At least you can learn, which is more than we can say for 90+ percent of the folks around here. ;-) — Terrapin Station
It’s just that my life was very lonely and shitty when I was an atheist. — Noah Te Stroete
It’s just that my life was very lonely and shitty when I was an atheist. :fear: — Noah Te Stroete
There can definitely be benefits to church/religion-based social life, especially if you live in particular locations where that dominates the way that people interact socially. — Terrapin Station
Still I think that people who believe in the primacy of consciousness over matter are usually less narrow-minded. — leo
I sympathize with your position, but you can't really discuss it with materialists because they disagree with your premises, but then you disagree with theirs so it doesn't lead anywhere. Still I think that people who believe in the primacy of consciousness over matter are usually less narrow-minded. But it's hard to show someone narrow-minded that they are narrow-minded, they have to be willing to let go of their convictions, or at least to tentatively entertain different points of view without reacting strongly right from the beginning against what they don't believe in.
Let me help you a little bit here. It could be that this material world we experience is a creation of our collective subconsciousness, and so that it depends on each and everyone of us, and that it is our will that shapes it, rather than unchanging laws that don't depend on us. If you don't like materialism, nothing forces you to believe in it, only some people try to force you (for various reasons that depend on them) but you don't have to let them take over your mind. — leo
I could just as well say that I think that people who believe in the primacy of consciousness over matter are usually more fanciful. I could do this all day. We could just keep on trading characteristics with negative connotations, but it's not productive. It just shows your prejudice. — S
I don't see why I should spend my time and energy giving a detailed breakdown of your opening post. That would seem like an unfair working relationship: you submit a handful of uncritical thoughts, and I'm expected to give you a detailed breakdown of the flaws? Are you suggesting that you're incapable of reassessing your own thinking, given my feedback? — S
I used to be a materialist, and I see now how narrow-minded I was, so there's that. — leo
I used to be a materialist, and I see now how narrow-minded I was, so there's that. I don't know of many people who turned materialists later in life, sure there are examples of people who escaped indoctrination from organized religion and who find more peace of mind in materialism, but then these were more looking to escape certain people rather than a philosophy that doesn't see matter as primary. — leo
Also, the ideas of 20th century physics would have been called fanciful by materialists in the centuries before, and they may be called fanciful again in the next centuries, and maybe what you call fanciful now will be seen as reasonable in the future. Looking at the history and philosophy of science can help shatter some deeply-held beliefs, and lead one to be more open-minded. — leo
I used to be a materialist, and I see now how narrow-minded I was, so there's that. I don't know of many people who turned materialists later in life, sure there are examples of people who escaped indoctrination from organized religion and who find more peace of mind in materialism, but then these were more looking to escape certain people rather than a philosophy that doesn't see matter as primary.
Also, the ideas of 20th century physics would have been called fanciful by materialists in the centuries before, and they may be called fanciful again in the next centuries, and maybe what you call fanciful now will be seen as reasonable in the future. Looking at the history and philosophy of science can help shatter some deeply-held beliefs, and lead one to be more open-minded. — leo
I would hope that people aren't choosing philosophical stances based on whether they like[/i[] them. — Terrapin Station
A sample pool of just one is no basis to support such a judgement. — S
There's also a long history of science failures, like flogiston, luminiferous aether, and the geocentric model, as well as a wealth of speculative ideas which failed to even meet the principles behind the scientific method. So what you deliberately characterise negatively with the term "narrow-minded" could actually amount to rightly standing by reasonable principles instead of compromising by lowering the standard. — S
You took the time to write all of this when you didn't have to lol — khaled
I'm not the only one to have claimed that, I do have first-hand experience however. You can use my personal report as a starting point to conduct further inquiry and see whether there is a statistically significant percentage of former materialists who call their former self as narrow-minded, or you can simply dismiss it because you don't like the idea or because you don't care. — leo
I don't see how that addresses what I said, those "science failures" you mention were widely accepted as facts, as truth in their time, whereas someone who would have discussed ideas of 20th century physics back then would have been seen as fanciful or as a crank. And these "science failures" adhered to the "scientific method" just fine back then. — leo
S singles out my posts for some reason. He said I have a “God delusion.” I never argued for a particular god or implied that I know the nature of God. A delusion means having a false belief. This from someone who in other threads stated he had no beliefs about God one way or the other. Now he says it’s “delusion,” and says I don’t care about the truth. Weird. — Noah Te Stroete
Does anyone like you? If so, then they’re probably insufferable pricks as well. — Noah Te Stroete
Does anyone like you? If so, then they’re probably insufferable pricks as well. — Noah Te Stroete
S, has nothing to teach. I suggest, learning from someone else if dialectics is your thing. — Wallows
A wallower. — Wallows
I think, a lot of what goes on here is identity formation, where you seem to be constantly in dissonance or confusion that isprotected/projected onto others. — Wallows
Obviously I'm not assessing those views from the perspective of someone at the time, otherwise my point wouldn't make any sense. I'm assessing them based on what we now know. The speculation in the opening post is comparable, in a sense. It resembles science, but is off track and weakly supported, if at all. As others have commented, it's based on a fairly common misperception about the meaning of terms and logical implications relating to the observer effect. — S
Well, back then... — leo
Not to say there aren't misconceptions in what the OP said, and surely it doesn't help to use misconceptions in support of a speculative idea, but as a speculative idea I think it is worth exploring, rather than dismissing it right from the start as if we knew better, just because it seems to contradict "what we now know".
A speculative idea sometimes starts as an intuition, we don't really know where it's coming from, it's just floating there, we don't see how we could test it, but maybe if we discuss it and allow it to grow, something that we don't see yet will come out of it. The OP mentioned repeatedly that his mind works best through dialogue, that much of his thought is subconscious and only takes shape through dialogue, that was an invitation to help that idea grow, but instead he was simply met with resistance and with attempts to nip it in the bud. That's why paradigms take time to change, because ideas that contradict the prevalent one are resisted and rejected, instead of being allowed to flourish. A speculative idea is a bit like a flower seed, we have to water it and let it grow if we want to see the flower that it can become. — leo
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