I Might As Well Tell You Five and Three are Equal
Neocogito: Ergo, click to ask why.
Davec426913 said:
If we can't do that, then that is reason there can be no discussion.
If you cannot discuss religion and religious behavior without erasing religious people from the discussion, it isn't a discussion. At the heart of the issue is a simple, straightforward question:
• Why do you participate in these discussions at all, Dave?
Let us skip back about a week, when we
traded posts about definitions↑; in the end, you made a certain point, and I held myself answered. That you ended up irrationally claiming both sides of the coin isn't surprising; at Sciforums that's pretty much what atheists do when presented with the question. And you
made your point well↑; it's just that you basically leave only one reason to participate in these discussions, which in turn is to troll them.
Really, it's not constructive. Our example arises in the current phase of our discussion. And, you know, I should probably mention, for the record, it really is a strange thing to witness someone who is, technically, correct,
blowing it by not comprehending their own argument↑.
Is it any less meaningful to say I am "without unicorns"?
To you, apparently not. Congratulations. What, exactly, is that worth to anyone you might be telling it to in this discussion? Well, it is useful as a signal that one would be foolish to expect rational discourse.
You do not get to define a religious person's values, Dave.
We discussed this. You even
skipped out on a specific example↑ in order to pretend confusion about what it exemplified. It's easy enough to let such bad faith pass in the moment, but here we are, right back to dealing with your problem.
You do not get to write the values for religious people; you do not get to define what the symbols mean to them. To wit, you do not get to decide that God and unicorns mean the same thing to other people:
Correct! The point was not about them at all! It's only about me. I'm not actually critiquing someone else's views, I'm simply saying I don't accept that a lot of back-story obliges me to believe something. I get to do that.
I also get to hold the opinion that my own world-view is more correct than the guy next to me. That is fundamental. It makes no sense to criticize me for thinking I'm right and for choosing not to believe something.
Thank you for clarifying. You are exactly correct:
You get to hold an opinion.
The key is: I only have to be right to me.
To be clear, I don't offer my views for public consumption―I'm not trying to convince anyone of my own beliefs . I don't expect others to acknowledge it. And I am perfectly happy with other people having opposing views. Out in the real world.
The exception is that, here, we are in this discussion discussing it academically, where we are essentially asking for each other's own thoughts on the matter. That is not the same as my public stance. My public stance is that my personal, private views about spiritualism are mine and mine alone, likewise every one else's are theirs and theirs alone. I don't wish to hurt anyone, and my views might well do that. Only here, in an academic discussion, where we have agreed to suspend our personal investment in the issues, will I normally discuss this. That―or if someone raised the argument themselves. Sure, then I'd feel free to express my views.
The only way it is possible to discuss such an issue is if we are free to speak our views without the consequence of someone taking personal offense. That's what makes it an academic discussion.
In any context that you might use the word "academic", the word "fraudulent" is also in play:
If you wish to discuss religion and religious behavior, you cannot reasonably exclude what religious people say.
It is exactly irrational to insist that you can define religious people's values.
You want to call that academic, I'll call it academic fraud.
So let us get this clear, DaveC426913:
If you require exclusion of a large and valid data set in order to have an academic discussion, you are an academic fraud.
Your refusal to recognize other people is your problem, Dave; it is how you invalidate them.
Think of it this way: Self-reporting studies are often problematic, but the solution is most assuredly
not to eliminate the self-reported data and just make up the results yourself. Yet it's nothing more than you demand.
You might not be able to tell the difference between God and a unicorn, and perhaps that's actually a deliberate result; the problem is you have to ignore large and fecund records literary and historical in order to justify inflicting your value assignments unto others.
In the end, sure, I get your argument, but, you know, congratulations, it's exactly worthless.
And, you know, it's one thing to note your right to speak your mind, but at the same time we should also consider your responsibility to avoid willful antisocial behavior.
"Let me tell you what you think" is not an academic discussion, Dave:
"Without God" and "without unicorns" are only remotely equivalent in a perspective that cares none what belief in either actually means. In the end, you render your own argument unreliable; your critique of other people's beliefs has nothing to do with those other people."
It just seems you're trying to post woefully uneducated tinfoil in order to disrupt discussions; calling it "academic" is terribly fraudulent.
Childish caricatures of religious people, crafted to serve your sentimental and aesthetic needs, does not an academic discussion make. When your argument is more about denigrating what you hate instead of actually comprehending a phenomenon, it isn't scientific, academic, intelligent, or even decent. And if you're just going to pointlessly muck up threads like that, then, we can only wonder why.
You aren't capable of having the God/unicorn discussion in a proper academic context, so stow the self-righteousness. Bigotry is as bigotry does, Dave:
If you can't have a discussion about religion without silencing religious people, why do you bother at all, and why should anyone else?
Let me know. I'm very interested in the answer.
Meanwhile, I might as well suggest that five and three are equal. And when you point out that five and three are, by definition, precluded from being equal, I will remind you that such definitions are, by your own expressed academic outlook, irrelevant; that is to say, five and three are equal if anyone is allowed to write their own definitions regardless of the real ones.
Functionally, it's only problematic to do so if one obliges others to the irrational, sentimentally and aesthetically prioritized make-believe. By no definition, however, is such behavior "academic".