-- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@...> wrote: > > Curtis, the fanaticism of your disbelief is more unyielding to reality--or > any ontological contingencies--than the fanaticism of those Evangelical > Christians who tried to make you Accept the Lord into you life. I don't quite > understand it, but there is a ferocious intransigence there, almost as if you > secretly believed in these accounts more than anyone could on FFL.
No the ad hominem route doesn't cut it Robin. You and I share a similar proof system if a guy on the street handed us a bottle of pills and said "take these and you will be better in every way." We would go through the same realistic questions concerning the claim, where did they come from, who made them, what is in them, how do you know what they do etc. You have deviated from this reasoning process in the case of the fantastic claim that people flew a long time ago and I am wondering why? You proposed that these claims "ring true" and you have turned it into an accusation that I am somehow deficient for asking what you are basing this confidence in. > > I am sorry, but you are the guy who if Santa Claus appeared at your fireplace > on Christmas night--with his full compliment of reindeer--you would shout him > out of your house, and even as you saw him flying away in the sky you would > be cursing him (undoubtedly with some very barbed wit). Well I might be asleep and dreamed that I saw him, would it be unreasonable to check that out first? Would it be wrong to ask if someone else saw him? I have the same cognitive gaps you do Robin. You are building a case that I am somehow uniquely flawed by unreasonable skepticism, but you reject many ideas that I do and often from the same analysis of the baselessness of their claims. I suspect that you didn't attend any services for the late Sun Myung Moon because the Lord died, right? Does that make you this same guy you are trying to paint me as because you didn't find substance in his claims that he and many followers made that he was God on earth? > > There is a terrible and tragic compulsion in you to simplify this business of > what is real, Curtis. You will accuse me of failing to address your question, I will because you are. You know better to slip an ad hominem attack in place of reasons Robin. <but the coercive intent of your dogmatic view of the matter of the mystery of Why there is something rather than nothing? > Just finished a great book by a physicist on this very subject. It turns out that from the physic's perspective "nothing" is less stable a state than something. Of course this doesn't clear up the mystery for a non physicist like me, but it does a bit better than just interjecting the word "God" as if that word explains it all. <just vacuums up all the space that I think should be there were your convictions originating in an innocent experience.> You are making a subjective assessment of how "innocent" my experience is here. You are of course welcome to make it, but don't think it advances your epistemological solitary, it is more ad hominem. It is a more gentile way of saying my pants are full of poop and yours are not so you don't have to give any supporting reasons for believing unsourced accounts of people flying posted on the Internet should be taken seriously. > > This is the problem between us, Curtis: It was an intellectual love fest in > the beginning [Robin realizes he has totally lost Curtis at this point in his > post: Curtis's FPOT is erupting in disgust]; Hey I liked you a lot and still do Robin (when you aren't trying to make a case that I am uniquely flawed for thinking differently than you do or challenging assertions you make), because of our disagreements as much as where we agree. <but gradually it turned to intellectual estrangement of a very high order.> I would rather discuss how we are putting our world views together differently, the reasons we have rather than long discussions of my personal faults through your perspective. Take a look at this very discussion Robin. I have challenged you for dodging my specific question about what you base your confidence on for those claims. I have further shown you where I specifically label what you have written as an attack on me as a person instead of rather than supporting your belief. What I have not done is to go into a list of what this means about the kind of person you are. I am not attacking you personally or characterizing you as a Bah Humbug Santa denier. (I just got my magazine page from the 1930s of Santa with a cigarette in his hand, it is my kind of Christmas cheer!) > I dont want to go down that road again with you, Curtis; but know this: there > is an argument to be made for the veracity of the phenomenon described in > these accounts and it is dramatically more complex and multi-layered and > interesting than your simple and outright--and nonempirical--denial. Condescension doesn't help, that is more of the same. I am plenty smart enough to follow your reasoning Robin, you just aren't giving me a chance, preferring personal putdowns. You haven't given any reasons for having confidence in those claims and now you make another one. That there is an unspecified argument, but I am not up to hearing it. > > Let's just be friends, Curtis. We are looking at the universe--and all the > beings inside of it--from very different perspectives. Let us leave it at > that. The writers, the witnesses, the Saints, in this article they are not > fairly represented by an idea that makes of all this the equivalent of > someone insisting the earth is really flat, or that my pet unicorn threw up > in the sink this morning.> You have made no useful distinctions between those concepts for me to judge. > > You have a reflex about this, Curtis. If in the end it is proven there is a > God you will tell him he doesn't exist.> No like Bertrand Russel I will put a finger in his chest and say "You didn't provide me with adequate proof!" The reflex comment is of course more of the ad hominem approach to me asking for better reasons to believe something fantastic than that it is posted without sources on the Internet. We have come to this door before. My guess is that on the other side is an appeal to a mystical experience you are having that you don't care to share. I could be wrong but that is my guess. > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@> > wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> wrote: > > > > > The veracity or purported veracity of an eyewitness account is of course > > > a special field of investigation. But, even were I totally skeptical, I > > > would, in going through all what is said in this article, find my > > > skepticism significantly challenged. > > > > Come on Robin, the sources for these outlandish claims are not even given. > > It doesn't rise to even the level of the proven to be unreliable eyewitness > > accounts. This is at best hearsay through the distortion filter of many > > years and an obvious agenda to promote a cause. This is the telephone game > > played through centuries. You can't make any realistic distinction between > > these claims and sightings of aliens or bigfoot. > > > > These are stories, told by people with a purpose to inspire others that > > their internal experience was extraordinary just as Maharishi did with his > > flying promises. They may never have been meant to be taken literally, but > > if they were. there is no good reason to take these claims seriously. Or > > if we do just accept any old claim we have to include all the nonsense > > people have claimed to have witnessed. > > > > Oh hell, I should have just left it to the 16 words I haven't helped this > > cause at all! > > > > But if you have a case to make that I have missed some good reason to take > > these claims seriously I would be happy to read it. Start with how you > > build credibility for an unknown source. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > http://www.miraclesofthesaints.com/2010/10/levitation-and-ecstatic-flights-in.html > > > > > > > > > > > > > It's just a shame that they seem to have stopped just before > > > > the invention of cinema. > > > > > > RESPONSE: No, "they seem to have stopped" because they stopped. God--or > > > the supernatural grace which precipitated this miracles--said: Fuck it! > > > I've had it. I'm going to change up the game. > > > > > > And ever since then (just before our lifetime) there ain't no miracles > > > (or if there are, they are not being done through the agency which > > > determined the miracles in this article). > > > > > > I think if cinema had been around in the 13th to 16th centuries in > > > particular, the Holy Ghost might have permitted there to be a few > > > miracles filmed. But maybe not. It might have destroyed the meritorious > > > value of faith. "Show me the nail marks, Jesus, baby--that is, if you > > > really resurrected." > > > > > > The veracity or purported veracity of an eyewitness account is of course > > > a special field of investigation. But, even were I totally skeptical, I > > > would, in going through all what is said in this article, find my > > > skepticism significantly challenged. > > > > > > I suspect that it what happened to you--when you began reading. > > > > > > No, the present ontological context of the universe would make Saint > > > Francis of Assisi probably an honest existentialist (of the atheistic > > > variety). > > > > > > No one will levitate or fly in my lifetime. This seems certain to me, > > > because I sense zero miracle potential in the universe. > > > > > > But when I read these accounts *it is a very different metaphysic* I > > > encounter. A metaphysic which simply does not exist and therefore would > > > seem never to have existed. > > > > > > I think your reaction a normal and healthy one. > > > > > >
