Isn't time that Humanity was more important than any religion

LG, what do you think this is that we are having:

A. A conversation between two peers.
B. A teaching situation where LG is to be deemed as the more knowledgeable one in every way.
C. Other (explain).

 

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well its not A or B ....

 

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I have the impression you believe it is and should be B.

 

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LG -

Are you really beyond the desire to make followers?
Are you really beyond the desire to rule over material nature, including humans?

 

Do you notice any great diametric difference of gynormous proportions between options A and B?

 

Absolutely, to the point of them being mutually exclusive.

 

Do I really have to be like that to say anything vaguely close to having a fig of truth about it?

 

Do you think there is a middle ground anywhere between "just like me in all respects" and "just like god in all respects"?

 

You yourself have once advised me to become more assertive, so did another devotee.

I made an effort to do so, and in the process got this book and a number of other resources.

But I continually see that neither you nor other devotees use the assertive communication style much, but mostly the aggressive one.

If you look just through the table of contents, you see what topics are discussed.
The chapters on giving corrective feedback and how to make requests without controlling others are especially pertinent, I think.

And because you are so prone to using the aggressive style, this suggests that this aggressiveness is precisely what you wish to convey.

 

I have always granted you that you may know better than I. But when you continually reply with aggressiveness, I can't cope with that indefinitely.

 

No it isn't.
I have no faith whatsoever that my being here and posting anything in response to you will ever cure you of being a utter moron.
Yet, here I am.

Oh dear. I don't need to call it anything, you twit. I don't have "faith" that science will eventually cure death. I think it might, given time, but I won't see it. That's all.

You now, I actually just sat here for about 10 minutes writing a page or so on advancements over the last hundred years compared to the last thousand, compared to the last ten thousand and all that, was going to point out the exponential rate of technological advancement and how we're decoding DNA right now, and how long three hundred years actually is in terms of... oh never mind. Then I was going to take a quick look at what religious faith has achieved for man over roughly the same period, other than, of course, it promising to make people happy eventually, if they just do as they're bloody well told and... again, never mind.

But, I deleted it all. I really only have one thing to say to that.

You're a fucking idiot.

So there you go, you won and you're going to heaven, or something. I just swore at you and insulted you, so obviously I just lost the argument... and I'm going to hell besides. Or something.

 

no
you just lost the argument

that's all

:shrug:

 

Did I?

Examine again. You're assuming I lost the argument because I insulted you.

In spite of there being no actual evidence that that has ever been the case, and that it is quite possible to win an argument while insulting the other, you use it as a tool to excuse you from any other consideration. You haven't even bothered to refute anything I said regarding advancement, which should have been fairly obvious without my posting that page, or so I alluded to having written.
But you neither read nor considered. You didn't think you had to. You saw your way out, right there.

At no point have you convinced me in any way that god is real, and that faith is better than science. You have, in effect, not presented an argument which has swayed over your audience.
You did not "Win".

However, I swore at you.
Ergo, on a simple pretext which requires no proof but is generally accepted as an argument in itself, you win. Your reply is exactly what I expected of you. Exactly. Right down to the emoticon.

That, LG, is the nature of faith.

 

get back to us when you have something to contribute to the discussion

thanks in advance

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Translation:


/insert fingers in ears
"Lah lah lah, lah lah lah....."

(insert slightly unnerved smiley emoticon here)

 

translation :

"hate dialogue interspersed with an overbearing sense of one's own self importance (remarkably similar to a drunken street vagrant) plus a smidgen of half thought out ideas that could possibly be related to the discussion if a bit more time was invested in coherent thought"

:shrug:

seriously dude, I've got nothing more to say to you until the drugs wear off or you grow up a bit

 

You sure?

I was dead certain you were going to say something about my mother next. I mean, seeing as you're one to just trot out trumped up excuses acceptable as valid only via the understanding that they are so simply due to majority consensus, I would not have been surprised.
I mean a comment about my mother is supposed to be the "snap" argument these days, isn't it?

Actually, no. It's yours... "come back when you have something to contribute".
Which actually means "I've got no fucking idea/completely don't want to know what you're trying to say, I feel so inadequate, so I'm going to trot out a standard line and hope someone will think I scored a point."

I remember a confrontation between you and Wanderer once, LG. I learned from that that insulting you is about as valid as any other approach. You see, you're only still here because you can only operate under an acceptable boundaries. Any environment in which stupidity is aggressively policed would have had you ousted long ago. Your version of an "intelligent discussion" is that you keep posting about faith under the pretext that everyone should just accept your particular faith without evidence. You'll keep saying it, and saying it, and saying it until everyone just gives up and leaves you to it. I mean seriously... one has to give you credit for persistence, if nothing else.
Unfortunately for you, your dogged persistence reveals little other than that you don't understand some deeper concepts. I wouldn't worry about that too much; for one thing, once someone has total faith it has a tendency to create a barrier obstructing further learning. For another, you fit in perfectly here.

I can't think of a single person who has ever changed their opinion on something as a direct result of interaction on this board. Not one.
No one is here for a discussion, LG. We're here to type in our little pet theories and arguments, and to see who will like us for them. That's the single underwriting point to any of this "discussion". The thing about most, including you, is that they prefer to believe otherwise.

My point, in mentioning that argument between you an Wanderer, is that you had your ass kicked from here to breakfast in what might have been deemed (at least at first) an intelligent conversation, and yet you still kept bobbing up like one of those old inflatable punch-up clowns for more. You're still here. Still the same. Do not pretend you're here to learn. You're little more than a waxwork exhibit, a wind up victrola.
I'm here for an entirely different reason.

So I'm just going to insult you. Its fun.
People will tell you you'll learn far more from an intelligent, reasoned discussion than you will a flame war. You would probably be one of them.
When one takes into account, however, that those like you never learn a damned thing, and are here for an entirely different reason, using predefined rules as cover for you preaching your own agenda, it does tend to lend legitimacy to me calling you a fucking idiot.
Both, after all, are contrary to the stated ideals of this site. The only reason you'll survive here and I probably won't is that your stupidity is allowable under The Rules.

Don't worry about it too much. I hardly address anyone with any civility these days... because you, by no means, are the only one.

 

And by the way... no, they're not.

 

Really?

You can be in a relationship with someone whom you consider a peer,
and take instructions from them without feeling inferior,
and give instructions to them without feeling superior?


Sure, it's an ideal to have that kind of relationship. But realistically, how possible is it, how much do you do it, given that you think that being peers and instructing and taking instruction, are not mutually exclusive?

 

i believe a key problem with religion is that it often doesn't realize there is essentially zero religion that is non-mediated through humanity. So asking if humanity can be more "important" than religion is a basic misunderstanding of the situation we are in, which is admittedly mostly the fault of religion's unawareness of the reality of the human being. Religion without "humanity" and an understanding of humanity, is just guessing at the unknown and hoping to be correct, it is not sensible to discuss it as a systematic search for objective reality, or even a practical theology for modernity.

the proper structure would be -
god
savior (if your religion requires that)
humanity
religion

Of course mystical experience, or SUBJECTIVE proposals, can be valid without rationalistic mediation, but they most assuredly cannot be presented as a supported theology. Therefore, if there is to be a theology that is not, by its own, nature, removed from the cognitive consensus validation process that humans most often use to test ideas, it MUST account for this subjectivity, OR submit to scrutiny by "humanist" ideas. Otherwise we are stuck with, "my book told me", against, "your book is not valid," arguments, both of which are essentially circular.

in other words, until humanity is not part of the equation (paradoxical) we have the necessity of either ignoring our condition and pretending we are not mediating our own experience and theology, or accepting it.