If I may be allowed to try... MUTUAL RECOGNITION has methodical primacy. (All our History is but struggle for recognition...) One does not need to respect the other to RECOGNISE him. That is before we enter into debate. Once in a debate we may end up respecting one another but the opposite may happen, too - we could even ridicule each other (hence no mutual respect, for instance)... But we do not stop RECOGNISING each other and instituting the right to differ in the process! Tolerance is a power relationship of the very lowly kind: "I realise you can hurt me but I can tolerate you, as you can't hurt me that badly or at least I think you can't or maybe even if you can - you will not (I presume/judge/in my estimation)"... Worse that that, as far as power relationships go, is IGNORING the Other. I.e. "I can afford to completely neglect you, as you can't do any harm to me..." How's that for a rational debate?
@Gorski: No...that'd be muppet science. IMHO, Tom Cruise is a Loonie, but He makes good movies. And you're right. Muppets do rule.
@ gorski, perhaps i should have said mutual respect.. tolerance and recognition are all very well. i do not have to tolerate just anything because i happen to recognize it, and i don`t.. but i know very well, that i am no fountain of wisdom. so if someone holds an opinion opposite to mine, i try to respect that. it is his truth. and i hope he respects my truth too. people do not have to agree to respect each other, imho.
To me, as I explained, it seems the opposite is the case, Nodnar - we have to recognise each other(s right to hold an opinion etc. - provided this opinion does not intend to "enslave" the other by force etc.). We do not have to respect the other's opinion, though...
may i ask you all to look over your shoulder and look at the post that started all this? If God is Omniscient then Human is not free. As the title of this thread says, in other words free will doesn't exist If God is omniscient . Please discuss/comment on it. not what we are doing now, i think.. the answer for me, at least, is free will exists, if this omniscient god does not. a very subjective truth, for one individual. [ ego, if you like, yen.] but it is not vague or fluffy, or preaching. just my thruth. science and philosophy seem to have stalked into this thread through a backdoor inadvertently left open. and of course they are at odds with the unproven beliefs of believers.. time to look at post #1 and get back on topic, imho..
No. Even more difficult to respect a matured person (presumably) with at least the intelligence to operate a computer(a gift of science) who holds a "strong opinion" that magical thinking are real.
i agree we disagree, gorski.. with all respect for your opinion.. so long as people do not deliberately try to hurt the other, because they are playing some dumb power game, respect is a priority, at least for me..
@ sid difficult to respect that. yes. it may cause one to raise his hands to the heavens in despair, sid. but it is this mature persons truth, it does me no harm, and so long as i do not know the absolute truth, who am i to say him nay?
These so called spiritualists pose grand sounding questions like this (without realizing them to be stupid) to denounce Science and Maths. It is like asking "Can you cut water? Knives and swords can not do so." Just as it is meaningless to talk about "cutting water", so is it meaningless to talk about quantifying or measuring love. After dismissing the Science and Maths with disdain for their inability to quantify or measure love, they do not care to explain whether quantifying or measuring love made any sense in the first place and then whether there is anything other than Maths and science which can do that kind of a job. Perhaps your answer would be, it is through action that love is expressed (spiritualist measured).....!!!! wow.....what a spiritual revelation.....scientists and mathematicians did not have any idea of this.....!!!! We needed a spiritualist to come and reveal this great truth...!!!!
"who holds a "strong opinion" that magical thinking are real" Sid is this not a strong opinion ? Your difficulty/struggle to respect the matured person (Elder) can be overcome by simply reading history .. Your conundrum is well documented as well as the solution .. A matured person would probably tell you don't mistake your intellect for wisdom ..
Thanks for making other realizing the original question. In the opening post I posted a simple question which remained unanswered till now and this topic turned in to a war zone between the believers (spiritualist) and non-believers. I don't know why would they turn and twist all topics I posted in to spiritualism to suite their choice/mode of answer? I've asked question in their own language (spiritual) which they deliberately avoided in all my threads and I've refuted their stance many time but you see the consequences.
Do you think the planets revolving around the Sun is reality or still just a model? What about power out of your wall socket? Electrons are real or not? Taking an x-ray picture, reality or some model? Seeing your own bones, not real? The majority of scientific progress has been through so many reviews and tests that you cannot possibly refute them anymore, especially if it builds on prior progress and still stands the test of verification. At some point, it _is_ reality and not just a model anymore. If you need to ask what the box represents then the whole story of the picture went past you. Playing word games again doesn't change that. It's just that science always delivered and religion has always failed us. Keep believing. It's not irrational, it's passionate. If he's quoting by adding funny titles then he forfeits all reason to be taken serious. If he claims to be on some path of enlightenment, he ought to be older than 12 years, which I seriously doubt whenever I read another braindump of his. Edit: Add to that the fact that he follows his critics into other threads and trashes facts there. That's the behaviour of a stalking scientologist, not of a rational argument partner.
Sid I responded to What assertion are you referring to in my response ? I find none I have read all posts in this thread BTW
Tolerance and ignoring someone are power games, as it were - but I do not see them as dumb... Necessary, for minimal civilisational step forward... However, if you see the sheer intolerance in Timey's posts - one wonders... So, with these issues, I think we are on the money, as this is underlining the whole thing... We interpret these notions and depending on our "beliefs" we react...
You firstly have posted And here: "Do you think the planets revolving around the Sun is reality or still just a model? What about power out of your wall socket? Electrons are real or not? Taking an x-ray picture, reality or some model? Seeing your own bones, not real? The majority of scientific progress has been through so many reviews and tests that you cannot possibly refute them anymore, especially if it builds on prior progress and still stands the test of verification. At some point, it _is_ reality and not just a model anymore." Perception is not science. At some point it is reality, yes. In that point that it is one's own. Science offers a model of different relations. But fails there where it has to stop to tie lose ends. Gravitation, Strong Force, Weak Force. Where is the sun located? Where a tree? Can you point at their place of existence? Objects don't exist per se. Objects are just an idea. Does the earth move around the sun or the sun around the earth? And is the movement due to bending of space? Science offers a model of Gravitation which says that mass is able to bend space. The so created downhill force makes the sun attracting the earth and vice versa, the sun just far more. Gravitation: bent space and resulting downhill force would make that the earth crashes into the sun, so the model is not 'conform' to perception. So one invents another force: centrifugal force, this force is related to mass and velocity of the rotating object. And we could go on tying lose ends, this is called science. Is this the reality??? No, the reality was before science. Does Gravitation really exist? No it is an idea. Where are you located, your idea to which you all relate to? The earth one perceives now is as real as the flat earth. It is ever related to your idea of identity and hence not the reality itself. Science and religion always offers the same, ideas of reality. The truth content is assigned by an individual without referrence to the reality. The reality is as it is and is not separated. (There is one reality, not many). The mind abstracts science and religion from this reality. So they are in its source, in 'reality' the same.
My post is as it is. It's funny to watch your ego trying to self-entertain itself by assingning meanings and definitions. I do not agree with what you have posted here. Furthermore I see that as evidence why the current western Philosophy doesn't shine. It shines not, because your world does not. It is not able to change consciousness. If it had been, the world would shine already. Gandhi and the 14. Dalai Lama were / are forerunners of the changing consciousness I am talking. More and more follow and will change more and more by just being present. Darkness vanishes because light is brought into it, whilst you would fight it physically. Till then the world plays with ego and western Philosophy...and science.
You people... Science has not failed just because it can't unify its own theories as one (yet). That's no reason to dismiss it. You're basically saying gravitation was thought of before the centrifugal force was thought of, which is complete nonsense. It's what you call science. You think scientists think of some concept of gravitation out of nowhere, then "prove" it. How would they prove gravitation if the centrifugal force as a conecpt was not there first? Noone ever said that science "makes" reality. Where do you draw those assertions from? I don't know. It explains how the world works. If it didn't explain it so well, you couldn't post your ideas in this very forum using the machine that you call a computer over a global network called the Internet. Please, please, please, if you dismiss science, do these things I listed here and anything else related to science: http://forums.mydigitallife.net/thr...an-is-not-free?p=750083&viewfull=1#post750083 Otherwise, you are accepting science as a valid school of thought or you're a huge hypocrite.
Without evidence for the claim spiritual people made here i.e (soul,self, consciousness,reincarnation,I idea etc), disbelief is the default position. This is true for every single topic not just this one. Anything else you want to add is just confusion and obfuscation.