mean for your hardest-hitting attack to be the claim that I have no ideas. Fine. But if I have no ideas, then why do you spend so much time squirming?
Take in point that when I read Nietzsche I find him an excellent questioner and arguer, though he says many of the same things as you. You, in contrast, are not. Fire but no substance.
Oh, I know Nietzsche. Indeed, though it maddens you, I have a larger philosophical education than you have, at least thus far, and I have had more years to digest what I learned. One thing I know about you, Daniel Krispin, is that you are enamored of things you newly learn, and are very eager to demonstrate your intellectual gravitas by speaking of these things often and proudly. So it is with Nietzsche. You were the one who first mentioned him in this thread. I had not spoken of him, nor had I meant to invoke him. In fact, I hadn't thought of Nietzsche at all when I replied to the original post.
You thought of Nietzsche, because you have studied him of late, and have decided that I am in the Nietzschean mold. I'm not, of course. I have explicitly repudiated that in the past. Nietzsche had some wonderful ideas, some of which I identify with strongly, but to call me Nietzschean already demonstrates your lack of understanding of both him and myself. Nietzsche and I are two separate entities, and I disagree with him more often than I agree, with the net effect that I find most of his philosophy no more convincing than any of the other philosophers'. Yet, in your haste to put your new knowledge on display, you seem to have revealed how little it is you actually learned about the guy. Perhaps your motive was to relate me to him as an underhanded show of self-righteousness: Nietzsche did, after all, find his own philosophy disturbing at times, and eventually had an incapacitating mental breakdown. I'm sure you would like to see the same happen to me, and in this sense perhaps your inclination to link the two of us finally becomes understandable. But, if not that, I find it utterly unfathomable why you mention Nietzsche at all, other than as a sadistic exercise to force others to write out his convoluted name multiple times. If you understand him, you would not associate him with me, and so you either do not understand him, or you are deliberating misrepresenting me. What I spoke of, earlier in this thread, is the imperative of exploration. By exploring, a person can both discover the truths of the world and create a sense of meaning for his or her place in it. I offer that to anybody who suffers from a religion, from religion in general, or from the lack of it. It is not a Nietzschean premise. If you're thinking of the Overman or the Death of God, think again. If you're thinking that I'm a nihilist, try again. By Josh, try again! In my personal philosophy, nihilism is the worst of the three Deplorable Isms and is indeed one of the ugliest things in the world. Thus it comes out, once more, that you are either inept or malicious. Which is it, then? Ah, Daniel! If I had to credit one person for my perspective, which is preposterous anyhow, it would be Carl Sagan—the scientist. His simple premise of accepting that, of objective truth, one does not know what one has not tested, provides two immediate impetuses for further action: the incitement to curiosity and the incitement to critical thought. Many of the great philosophers have touched on this or hinted at it in some fashion, including Nietzsche, but your insistence with his name is just one more example of your own narrow reading of the world around you.
Now, that was a thick enough paragraph that perhaps you will be the only one to have read it. For the benefit of others, here is a much shorter exposition of your intellectual dishonesty:
And are we really to take seriously your appeal to the mood of 'freedom'... ie. that you start this 'well I preach freedom; THEY preach chains' as a method of winning over your audience? That'll catch the rabble, but no one of discerning thought. And if you win the mass, then you've become a preacher of your own dogma, haven't you?
One of the most beautiful things I wrote in this thread was
my definition of freedom: “Freedom is the opportunity to figure it all out for yourself.”
I recognize and acknowledge every human being's qualified desire for sovereignty of the mind. We each have a will that drives us. My aim here is to tell people that this must be respected: We each have to answer the questions of life in our own way, because they are our own questions. One person's plea for understanding may have a completely different meaning than another person's verbally, emotionally identical plea. It will not suffice for anyone to be deciding these things for another person. Even if they tried, it would never work unless the second person has lost their will.
Yet you attack me for my stance on freedom, both directly and by association, demonstrating in yourself no understanding of the concept and no desire to learn about it. You wrap what I offer in religious words like “preach” so as to cast doubt on everything I am saying without actually putting up a real argument of your own. Your opposition to human exploration is stark and ugly, Krispin.
If you want to be anything near to a philosopher - and you're not - what you must do is stop hating the people - especially those that disagree with you! - and actually, for once, have something that approximates an open mind.
There you go again with the personal attack. You must know, because I have said it, that open-mindedness is one of the two great qualities of an enlightened human being. So of course, it makes perfect tactical sense for you to proclaim that I have none of my own.
I'll tell you what, though: I don't “hate the people—especially those that disagree” with me, as you put it. It just so happens that I disagree with everybody in this thread to some extent. My worldview is my own, and nobody else here has come close to it. But I'm not attacking
them. I'm offering comment or criticism where I see a use for it, occasionally rebuke, and otherwise offering my own story as appropriate.
As far attacks go, I'm only attacking
you, Daniel, because
you are one of the handiest examples I have ever seen of religion's capacity to corrupt otherwise intelligent people into the most unashamed acts of intellectual dishonesty. It chagrins me that you masquerade as an intellectual when demonstrably you have taken leave of your wits. That reflects poorly not only on you, but on me, and on everybody else who tries so hard to teach the people of Earth that intelligence is the key to illumination. This, more than anything else, is why I continue to spend my time rebutting your myriad idiocies.
Who is the one who questions? Definitely not you. At least I'm able to say 'well, maybe this, or maybe that', set my conclusions, but be willing to admit the necessity of many sorts of things.
Ah, you noticed that. You see, Krispin, the problem is not that you are asking questions and I am asking none. The problem is that you are decidedly
not asking questions, and are instead phrasing your conclusions in the form of questions. That's why I pointed out your six “what ifs” in my previous post. Each of those “what ifs” was not really a question at all, but in fact a statement phrased as a question so as to save you the trouble of actually constructing an argument.
Let's review, shall we? In each case, one need simply remove the “what if” to arrive at your personal conclusion. I have done the work of boldfacing these:
I suppose the question that must be asked is... if we are to break our moral chains, as it were... what happens if there are, indeed, unescapable chains? There is a strong desire in Nietzsche to break out of the herd, as it were. To some extent I find that commendable, but it must be wondered... are we just deceiving ourselves into a delusional freedom thereby? Basically I'm asking, what if freedom is, in fact, not only freedom of will, but free knowledge (knowledge free of ignorance), and as such one becomes less free, though they think themselves more free.
Krispin's Opinion: People who break out of their moral chains become less free.
But the question we must ask is... what if we are all, inherently, weak?
Krispin's Opinion: We are all, inherently, weak. Thus, we need to remain in the grip of our moral chains.
What if, as much as we will ourselves otherwise, we cannot be strong, and in doing so do not end up truly free, but only put ourselves under another form of control that we perceive even less... that is, merely exchange the names in things.
You didn't even bother with a question mark on that one.
Krispin's Opinion: Because humanity is inherently weak, therefore if we attempt to take control of our own destiny, we will only end up worse off than when we started.
There was a time when doctors did not know the use of many parts of the body, but that did not make them useless or redundant. What if they'd tried to remove them? So there's your answer for the question of the public nudity.
Krispin's Opinion: Because doctors used to not understand human anatomy very well, therefore public nudity was and still is inappropriate because otherwise the doctors would roam the streets trying to remove people's body parts.
(WTF?)
As, I would add, is the stance that religion is uneccessary. What if (religion) performs a useful social function that we are unaware of consciously?
Krispin's Opinion: Religion performs a useful social function that many people do not understand. Specifically, it provides us with the aforementioned moral chains to keep us from screwing ourselves up even more badly than we already are.
Right, right, we can all be strong on our own... we think. But what if we can't.
Krispin's Opinion: Humans think we can be strong on our own, but really we're weak and need moral chains. Have I mentioned that yet?
Okay, Krispin, so there you have it. Yes, I wasn't asking questions of you this time. I was attacking your remarks because they are bullshit. You haven't substantiated a single one of your opinions. Worse yet, you yourself weren't asking any questions, either. You were, insidiously, hiding your dogma in the form of questions. Such an act is not interrogative. You were asking
rhetorical questions, and you're quite a rhetorician yourself.
Did you honestly think I would not notice that? Good grief, Daniel, you so consistently take me for a fool that sometimes I wonder if you're not secretly longing to be caught! Do you have some kind of fetish for losing it in court? I wonder.
Okay, so that fetish bit was a personal attack. Distancing myself from those comments, I return to your own statement that it is you and not I who ask the questions. Such a bald-faced whopper there has never been on our Compendium. Questions are the love of my life. They are how I learn. Of course, sometimes I don't ask questions, because it is also important to me to stand up for my principles.
You, on the other hand, have rarely been observed to ask an honest question. In your scrupulous avoidance of real argument, and your ad nauseam recitation of poorly grasped historical irrelevancies, somehow you seem never to find the time to actually ask questions—of yourself or anyone else. No surprise there. You accuse me because you are guilty yourself of the very thing!
If you were anything of a free thinker you'd have at least considered what I said.
I do read everything you write. I'm probably one of the only ones who does. When you make a claim I have not heard before, I consider it. When you bring forth a new argument, I consider it. The sad truth of the matter is that this rarely comes up, because you almost never have anything new to offer. A tired old fallacy in 2003 is usually still going to be a tired old fallacy in 2008. On the other hand, occasionally you make remarks that I can almost bring myself to compliment. So, please, don't play the victim and pretend that I'm not even considering your arguments. I have considered them duly...and
rejected them for all the reasons I have laid out over the years...which you have always steadfastly ignored.
Yet even I, as a believer in my faith, understand that sometiems even the devil speaks the truth. Yet you think yourself so entirely justified in your stance... Lord J, you'd make a very grand Inquisitor, of that I am entirely certain. At this hour you hold your flames and venom only for religion. Soon, all too soon, you might see that encompass everything and all that disagrees with your system of belief. Watch it, and for bloody once, at least consider that others who have a different view might be saying something worth listening too.
Our exchanges over the years have been educational for us both. We have both learned from each other. But whereas I have learned about the kinds of argument that pass for Christian intellectualism, you seem to have learned only how to conceal your own character weaknesses—not for the purpose of overcoming them, but for the purpose of making yourself more palatable to others. In the past you have compared me openly to Hitler and Stalin and many other dictators of yore. Now you settle for praising me as a would-be Inquisitor, leaving the rest unsaid...except for that part where you not-so-subtly speculate that at some point in the future I will turn my “flames” on the whole world, as in the great tradition of Hitler.
You never learn. You really never do. Yet, by your ardor for passing yourself off as an intellectual, I am fated ever to be on watch against you and those like you, who would corrupt the world to their own, ulterior sense of justice...even here in an otherwise happy and hopeful thread where your monstrous presence was not required. Sigh...!
Stop the rhetoric, and show us some of that philosophy you say you are so well versed in.
In third grade I was formally taught many of the tools of critical thinking, such as inference, hypothesis, supposition, inquiry, and so forth. But it was all the way back when I was two and three years old, watching
Sesame Street, that I learned the important lesson “be yourself.” And, wouldn't you know it, I was
born with a predisposition to both imagination and awareness.
Such qualities are the stuff philosophy is made of.
I have watched, with some private amusement, over the past year or so as your academic study of philosophy has unfolded. I have watched you excitedly begin to talk in great detail about philosophers whose names you had barely known just weeks prior. I have watched you boisterously lay claim to some rather sophisticated concepts, always with an endearing mixture of enthusiasm and incorrectness. It reminded me of myself, actually...myself as a teenager. Up to a point.
I began to learn philosophy long before I was ever introduced to it formally. I have a very good mind for such inquiry, and developed a great deal of my own thinking before eventually discovering that I had, independently, come to many of the same realizations that the philosophers of yore have reached. That's just who I am. I can't claim to be the best swimmer or the best pianist, and you're a lot better at drawing pictures than I am, but as a student of philosophy I am pretty damn good. I can count on one hand all the people in the world I have yet met who can match wits with me on a regular basis. You, Daniel Krispin, are not one of them.
As surely as you have amused me by displaying your new philosophical knowledge with great fervor—and as surely as you have disgusted me by distorting your newfound knowledge to fit your own, deluded view of the world—you now amuse (and disgust) me again, by demanding that I operate down at your level of philosophical understanding.
One of the more important differences between us is that you try to build up your reputation by referencing the great names of history, whereas I try to make myself credible by standing on my own feet. You are the one who holds the philosophers' hands. But I tell you this, Krispin: To name is not to know. To me, the superior argument is not to name Plato but to
know Plato. And I tell you once more, Krispin: To name is not to know. Your constant, ingratiating name-dropping has neither impressed nor persuaded, certainly not me and probably no one else. Demonstrably, you have only a modest grasp of philosophy at this point. You know names and terms and concepts, but your
understanding lags significantly. This much is evident in your repeated losses to me (at least from an objective point of you), and is all the more strikingly evident in what parts of my writings you choose to discuss, and what parts you fail to discuss, and, lastly, of what parts of my writings you choose to discuss,
how you go about discussing them.
To me, the superior working knowledge of a philosopher is not to memorize his teachings but to master them. I rarely remember with literal accuracy the sources that teach me. I absorb those teachings in some measure, and assimilate them into my own, internal rationale. Only occasionally do I bother to mention somebody else's name, because the names are not important and I rarely remember the specifics anyway. It is the ideas themselves that matter, and the ideas are anonymous. They cannot be owned, but merely possessed. Do you want to get into a meticulous discussion of, say, Hume's views on causality, or Nietzsche's Overman? Fine, engage me. Show me you have any real interest in it. I doubt very much that you do. But if you do, then, for my part, I must admit freely that I should have to bring a book with me into the conversation, because I won't remember everything they said. Yet I have the strength to stand my own ground, and you are the one holding the philosophers' hands.
That doesn't mean I haven't learned from them. The ironic thing is that I've been running philosophical circles around you since the day we met, yet for your part you usually fail to notice so much as a single footfall as it impacts the earth. In the past, my best philosophical arguments have been outright ignored by you. I remember in particular
the thread on atheism, where I wrote some of the most beautiful philosophical work I have written anywhere (
here,
here , and
here), and yet you did not even reply to it. You simply skipped all of that and persisted in
your miserable personal attacks.
As a would-be engineer, I have some sophisticated knowledge of mathematics. You might think, then, that I would incorporate math into my everyday writings...yet I almost never do. (Although I was sorely tempted tonight, when you said that you refuse to believe that equations can be derived down to zero, to which I was tempted to reply, “dy/dx = C.”) Why is that? Why would I avoid mathematical exposition? It is because the symbols of mathematical truths are rarely necessary in the conveyance of the truths themselves. Quite often, the most ordinary English words will suffice. Would you also accuse me of not knowing math? Would I have to perform difficult equations that would please your majesty? Or is a qualitative understanding of the relevant mathematics sufficient?
Rhetorical question. Of
course a qualitative understanding is sufficient, you insufferable moron. And so it is with philosophy! We rarely need to discuss what the philosophers said verbatim, because usually the discussion turns not on the philosophers themselves, nor on the philosophers' specific teachings, but rather on the many ideas underneath. Do you understand any of this?
...yet you are unwilling to see any good in religion...
Again you obscure. I have said before that there can be much good found in religion. The more important point I have made is that no
unique good can be found in religion. There is nothing good in this world which religion alone supplies. That is what I have said...you errant pedant. What are you playing at, confusing everything I would say so as to desperately retain your own crumbling vantage point? Why do you insist on making me repeat everything I have ever said, to which you never even honestly replied in the first place, let alone now?
That's what you do as soon as I begin to speak: murmur your mantra of 'I'm right; I'm right; I know I'm right; he's wrong; he's just delusional.' Does that make you feel better? Does that soothe your ego or your security? Stop it. If you want to learn something, stop selecting only those things which support your current world view.
I propose, not for the first time, that you are consistently the worst case of projecting one's own problems onto somebody else that I have ever come across. You are deluded, all right...
You speak as though freedom of choice is the highest good... but is it? That's a question you've not asked, it seems. You seem content to merely assume that THAT is the highest good... a similar problem I have with Nietzsche... his arguments seem to be based on the idea that one should be a wolf rather than a sheep... but what makes THAT right? Ask yourself that: what makes that core idea right.
You're right. Freedom of choice is not the highest good. It is the
third highest good, to the best of my understanding. Forgive me this bitof colorful language, but you are truly an idiot, Daniel Krispin. I have spent more than half my life piecing this stuff together, and still you seem to think that one of the three most important truths in the entire universe is “a question” that I “have not asked.” And to bolster your claim, to support your ridiculous notion, you...
You don't do anything! You don't offer a single piece of evidence, not even circumstantial evidence. You just say it, as though that makes it true. Again and again you do this. Idiot, idiot, idiot! I hate to trot out such childish language, but truly we are at a juncture where words fail me. You, sir, are a cosmic joke. You are the very apotheosis of a good mind going absolutely rotten. Children should have to watch a video of you in school, played in conjunction with the “Just Say No” documentaries and the “Red Asphalt” films, and other educational material that teaches children of how catastrophically deranged their heads can go, if they commit the mistake of placing religious dogma ahead of all sense!
I'll not grudge you arrogance... you once said to me you can speak arrogantly because you know what you're talking about, and I must admit I quite enjoy that sort of confidence. But this what you're doing now sounds like someone so worried that they might see something wrong in their system they angrily declaim those things which contradict. That's what you do to me each and every time. I'm beginning to think you genuinely are concerned to hear my argument, and as such have to put up these walls of fire because you cannot directly engage what I've said. After all, tactics like appeals and ad hominems are usually only used by those who have no actual justification for their stance (and yes, I understand the irony of using it in this post.) I don't think you entirely understand what you yourself are doing in this. I am one of the few who stands up to what you say, who actively disagrees, and with no small or constrained mind.
I might say the same thing of you. In fact, that is exactly what I have said for a good while now. You continually evade arguments, offer none of your own, provoke confrontation where none is warranted (as you did in this thread), and manage to get off with very little cogent opposition. When you said “this what you're doing now,” do you even know what you're talking about anymore?
That's two instances of projection I've caught you in thus far, but perhaps the most damning of all is this last one:
I've seen your development. For a while you were directly trying to argue me, then suddenly, seeing that impossible, you devolved into this 'well, it's just his dogmatism' mantra.
That's sad. Of course, I'm not here to be a concern troll. The only reason I give you so much as the time of day is because of what I said earlier: Your pseudo-intellectualism mustn't be allowed to pass for the real thing. You may have it easy elsewhere in your life, but not here you shan't. Not until you decide to respect intellectual discourse.
