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tonyrey
Guest
The predicate of absurdity undermines rationality, let alone anything else!
It is an absolute certainty you’d be completely frustrated if you tried to wear size 8!
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InJesusItrust
Guest
If a man in rags went around claiming to be the King of France we would not tell him the truth is up to him. We would assume that he is delusional, no matter how sincerely he believed it. Subjectivity has nothing to do with truth.
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tonyrey
Guest
“filled” seems to imply every event is directly caused by God - which would mean He is directly responsible for all the moral and natural evil in the world…
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WmJackP
Guest
That is my point precisely. Size 10 is not an absolute simply because it suits you. By you’re argument you seem to suggest that if stealing a loaf of bread is wrong for for Donald Trump then it is similarly wrong for the starving jewish boy in the Warsaw getto of 1940.
Put another way, and, I admit, this seems abit grotesque given the seriousness of the topic, but still it seems to capture the essence “Different strokes for different folks”.
Now can we agree we’re done? Or do you want another shot?
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WmJackP
Guest
Perhaps the plank in your own eye would be worth noticing.
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WmJackP
Guest
Of course there are pathological beliefs.But we are not speaking of diagnosiable beliefs under the DSM. We are speaking of honest, reflected beliefs held by mentally healthy individuals. For example, there are islamists who believe a number of virgins will meet them after death. That is a belief which some might find as foreign as others might find another’s belief that bread can change its substance simply by having a phrase said over it. Yet, both sets of beliefs are regarded as firmly held convictions, and not regarded as delusions.
My grandmother always was fearful of a date in March for some bizarre reason. It was perhaps a very mild phobia, or, it may also have been a superstition. She was, however, by most standards, mentally sound. Yet she had a belief concerning a mystical aspect of this date in March. You may say that “objectively” she was wrong or even delusional, but, she would say she was right and support her case by rational argument, listing people who had died that day and misfortune she related to that date.
Thus, people can have convistions and not be delusional. They can, however, be wrong by standards which correspond to what others regard as reality.
Is my point any clearer now?
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Snowball7
Guest
It is not our place to judge this reality. We see through a mirror darkly, if at all.
Life will not continue this way unchanged. Consider this world as temporary
in time. Even if it appears absurd, that does not make the whole of the
greater reality absurd. By definition, the greater reality cannot be absurd,
because nothing can compare to it.
Life will not continue this way unchanged. Consider this world as temporary
in time. Even if it appears absurd, that does not make the whole of the
greater reality absurd. By definition, the greater reality cannot be absurd,
because nothing can compare to it.
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WmJackP
Guest
Your suggestion, namely that I visit my local Barnes and Nobles in search of some arcane latin text sounds (to me) to be somewhat pretentious on your part.
The reality is that I can’t convince you; and you can’t convince me, notwithstanding, recommendations for what was in vogue in 13th century Christian Europe.
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WmJackP
Guest
No it’s not. Even the laws of physics yield to the reality that time and space relationships are relativistic.
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Iron_Donkey
Guest
That just means that the absolutes are more fundamental then our experience of time and space. That how things appear depends on circumstances is obvious, but does not in any way lend credence to the claim that there are no absolutes, because there are fixed laws which determine how the circumstances affect how things appear.
But physics aside, “there are no absolutes” is an absolute statement. Therefore, it can’t possibly be true.
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Iron_Donkey
Guest
Your point is clear, but you’re just avoiding its weakness: how can you judge someone to be pathological? By comparing them to most other people? Why does that have any force? Why should the fact that someone else, or most people even, brands me as pathological make any difference to me whatsoever?
You say that things “make sense” if they “work,” and they “work” if most “healthy” people tend to think that they do.
But that’s still just a pipe dream, because none of those words generate any meaning whatsoever. I can pretend that I’m healthy and so that this makes my opinions worth following if I want, but this in no way makes it so - either the healthy or the worth following part.
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InJesusItrust
Guest
This is wrong. The theory of relativity is an absolute claim. No matter where you are the theory of relativity applies. Scientific relativity has nothing to do with moral or epistemology relativity. False analogy.
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Paddy_Walker
Guest
only to the extent to which you are free to think that way. once you realize you have a choice in how to see life on this earth you may realize that an absurdity could not account for the things you like. so life on this earth is serious in a jovial way.
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tonyrey
Guest
Incontestable! Of course he might be the King of France but he would have to produce some objective evidence… 
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tonyrey
Guest
A cast iron proof!
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tonyrey
Guest
I agree with your conclusion but inexplicable coincidences occur nevertheless. Accidents occur because people and animals happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for no reason whatsoever…
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WmJackP
Guest
I think you have managed to successfully demonstatre only the limitations of language, or, at least your use of it.
You would agree with me, I hope, that there is no single “right” way to play chess nor a single "correct way to respond to an essay question, yet, there are good chess players and people who flunk examinations.
Accordingly, morality is a “correct” way to behave. Thus, borrowing on the chess example, we elect to proscribe theft because it doesn’t work well to allow it, not because of the reputed etchings on a stone tablet.
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bri89
Guest
To some extent. I don’t know what faculty is responsible for enabling some people to perceive meaning to existence itself and to believe in the absolute truth of their perception. It seems both an advantage and limitation. I have struggled most of my life to affirm meaning within a Christian model of belief and simply can’t sustain that faith for more than five minutes. It dissipates as soon as I finish my prayer and open my eyes. For me the struggle to faith has sadly resembled a game; how long can I suspend my disbelief? five minutes, an hour, a whole day. I think our powers of perception are remarkably fallible and lend more to an absurdist view of things, but then there is a haunting sense of divine meaning that creeps in from time to time.
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Iron_Donkey
Guest
But we say it doesn’t work well because we already have an idea of what it means to work well. It is this we are challenging you on. We all know that allowing theft doesn’t “work well,” but this is because we share, more or less, the idea of what “works well” means. But we don’t accept that you have given either a valid reason to accept this idea of working well (that we do in fact accept) or any particular reason why someone is bound to do stuff that works well, even if he agrees with you on what that means.
It appears that you are introducing an absolute of sorts, but trying to avoid calling it that and saying that it doesn’t really come from anywhere important, but that it still for some reason is kind of sort of binding.
You mentioned chess. The goal of chess is to check-mate the other king. Now there are lots of ways to do this, some better than others and some just really, really bad, but these value comparisons all depend on the fact that goal is to check-mate the other guy’s king.
And why is the goal to check-mate the other guy’s king? Because it’s written on a stone tablet, so to speak - it’s in the rules. But we made the rules and only play by them because we agree to. So what would you say to someone who decided the real goal of chess was to have all his pawns die horrible inventive deaths? He would be playing wrong according to the rules we like, but why does that actually matter at all, either to him or to us? To say that it matters simply because it goes against the rules are to elevate the rules, or at least the idea that we should follow the rules (or possibly the idea that we should follow some rules) to the level of an absolute turth, but where does it come from in a world with no objective absolute meaning?
Or in other words, we’re back to "why should I care what you consider to be ‘working well,’ and even if I agree with you on what that means, what is there about working well that compels one to try to achieve it?
That there are multiple ways that are acceptable is completely irrelevant by the way, there are also multiple ways I can throw a ball but no matter how I do, the ball will obey the absolute laws of physics.
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tonyrey
Guest
The acid test of faith is not what we think we believe but the way we live and how we intend to live in the future. If Jesus is our role model we are obviously on the right path regardless of our doubts and difficulties. What really matters is the extent to which we love others. There is nothing absurd about that except for those whose priorities are wealth, power and pleasure…
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