You are religious, atheist and theist alike.

Author: Mall

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Best.Korea
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@Mall
I watched video about transgenderism. I agree that if people make changes to their body, it means they needed to make those changes to like their body more.
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If true intelligence is mental expansion, which is to say, it involves the ability to view and understanding widely different things from multiple different perspectives, an aptitude for grasping a wide range of truths, relationships, and meanings, and the capacity for abstract and symbolic thought, then it follows logically that the contention that one can reduce reality to only one of its modes, to know it in only one of its forms, is an unintelligent claim.

Science does not contend that reality can be reduced to a single ontological level, on the contrary, science asserts that reality is in fact, multileveled, it asserts that the four dimensions of existence that we call reality, are contingent and relative to a greater reality of more dimensions, of which we cannot have certain knowledge, and which can only be expressed metaphorically.  Being a function of abstract and symbolic thought, this concept simply cannot be grasped by unintelligent people.


Sidewalker
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Scientism is a faith that is engaged in by people that draw purely metaphysical conclusions from a junior high school textbook understanding of science. They can't seem to understand much more than that so they attempt to reduce reality to a surface level understanding of just "objects", whenever they encounter concepts they can't comprehend, in mental frustration they tend to act childish, trying to insult anyone with the ability to look deeper with name calling and things like that. They desperately pretend they are smarter than those who comprehend more deeply to hide the insecurity that results from their lack of understanding.
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When people of faith speak of the transcendent reality, they tend to refer to it as a “Spiritual” reality, or simply “God”, and when one examines what they are doing when they use these terms, it becomes clear that they are referring to a particular category of experience which transcends our normal frame of reference. Those who are not mentally able to grasp the concept of transcendence will inevitably confuse the referenced experiential reality with physical reality and reject what they do not understand.

Way too many, if not the majority of the discussions here confuse epistemology with ontology, and we end up with a boatload of inane discussions about physical existence, with absolutely futile contentions about what is real and what is unreal. If we are going to just spend a lot of time reducing philosophy to semantics games, then we really should just “log off, and go out and experience reality”. 

There really is one out there and fully experiencing it can be a whole lot better than sitting at a computer pontificating about whether it is real or not.


Shila
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There really is one out there and fully experiencing it can be a whole lot better than sitting at a computer pontificating about whether it is real or not.
Reality is shaped by our experience. That is why reality differs because individual experiences differ.
ranacat
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@Mall
You treat faith as the same thing as belief. There is, I maintain, a substantial difference, because belief imposes no action on anyone's part resulting from the belief. You can believe there are blue Na'vi who live on the moon, Pandora, [from the movie, Avatar], but you are not compelled to do anything about it. That lack of  being compelled to act on the belief  is the divide between belief and faith. Faith maintains something is true even though there is no apparent physical [empirical] evidence of the truth to support it. However, by definition, by the Apostle Paul [KJV Hebrews 11: 1] “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"  the typical empirical evidence by sight, sound, smell, taste and touch does not apply. As Paul describes, "the evidence of things not seen [nor heard, smelled, tasted, or touched]. But id there is not another sense, how is it evidence? Because other animals have senses beyond these 5: echo location, or magnetic north detection, for example. What if faith is another extrasensory humans have access to, like the animal extra senses some have, but must learn how to acquire it? I think it can be done, but it requires effort on our part; the necessary action n to imposed by mere belief. How else to acquire "...the substance of things..."?
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@Best.Korea
The video you watched expresses, I presume, reasons why the producer felt the information given was sufficient proof of transgenderism. But the Human Genome Project concluded in, I believe, 2003, that there is DNA evidence of only two genders: female and male, and that these express not by the two genitals, but by the presence of ovaries or testes, and these only come one set to a customer,  as a set of one or the other, but never both. This, in spite of the fact that both genitals may physically express. Further XX and XY may occasionally express as XXY, or XYY, or other variables, but these are not separate genders, by DNA. They are aberrations of XX and XY, and affect only 0.00000007% of the world population; about 500 people, or less than 3 people per country, on average.
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@Mall


I do not believe anything.

One can either know or not know.

One can be hopeful or uncertain or assumptive etc.

Or have faith, even.

But to simply accept something without proof is futile in terms of knowledge gathering.

Which isn't to say that for some, belief does not produce positive electro-chemical reactions in their brain.
Shila
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@zedvictor4
I do not believe anything.
Not even in yourself. That is why you wish to remain unknown.
Mall
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@zedvictor4
Then how can you do anything without thinking of the belief in it first?

You said you either know or don't know.

You don't know everything, right.

So honestly not knowing the future of everything but in some of those things you may or have to do, you don't believe in but do anyway without belief, is that correct?


Mall
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@ranacat
Faith is belief and belief is faith.

You believe what the scientists are telling you. You have faith in them, you have trust in them.

Since we're bringing the scripture in this.

Scripture say in the book of Corinthians ...we having the same spirit of faith.....according to as it is written.....we therefore speak what we believe
Shila
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@Mall
Faith is belief and belief is faith.

You believe what the scientists are telling you. You have faith in them, you have trust in them.

Since we're bringing the scripture in this.

Scripture say in the book of Corinthians ...we having the same spirit of faith.....according to as it is written.....we therefore speak what we believe . 
Which one needs mor3 faith to believe , science or religion?
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@Mall
@Shila
Nope, that is not correct in my book.

If one doesn't know something, then that is that.

Believing that one knows something is a tad silly, isn't it?


And why would I need to believe in myself?

Within the limits of the self, I accept what I know.


Depends upon how you define the word I suppose.

For you... Is "belief" just a trivial word, with a hundred synonyms?

For me it has a specific meaning.
Mall
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@Shila
I couldn't say . It depends on what the specific area is in either field being viewed and how far you have to go without doing any empirical input to just trusting what folks are telling you.

Trusting prophets is akin to trusting scientists.
Shila
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@Mall
Trusting prophets is akin to trusting scientists.

They are the custodians of religion and science. Both essential to understanding our universe.
Mall
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@zedvictor4
So do you go about doing things you don't believe in?

Why would you do them when you don't believe in them?
Shila
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@Mall
So do you go about doing things you don't believe in?

Why would you do them when you don't believe in them?
To make suckers of those who take him seriously.
Mall
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@Shila
I still ask the individual legitimate questions to get the logic.
Shila
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@Mall
I still ask the individual legitimate questions to get the logic.
When you don’t get it, try and try again.
Reece101
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@Mall
When it comes to uncertainty, the difference between a guess and an educated guess is that a guess isn’t necessarily reliant on experience/academia. 

Both can be wrong. But generally one is far more knowledgeable than the other when it comes to nuance.



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Instead of academia i should have just put education, to be more general. But they’re both loaded words these days for conservatives. 
zedvictor4
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@Mall
So do you go about doing things you don't believe in?
Give me an example Mall.


I would say that I function according to knowledge.

But of course, we obviously cannot know outcomes in advance, so there is often an element of risk associated with a course of action.

Though coping with such situations and moving forwards ,means taking a calculated risk based upon experience and/or knowledge. 

Belief is not relevant.


I once saw a video of a guy who believed that if he prayed, he could swim safely in a crocodile infested river....He promptly disappeared never to be seen again.

This was the outcome of a belief based system.

If the guy had made a knowledge based assessment of the situation, his Mum would have been happier.
Shila
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@zedvictor4
This was the outcome of a belief based system.
Kennedy believing man could land on the moon. 
"We choose to go to the Moon" was a speech on September 12, 1962 by John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. The moon landing  on July 20, 1969, with the Apollo program's successful Apollo 11 mission.
FLRW
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@Shila

There are no crocodiles in space.
Shila
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@FLRW
There are no crocodiles in space.
That makes space travel safer.
Mall
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@zedvictor4
You must don't know. 

I tell you what. Just think about everything you do. Do you always know what you're doing, why you're doing it, what  the outcome is going to be.

Being that there is no evidence of you waking after you sleep again, do you or do you not believe you will wake up ?

Think about it.
Shila
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@Mall
Being that there is no evidence of you waking after you sleep again, do you or do you not believe you will wake up ?
The body knows when to sleep and when to wake up.

How does the body decide to wake up?
The optic nerve in your eyes senses the morning light. Then the SCN triggers the release of cortisol and other hormones to help you wake up. But when darkness comes at night, the SCN sends messages to the pineal gland. This gland triggers the release of the chemical melatonin.

zedvictor4
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@Mall
@Shila
I hope that I will wake up.

I assume that I will wake up, based upon previous experience and confidence in my current health.

I don't believe that I will wake up.


In my opinion, based upon technological advancement, anyone could have been reasonably confident that man would eventually travel to the moon.

Belief wasn't necessary.

Based upon the rate of technological development since JFK's day, I would further suggest that man will venture further afield...But I don't believe this.
Mall
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@Shila
Ok let me stump you or have you conceding.

What is the evidence that you will wake up after your next sleep cycle?
Mall
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@zedvictor4
Comrade, hope comes with belief.

Something you don't want to believe you don't have any hope in.

You went through all this just to admit the point. 

It doesn't matter if you're a theist or atheist. Faith is not just in theism. We believe in a lot of things.

I believe it's going to rain. I believe they're going to win the game. I believe it so much, I'm hopeful for it. I'm hoping this will happen.