I appear to be unable to delete my comment.
synkarius
Karma: 48
Cryonics Symposium International
I can’t really tell whether this is me failing to appreciate some aspect of human experience, or just that the way people tend to do things is stupid.
I wonder the same about myself all the time. Sometimes I feel less..., uh, “human” (?) for it. At those times, I ask myself, “would you rather be doing X?” and the answer is invariably that I would not. I seem to be happier for not doing these things because when I give in and do them, I get bored or annoyed.
Not to belittle KLF’s achievements, but is that really the best example you can come up with?
I have studied two of the items on his list extensively: theology and literary theory. And I agree that they are worse than worthless.
Here’s your evidence: what significant problems have these fields ever solved?
I too would be interested in doing this next year.
I too have noticed this. In fact, most of your post could have been written about me.
I actually didn’t want to. It was more of an overwhelming evidence deconversion. But I was willing to look at that evidence because I had a strong desire to be a defender of light, to boldly face the philosophical abyss of unbelief—for God.
Yet there was a key difference somewhere between what I did and what I see a lot of believers do. I read enemy texts, not just friendly texts on enemy ideas. Why did I, in that frame of mind, do that? That might be the thing to figure out and then articulate, as you put it.
No, you’re right about that. They’re not rejecting logic. They use it (selectively). They’re just saying “I reject logic” as a tactic to stopsign any arguments in which they get cornered.
I like the idea of getting them to want to accept my beliefs. That’s a rather large task though, isn’t it? I’m not quite sure how I managed it myself. Sure, now I look back and say, “what a dreadful and frustrating perspective that was in comparison”, and now the beauty of what we might achieve without a god, and the natural world, are overwhelming, but how to get that across?
That’s a rather good point. I suppose I assumed that everyone (on some gut level) endorses logic, that it was just my failure to communicate my point clearly, not that they were viewing logic as external in the same way they did the other evidence.
Yet, I don’t see where to go from here. Without getting some sort of commitment to logic, anything I say using any methodology can be rejected for no reason.
Perhaps I ought to use scriptures to show that God endorses logic? Hmm. What a twisted path that is.
As a former theist myself, I have found that the most effective strategy is to argue with them from within their worldview and by their own rules. The reason for this is that they (in my experience) flatly reject any evidence external to their religion.
So, rather than discussing the existence of God, assume God exists and then point out that if God were a human, we’d call his motivations needy and depraved. Rather than bringing up outside savior myths which influenced the gospel writers, assume that the gospel is divinely inspired and then point out that it was divinely inspired in four different (contradictory) ways in the story about Mary visiting Jesus’ tomb. There are plenty of these.
In my experience, this method is far more effective than outside evidence, but tends to lead to dismissals of logic itself, which is where I get frustrated. I try to explain that logic is embedded in language and thought, that to dismiss logic uses logic (albeit poorly), but I can’t seem to make that point stick.
I don’t like either presidential candidate. I need to say that before I say this: using current rather than past political examples is playing with fire.