These two laws, the commandments from Mark 12: 30-31 are partly counter-productive to obey, partly impossible.

Let me focus on the second one first. It does not say "Behave as if you loved thy neighbour as much as you loved yourself." It says, instead, "LOVE thy neighbour, etc.". Do you love thy neighbour? I don't. I may act as if I loved him or her, but it does not equate to a love. However, the commandment does not specify how to behave; it specifies how to feel. And you can't command feelings. You also can't fool god... if you hate your neighbour, or simply don't love him, you can pretend all you want, but you are breaking god's law or commandment. In fact, you can kick your neighbour, spit at him, steal his wife, ass and land, but as long as you love him, you are okay in the eye of the lord.

Let me focus on the first one now. "Love thy lord with all your... mind and ... all your strength" etc. Obviously everyone disobeys this law. It says "with ALL your mind" wich means, there ought not to be mind power left after you love thy god to the extent that he asks you to love him. Ditto with strength. If you have any strength left over to do anything else, then you don't use ALL your strength, which he specifically, unambiguously, explicitly asks you to do when loving him.

Therefore these laws were not ever obeyed even for a second since their inception.

Hate is borne by sorrow ... I like that.

The interpretation that he was saying something as trivial as that people can have feelings strong enough that they pretty much can't help but to jump to conclusions doesn't really fit with what he saying about fallacies, because that is a fallacy. — S

I would say what people believe as real on the pattern of their experiences is based largely not only on what constitutes a valid inference, but also on how gullible people are.

You are right, @S, that one should not build an argument, a philosophical argument, on the strength of gullibility, and on the varying degrees thereof, but I see the issue here as an experiential/belief question, not a philosophical one.

What one believes and what one can self-suggest is incredible.

There was a story that was regaled in Hungary in intellectual circles, which told of a Sorbonne professor in the early part of the nineteenth century, who was a staunch atheist. His students wanted to scare him and trick him into confession of faith in god. They dressed one of their classmates up in typical Devil gear-- hoofs, horns coming from his head, red tongue, and they created some impressive red light and noises, and burst into the professor's bedroom in the middle of the night, and the "Devil" said, "I'll take you now to the depths of Hell and eat you", and the professor looked at it with sleepy eyes, and said, "you are hoofed, and you have horns, you are obviously a herbavore, you won't eat me", and he rolled over to his other side to continue his rest.

One has to be careful, however, to be sure that there are no rational explanations extant before one claims that s/he witnessed an act of a supernatural force.

Aliens from other galaxies, for instance, could become invisible to us, and bring in a hundred barrels full of fish, in an instant. I, as a person, would be so impressed by the production, especially when unaware of the invisible aliens, that I would have no choice but believe the real presence of the supernatural.

Well, I took my own hypothetical experience to be an example, and instead of creating an example of an epiphany stemming from a spiritual impression or "vision", which the scriptures have some records of, and @Wayfarer said if s/he replicated, s/he would be convinced, I took a vision which is not esoteric or spiritual, but factual and in-your-face, but like you said, it's a vision nevertheless (you likened it to

magic or brain damage or drugs or any number of other possible explanations — S

).

So I simplified the process and declared that I am a gullible human, who, when encounters an experience, which indicated to people long time ago that there is a supernatural force, would also interpret the process or phenomenon as an act of a supernatural force.

There are experiences that are so strong and compelling, although not real, that we believe them.

Solipsists claim that our entire sensory life is precisely that.

I therefore agree with this kind of thinking, so I agreed with @Wayfarer that indeed there could be strong enough experiences in life -- such as Jesus appearing, and creating 100 barrels of fish in an instant -- that even I, a staunch atheist, would not be able to explain with anything but with the existence of a supernatural entity.

Then again, I never encountered anything like that yet. And I believe I never will.

(Incidentally, I also see this hypothetical scenario I described and my response to it, as a way to falsify the scientific finding that there is no evidence of god's existence.)

I think there are records of genuine epiphanies, actual ‘revelations’, such that if anyone were exposed to such visions then they likewise would be compelled to accept their veracity. Not everything in sacred texts is true, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all fallacious, either. Otherwise it would make it the mother of all conspiracies — Wayfarer

If the part in bold isn't fallacious, then set out your reasoning. Surprise me. — S

You did not ask me, S, but if Jesus, Yahweh, or Beelzeboob (sp?) appeared in front of me and created 100 fish out of nothing instantly in a set of barrels, or turned 100 barrels of water into wine instantly, then I'd accept it as an act of god, not as an act of magic or trickery. Call me gullible, but it would satisfy me as a proof of truth. And you know how religious I am now.

What is the standard to prove to you mind body dualism? — MiloL

To me it's the impossibility to explain feelings, emotions, desires, even things like seeing and not just looking, and hearing, not just listening, and such like sensations, merely with the physical attributes and physical functions of the body.

In other words, I can't explain the FEELING of hunger. Yes, I believe that if I had enough eductation in physiology, I would pretty well be able to explain how the receptors inside the body measure blood sugar levels, fullness of the stomach, and other such feedback- and feedforward mechanisms that trigger or create the feeling of hunger. But the feeling itself I could not explain on simply physical bases.

I believe the two are connected (the physical triggering and the ensuing feeling) but I can't put my finger on the actual bridging of how a physical phenomenon becomes a feeling. Some say it's a function of the brain, which I also understand must be true. But still. A brain is still nothing more than a bunch of semiconductor units. There is something in living things -- not just in humans, but in all animals -- that created a feeling in them, instead of just making them mechanically respond to stimuli.

Because that would equally be as effective as a force to make the organism live. Whether you feel too hot, or your feedlback mechanism automatically compels you to go to a cooler place, are both effective, yet one employs sensation, the other, does not. In fact, many religions rode on the ideal that animals are much like machines, therefore their killing and slaughtering and enslaving is no different from building steam engines and torturing those (other than being more environment friendly, I guess.)

--------------

Can I please have several billion dollars now for my research, please?

If you want to know how space bends, drive down the street in a Mercedes and turn the corner. Space curves the same way as a Mercedes Benz.

As you can see hate can be caused by injustice. Injustice has moral implications. It's this I'm referring to. — TheMadFool

Thank you. Injustice is harm done to you also, no? So who is to say it is the moral implication that heightens the response?

I am not denying your point, I am only saying that it is not necessarily true.

You'll hate someone who calls you a liar, but hate him even more if he kills your wife or kids. You get morally hurt in the first instance, but not morally hurt in the second, yet your hate will be stronger in the second instance.

I can't say a straight yes or no. Do what your conscience dictates. You justify your decision by predicting whether you feel good about it (because you helped your brother and his family) or you feel bad about it (because you jeopardize your own future and the lot of your potential offspring in life.)

If you think it's greed that stopping you from giving him more money, well, you have to look at this way: is the money you give him going to create an essential shortcoming for you? Or does the loaned amount amount to nothing more than a drop of water in an endless sea, so to speak.

You also have to consider whether your other siblings helped him out. You don't have to be the sole bearer of this burden, if I may call it that.

You also have to consider that people, even siblings, have completely different temperaments. If you give, your other siblings may not take your gesture as an example to follow.

Hate, as you might have already guessed, has something to do with morality. In a very loose sense what we hate are morally prohibited. — TheMadFool

We also hate wrongdoing or harm done to us. Or to someone we care about. Regardless of morality. I think hate is a general dislike, and as such, you can dislike acting against morality, but I see no special function of hate due to morality.

As far as I understand, it is one of the laws of thermodynamics.

Work and movement change can only occur if there is a differential in energy levels. Once the energy levels even out, then there is no chance of movement change.

I don't know if you can call it a fact. It makes sense, much like evolution does. It is rather all the facts that are possible put together give you this outcome.

The link I put up shows otherwise. Dualism exists in our emotions, like it or not. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

LInks are always right. This is the first order of truth in the cosmic order of the universe.

the "real answer" to that is that WE DON"T KNOW. — Zuhair

The sad truth is that we do. Entropy will nullify all movements in the entire world.

I agree, with the sad fact that I don't see a dichotomous optimistic realism.

The first problem, of course, the extreme anthropocentricism of religions.

The second problem is the chaotic unrest being acted on by the organized good. Evolution indeed can be seen as a function of this movement, but eventually entropy will take over, and everything will end up in a quiet, luke-warm, uneventful and smooth movementless world.

What then? Whom do you declare as triumphant? The Good, or the Bad? (Or the ugly??)

If course, in a literal doomsday scenario, things might be different. — Echarmion

The literary doomsday scenario has begun when I started to write poetry.

There is bad poetry. There is BAAAD poetry. And then there is mine.


(I know I used an alteration of the word, and then cmmitted the equivocation fallacy on the Strawman just committed. It's for the humorous effect.)

@Wayfarer this reminds me of an old Jewish joke.

Green goes to the rabbi with Black, to get justice done. "Black borrowed my hat and never returned it. He must pay me for the hat." The rabbi says, "That's right." Then Black says, "Yeah, but Green borrowed five bucks from me last week, and he never paid me back. So I don't have to pay him for the hat." The rabbi thinks for a second, and says, "You're right!" Then Green pipes up, "But rabbi! We can't both be right!" The rabbi looks at him in surprise, and says, "You're right!"

(That is true, too.)

(I think @Isaac was using irony... I beleive s/he meant to say, "You mustn't believe your eyes when they contradict theory.")

It's not that you are undivided, it's that everything is undivided. — T Clark
Sorry, but I've just peeled a mandarin. And it is indeed divided. In fact almost every sensible object is divisible into parts, some of them, like mandarins, into sub-parts. So whatever the sentiment you're wanting to express here, it regrettably doesn't conform with the testimony of sense.
— Wayfarer

What a facetious trivialising of what was a very thoughtful point. Your personal incredulity does not constitute an argument. What lends you the arrogance to think that whatever makes sense to you is what sense itself is constituted of? — Isaac

@Wayfarer, @Isaac, and @T. Clark, the three of you seem to be divided on the subject of unity. This actually unifies the three of you into a community of participants of a debate.

Except that there CAN'T be three of you, according to the Tao Unified Cosmos theory.

What should you do now? — Purple Pond

Die. Die your hair blonde, and get a boob job, or work out and develop muscles. Humans are frightfully superficial; good looks are everything in our world.

I won't engage with you in an infinitely long exchange of swearing to the truth because I need to defend myself from your accusing me of lying, and of being silly, solipsistic (I am not sure you are using this word correctly, but hey, enough is enough), not willing to exchange serious ideas, etc.

I was not interested only in proving you wrong. I am interested in proving anyone wrong whose claims are self-contradictory.

Obviously you disagree with my assessment of how you presented your subject and how I perceived it, and the logical links between the two. I note your disagreement, but I shall disengage now, as you are merely repeating yourself, with inventing accusations against me with each new post you write.

I don't write many long posts. — Terrapin Station

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

I write long posts. I love to hear my own keyboard's tap-tap-tappity-tap.

I distorted your story only in retrospect. It appeared to be distorted to you, because you knew the whole story from the beginning, but you must admit that you did not WRITE the story correctly, you left out a lot of details and important information.

I see now how it happened. You assumed that your readers would assume a lot of things, and when I challenged you, you eventually and one-by-one filled out those gaps which you assumed I ought to have assumed.

It's your right and privilege to not take me seriously. I have no arguments against that. I, however, take your words seriously.

AGE OF CONSENT LAWS IN TORONTO, ONTARIO

I passed that age, whatever it is. The significant law for me is that the city fathers decreed that children ought to be allowed to bicycle on sidewalks, but adults, not. At age 50 I bought some children's bike, with 20 inch wheels. Because the lawmakers (I guess the law was a city-by-law) in their inifinite wisdom (must have been lawyers) decided that AGE is hard to ascertain in the absence of a document, and kids don't carry documents; so the law was made so, that no bicycles were allowed on city sidewalks that were over 20 inches in diameter.

This not many new, but I read the applicable laws.

And you must know that bicycling on Toronto city road arteries is next near to suicide attempts.

So I happily bicycled all over the sidewalks, being 50 and / or over, riding small children's bikes.

=====================

In this spirit, the city fathers ought to replicate this example with marriage licence issuing. If a man (regardless of age, since it's hard to ascertain in the absence of documents) has a penis less than 20 inches, he is considered boy, and can't marry. 20 inches and over, he is a man. No arguments, this is the law.

No, I just don't understand what you say: the technology / science will save us from destruction, or the technology/science will save our destruction?

Three possible solutions:
1. A Big Fat Dictator who shoots anyone who tries to put two cows on the commons.
2. Sell the commons, making it private so that folk take care of it. (We might call this the Selfish Git solution)
3. Develop a culture that treats the commons with respect.

Which will you choose? — Banno

1. Destroy all cows and eat grass ourselves.

2. Destroy ourselves, and commonize all privately owned land.

3. Invent edible artificial turf.

4. Learn how to photosynthesize.

5. Steal everyone's cow and laugh like the wind. (Anti-gov, anti-tyrant)

6. Destroy the question.

7. Send prayer to the Lord and ask Him to make justice. Out of clay, if necessary.

Science will find a solution to man's habit of destroying the planet (so we don't need to adjust our behavior) — Tzeentch

So the planet won't be destroyed, after all, despite your foreboding prophecy?

"Finding a solution to man's habit of destroying the planet" actually is ambiguous; it does not differentiate between "helps us destroy the planet" and "helps us not to destroy the planet". A person who employs the Principle of Charity may think you wish we won't destroy the planet; but an equally strong lingual/ language force may interpret it that you want to stay consistent to your original point, and that was that science will destroy us and our habitat.

I can't make any go of this, @Tzeentch.

Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful post re: principle of charity and how it applies to autists.

I have met many autists in social circles, who you would never think they were. A woman, extreme beauty, rich, confided in me that when she asks her mother-in-law, "Do you get the newspaper seven days a week", the relative answers, "We don't get it on Saturdays." My acquaintance said, that this meant nothting to her: does the M-i-L mean she gets it on every day but Saturday? To my acquaintance it was an impossible conondrum to solve. Had she known and applied the Principle of Charity, she most likely would have interpreted that the M-i-L meant she gets the paper the other six days of the week.

The language is not as weak as some people think; the language is as weak as the user who uses it. It takes special skills to be unambiguous, and if the speaker does mind if she is misunderstood, then I think the onus is on her to be crystal clear in her communication.

Clear, unambiguous speech is just as inaccessible for most of the population, as for me to access the Principle of Charity properly.

A wise man or woman once penned, "Everybody lies, but it does not matter, since nobody listens." It is true, that reading and comprehension skills are lacking in our world. I wrote just yesterday a post , that I was harshly criticized for, only because the reader neglected to read two words in my argument. I was crystal clear, but s/he glided over words.

My autism dictates that I listen and read every word... can be very uncomfortable when in the company of very boring people.

Anyway, I am rambling. The upshot is, that the Principle of Charity is useful for normal people, who can substitute the gaps in the explanation or the gaps in the steps of logic, or the misspeaches with the right expressions fluently and without error. I believe this is a skill that more befits women. I can listen to a story with my aunt (she passed, this is an old example) and the speaker would talk about a woman, her mother-in-law, and a female cousin of the woman, and in the story she would use the female personal pronoun for all three. I would be lost by the second sentence, while my aunt would follow the story through, without any difficulties.

The sad ending of the story is that I perfectly well see the intention and the logical helpfulness of the Principle of Charity, but alas, I am unable to use it due to my disability. This is not a statement coming of defiance, it is a statement of the sad truth.

More revelations to the "Great unwashed":

"Part for the course" is a secret sign among Maoists to identify their stand on "rice or buffalo".

"I'll slap you into next Tuesday" is a verbal way of mothers to protest the recently imposed increases of import tariffs on natural sand, complicating US-Belize trade links.

The general use of "went" instead of "gone" as in "I've went into the store" is a secret sign which means that the person uttering it spent more time daydreaming about sexual relations with the teacher in grade three than reading the text.

I also heard that "card-Blanche" is used by extreme supremacists only. It is a secret sign to designate their belonging to the group.

I also heard "It's a nice day, isn't it?" is a code between anarchists, communists, and revolutionary bolsheviks (but not Trotskiites!! Very important!) to identify themselves to others in a crowd.

While if someone opens his or her speech with "Ladies and gentlemen", then he or she is secretly a loyalist to the crown crownie, who wants to bring back British rule of the sovereign to North America.

With regard to the above, that is, my view on Principle of Charity: If you refuse to use it, then the holy scriptures of any and all religions appear to be bullshit to you. I can't afford to give the interpreters of holy scriptures that freedom of escaping from the truth. If I agreed to use the Principle of Charity, then I give the green light to interpreting scriptures.

IN other words, if I used the principle of charity, then I deny that scripture interpreters are simply rationalizating a completely false claims. And I refuse to deny that.

Okay, I read the link in Wikipaedia, and it makes sense now.

Please tell me the name of the process that is the opposite of "Principle of Charity". I suffer from autism, very badly, and to me words are words, with meanings. If I have to extrapolate from the words' meanings, in my view it leads to extremely dangerous territory, as extrapolation can lead to ANY INTERPRETATION.

I like to not fall into the trap of false interpretation, and therefore I am unable to use the Principle of Charity. This is in my nature and conviction as an autist and as a person who has experienced life.

unicanni herself, and probably you, too, advocate to not assume things that are false. That is laughable. How do I discern between a false assumption and a non-false one? I read words, understand them, and form opinions based on what they mean. I don't go beyond that, becasue to do that, I need to make assumptions, and you and uncanni are against making false assumptions, while you don't give guidance how to differentiate between false and true assumptions.

The only guide this Principle of Charity gives is to make the statements lacking in crucial detail filled in so that it makes sense and logical congruence. Even then, the sky is the limit of possible assumptions.

I am sorry, I can't use the principle of charity. In fact, it can be used, but I don't condone it.

are you familiar with the principle of charity? It seems to me like you could stand to extend it a bit more to uncanni, whom I read as saying that she is employed to professionally teach a university course (on some subject matter unspecified, though I would guess philosophy from context), and in that course she has to make rules against which her students will be graded; but that, in a more casual sense of "teaching", an important principle she tries to convey to her students is the importance of questioning authority, which NB is not equivalent to disobeying authority. She is not, I'm pretty sure, saying that she grades her students on how well they follow her (hypothetical) instructions to not follow her instructions. — Pfhorrest

How does this explain the principle of charity? You, @Pfhorrest, set out to explain it to me, and then you did not, but instead told me what @uncanni has assured me of later in her posts.

What is the principle of charity? I wish to learn it from you.

If you promise something, then please deliver it.

Ah, yes. That's why we northern Europeans are the Master Race. — T Clark

Ditto. You are biassed against a posting because you were too tired, too bored, too lazy, or too impatient to read it through.

Please next time don't do this.

No. You just spouted some jingoist pseudo-anthropology that said the same thing. — T Clark

Absolutely not, and I can prove it. The JIngoist Anthropologists said that the white race is more skilled, more intelligent. I deny that. I believe, and it can be proven statistically, that all races have the same ability to learn skills, and to be intelligent. THIS is a huge difference between me and the proverbial jingoist anthropologist.

There is, however, that problem that the northern hemisphere inhabitants faced: how to survive the winter, how to do this, how to do that, which the southerner races did not have to face. This NEED let the northern races develop technology, and which eventually lead to the industrial revolution.

If you switched the races ten thousand years ago, and put the Africans into Europe, and the Europeans into Africa's lands, then the history would have repeated itself, with the only exception that it would have been the African Black race, living in Europe, who would colonize the world.

This, what I described, is a huge difference between me and a jingoist supremacist asshole anthropologist, and it was reflected in my earlier comment, which you very conveniently did not read through.

I think everyone should read postings through thoroughly before leaving their critical messages.

Clearly, the coded language "works" for them, so there must be a way to establish the code besides express verbal agreement. — Echarmion

So what is the way to establish the code translation? Please tell us.

Clearly, the coded message works for them, you, @Echarmion say. But how do you know that? You are not only imagining that there is a coded message, but you are imagining that it has an effect on white supremacists, but it has no effect on non-white supremacists, white non-supremasists, and on non-white non-supremasists.

You know all of a sudden claim to know the precise thoughts are of several millions of people.

What is my thought right now? If you know it, I shall cease and desist. If you can't guess it, you cease and desist.

“How do I say ‘law and order’ and still mean law and order”? — NOS4A2

:up:

If it hadn't leaked, how would we be talking about it? — Echarmion

By imagining it was a code and acting on our imagination.

If that is how language works, how do children learn the meaning of words? — Echarmion

Okay. You are a bit deft. "ACREW" is the password to my laptop, to my computer, or to my iPhone? If you guess it right, you are a genius.

Coded language only works if there is preagreement on the code. Although I was a child once, I would never have guessed that "law and order" means "Relax, White Supremacists.".

When YOU were a child, and someone said to you, "law and order", was your immendiate reaction to think "huh, this is a message to white supremacists"?

You... don't know how children learn the language, either.