Another white male attack:

Skarekrow said:
I don’t feel “ruled” by my beliefs.
You seem to take everything in a negative way...that is not a requirement of faith the way I understand it, imho faith requires much study, soul-searching, and critical thinking...when you say unquestioning, that is “blind faith”...yes, yes, drink the Kool-Aid!
And you’re right...guns don’t kill people...blah blah kill people...(insert NRA slogan).
You seem to be under the impression that people are ruled by faith, and not that people who have faith can use it without it overtaking their sanity.
You’ve limited your parameters of your rule-stick.
This isn’t a problem with an answer to be solved.
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Its helpful to remember that reason and rationality do not require evidence. You can always rationally discuss an idea without ever having to refer to anything physical. Anyway, I'm not American, so I don't understand what you mean by "drink the Kool-Aid". The way you have characterized faith here is virtually indistinguishable from reason. What exactly is the difference?

You say you don't "feel" ruled by your ideas, but this is quite irrelevant. You wouldn't object to a computer program telling the computer what to do. So why object to the idea that our mind tells US what to do? That is, our mind as a collection of memes, beliefs, abstractions, ideas, morals and all other manor of immaterial constitution.
 
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Flavus Aquila said:
If he's Cartesian/Kantian his anti-religion is at least understandable. If his level of rationalism is such that he is skeptical of any meaningful/accurate perception of reality outside his own psyche, it is important that any predeterminations be set aside for the sake of exploration.

However, if I was a skeptical rationalist, doubting that anything might exist outside my own psyche, I would most probably pursue the most comfortable outlook possible.
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No no, I do believe it is possible to perceive accurately. But it is a mistake to equate accurate perception with perfection perception. True there is such thing as objective reality. A world that is independent of the mind. But does this really mean that perfect knowledge is possible? Its tempting to think of Plato here, but he actually believed the exact opposite. His allegory of the cave was to illustrate different stages of awareness, not to show perfect perception is impossible.
 
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Flavus Aquila said:
If he's Cartesian/Kantian his anti-religion is at least understandable. If his level of rationalism is such that he is skeptical of any meaningful/accurate perception of reality outside his own psyche, it is important that any predeterminations be set aside for the sake of exploration.

However, if I was a skeptical rationalist, doubting that anything might exist outside my own psyche, I would most probably pursue the most comfortable outlook possible.
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I can understand that.
That point of view will only take you so far though, especially when trying to argue a point when he doesn’t grasp the whole concept the other side is trying to paint for him.
It doesn’t fit his parameters - so...must be no good.
Too much assuming.
 
wolly.green said:
Its helpful to remember that reason and rationality do not require evidence. You can always rationally discuss an idea without ever having to refer to anything physical. Anyway, I'm not American, so I don't understand what you mean by "drink the Kool-Aid". The way you have characterized faith here is virtually indistinguishable from reason. What exactly is the difference?

You say you don't "feel" ruled by your ideas, but this is quite irrelevant. You wouldn't object to a computer program telling the computer what to do. So why object to the idea that our mind tells US what to do? That is, our mind as a collection of memes, beliefs, abstractions, ideas, morals and all other manor of immaterial constitution.
Click to expand...

“Drink the Kool-aid” refers to the “Jones Town” mass suicide that took place during the 70’s...they laced the grape Kool-aid with rat poison and most drank it willingly (that would be “blind faith”).
I don’t object to the mind telling us what to do.
I never said that the brain does not control the body.
However I do differentiate between mind and brain.
Where you seem to think the brain as the source of consciousness, one that is ruled by it’s programming, experiences, and complex algorithms...I think of the brain as the receiver of mind/information, that information then is filtered through the brain.
It is still subject to any damages such a brain might acquire...perhaps, someone has a stroke and they lose the ability to speak...this part of the brain has been damaged by the stroke...this is no different than if I uninstalled the software to the speakers on my laptop, or better yet, just cut the connection.
Same result...different ideas.
So where you think we are bound by certain things, I believe we are to a point...and this is my own personal point of view that is ever-changing.
Reason in this case would be that which is provable by some means other than a “feeling”, the issue is, it is a very subjective experience...depending on the type you have. There is quite a bit of scientific data to back up, or at least give credence to many things that people believe are subjective but actually have data to support them...that is called the wonderful taboo of materialist science and it’s dogmas.
If you define “faith” as "how much control you have over reality" then you can begin to look at it from a different perspective.

We can discuss this into great depth if you want...we could start another thread so we don’t derail this one further?
 
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wolly.green said:
Not at the moment, since that would require accepting a logical contradiction.
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It doesn't have to. Only the acceptance
wolly.green said:
No no, I do believe it is possible to perceive accurately. But it is a mistake to equate accurate perception with perfection perception. True there is such thing as objective reality. A world that is independent of the mind. But does this really mean that perfect knowledge is possible? Its tempting to think of Plato here, but he actually believed the exact opposite. His allegory of the cave was to illustrate different stages of awareness, not to show perfect perception is impossible.
Click to expand...
Perfect knowledge would require knowledge of everything that exists within the known universe and quite likely past that. To store this information would require a mass that exceeds that of the known universe resulting eventually sooner or later in it's collapse into a singularity where the related information would never been seen again.
 
Skarekrow said:
“Drink the Kool-aid” refers to the “Jones Town” mass suicide that took place during the 70’s...they laced the grape Kool-aid with rat poison and most drank it willingly (that would be “blind faith”).
I don’t object to the mind telling us what to do.
I never said that the brain does not control the body.
However I do differentiate between mind and brain.
Where you seem to think the brain as the source of consciousness, one that is ruled by it’s programming, experiences, and complex algorithms...I think of the brain as the receiver of mind/information, that information then is filtered through the brain.
It is still subject to any damages such a brain might acquire...perhaps, someone has a stroke and they lose the ability to speak...this part of the brain has been damaged by the stroke...this is no different than if I uninstalled the software to the speakers on my laptop, or better yet, just cut the connection.
Same result...different ideas.
So where you think we are bound by certain things, I believe we are to a point...and this is my own personal point of view that is ever-changing.
Reason in this case would be that which is provable by some means other than a “feeling”, the issue is, it is a very subjective experience...depending on the type you have. There is quite a bit of scientific data to back up, or at least give credence to many things that people believe are subjective but actually have data to support them...that is called the wonderful taboo of materialist science and it’s dogmas.
If you define “faith” as "how much control you have over reality" then you can begin to look at it from a different perspective.

We can discuss this into great depth if you want...we could start another thread so we don’t derail this one further?
Click to expand...

Great idea. Can you start one and tag me in it? I'm still new here!
 
Eventhorizon said:
It doesn't have to. Only the acceptance
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Not true. If there exists two alternative explanations that explain exactly the same thing, they must be incompatible with each other. If they are not incompatible with each other, then they are really just the same explanation. Thus two foundations must necessarily lead to a logical contradiction. Which is bad for reasons you may not be familiar.
 
wolly.green said:
Oh yes it does. Solving problems requires reason and rationality, not faith. As Dwain put it, faith will get you eaten by lions.
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It can prevent that, also. I really don't mind people trying to use things against me. I must be doing something right.
 
It's not like I have faith in things that may cause bad things. Get a grip on it and admit some folk have strong faith that does not let them down.
 
So, white people make up 63.7% of the population. Meaning proportionally speaking they're committing exactly as many shootings as you'd expect. If you want to yell at men I guess you'd have more reason though.

As to the larger question of mass shootings, I would have to think about it, but my gut says that there's probably mounting evidence that the shooting is going to happen before it does that isn't taken advantage of properly, which I think happened with Jason Rodriguez.
 
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