I appreciate your level-headedness despite disagreeing with you. Just wanted to mention that I value discussions with you.

I think contact between humans is a different phenomenon. — Tom Storm

Different to what and in what way?

We seem to have moved from eyes which can be described as beautiful, to something else involving eye contact and interaction. — Tom Storm

You feel I've moved my goalposts? I didn't mean to. Let me know if I'm not understanding here.

My advice is to not disparage your interlocutors if you want any discussion.

You make it sound like mysticism. — Tom Storm

It is mysticism!

Do you think someone from the indigenous Australian community in the remote Kimberly would share your experience? — Tom Storm

I think so. I think the beauty of eye contact is universal.

Again, my advise is to not disparage your interlocutors if you want substantive discussion.

My advice is to not disparage people if you want to grow and learn, and help other people to grow and learn. Best of luck.

Our faculties of reason represent death to be a great harm. — Bartricks

Reason "represents"? that doesn't make sense to me.

It would not be a great harm if it — Bartricks

What is "it" in this sentence?

ended one's existence as one can't be harmed if one does not exist. — Bartricks

I don't know what "it" above references, so I have no clue what this means.

Thus we continue to exist after death, else our deaths could not harm us. And the plane of existence our deaths take us to be must be considerably worse than this one, else it would not be harmful to die, but beneficial. — Bartricks

This is incoherent to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

What I'm suggesting is that looking deeply into this girls eyes would sufficiently convince you otherwise. But of course you'll disagree until you actually do it, which you won't, given the circumstances. So there's no way for me to demonstrate this.

:flower:

good evidence that we survive our deaths (albeit it'll take us to a place worse than this one). — Bartricks

Which evidence is that?

Unless you are a Platonist, isn't beauty just a term used to deal with personal taste and/or intersubjective value systems? — Tom Storm

I think it's simpler than that. Beauty is an experience that's self evident. Today at work I helped a girl who I've seen from time to time, and she always makes a lot of eye contact with me. Her eyes are beautiful. I don't think anyone would disagree with my personal opinion on her eyes if given the chance to assess.

But that tells us something. The human experience of making sustained eye contact with another elicits many things in us, but this experience can, I think, be objectively described as an experience of beauty.

.

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Also, regard the fundamentalist atheists here. Apathy, I've found, is the best response to this particular cult.

There's a whole rabbit hole to go down on this forum if you're up for it:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1980/evidence-of-consciousness-surviving-the-body/p1

Whatever it is needs to be done, that's how you do it, yeah.

In ideal conditions, the human intellect can explain anything — Tate

What are these ideal conditions?

The Magus of Strovolos by Kyriacos C. Markides

I'm dumb too. Join the club! — Agent Smith

It's like Fight Club; now we know we're both in it...? What...?

The Trinity isn't nonsense in my humble opinion because religion was never about rationality. Were it so, why all the logical boo-boos in religious texts. The objective of religion, if there's one at all, isn't to make sense to classical logicians and their fans viz. philosophers! — Agent Smith

Sure, but religion's objective is different than arguments for or against the trinity.

I'm too dumb to catch half of those references, sorry. All I'm saying is the trinity is bullocks. :pray: [prayer emoji]

That's probably the logic at the core of any Christian theologist, yaah. Then you just construct a bewildering web of faulty logical proofs around it to get from 1 to 3 in a way that squares with the canonical texts. Easy.

Thought I said this but the link is boken

Mine too. Not to worry.

The link doesn't work.

Oh yeah babe, Jackson got banned.

Isn't there already an elephant in this particular room?

Action-@Jackson. — Changeling

Is that an Action Bronson reference?

Oh no, are you adopting @180 Proof's {idiolect?} :chin:

For example, someone above mentioned that Jesus supposedly said something about 'the Father' that made it sound as if 'the Father' might be a distinct person from himself. He said "forgive them father, for they know not what they do" or something. — Bartricks

If you talk to yourself, do you refer to yourself as "mom" or "uncle", for instance? I don't think that's a good argument against the trinity, but I think there are plenty of other options.

In terms of non-trinitarian suggestions in the Bible, there are of course the several words used for "God" in the old testament (I'm hazy on this and going to bed soon, apologize for the low post quality). "El" is one, which I think was the name of a Babylonian God. Some scholarship suggests that the ancient Hebrew religion grew from polytheistic to suddenly monotheistic. Of course this says nothing about a fervent believer's position.

The concept of the trinity is meant to be a sort of brain teaser — Merkwurdichliebe

I don't think anyone had a master plan of what the trinity was "meant" for, whether a brain teaser or something else. It's a doctrine that arose out of the chaos of the post-Jesus era in which Romans were persecuting Christians because they saw them as "atheists", and Christian views on what would become theology were just as chaotic. And the canon wasn't even set yet. I don't see any need to worry about the trinity. It's a human construction.

:up:

How's your thread about elephants going?

:rofl:

Great writing skills indeed.

What did "I do" refer to?

I do — Jackson

You do what?

Oh haha, Oh ha hee! Great job boys!

I'm sorry too.

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This post has nothing to say about my views, so I have no idea what you're on about.

He probably agrees with your caricature of him, yes, no doubt.