Atheism does not exist

[Enai de a lukal]

Person A considers a particular piece of art to be good. Person B considers a particular piece of art to be bad. Both statements are true to the people in question.

Aesthetic judgments do not concern any matter of fact. There is no fact of the matter here- liking a piece of art is a matter of taste.

As for the belief in god, maybe the act of believing does essentially create a godlike entity in their life.

Hows that work then?

Putting my Willa thinking cap on

Um... What?

She can probably explain it better. I don't fully believe it myself, though I do think there is an aspect of truth (hahaha) in the concept.

You're right to not believe it, its a self-contradictory position.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I'd say it's time to put up or shut up.

Oh, you're so daunting. I must flee.

(But if you ever decide you're ready to answer my questions, I've given you the number of just one of my messages which you ducked. Start with that one.)

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

So there must be something half of everyone is seeing but I believe it is an attempt to say that truth doesn't really exist therefore it is always relative.

Truth is a word, and words are just little bits of sound used by humans to try and make meaning. Just because we have the word 'truth,' that doesn't mean that some real object exists out there which equals the word.

The definition of truth is that it absolute and objective.

There's no such thing as 'the definition' of a word. Words by themselves aren't even reliable units of meaning. They fool us into thinking so because of the white space on either side of them.

If we can't possibly grasp truth, like I may have mentioned to Willamena, why do we even use the word.

Can we ever grasp justice? I don't see how. But we still find it to be a useful word.

We can chase truth and justice, but we err when we claim to have caught them. Think of them as ideals.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

(But if you ever decide you're ready to answer my questions, I've given you the number of just one of my messages which you ducked. Start with that one.)

Still with this farce... As I said, if you have any more questions you'd like addressed, pose them. And if you want to refer to a past post, then quote it.

Or better yet, actually post an argument or line of reasoning.

But one way or another, I'd say its time to put up or shut up; you've been all bark and no bite so far on this thread. And you're not fooling anyone by pretending I'm ducking or avoiding you- I obviously have not gone anwhere, I'm still waiting patiently for you to pose some of these mysterious questions you keep hinting at.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Still with this farce... As I said, if you have any more questions you'd like addressed, pose them. And if you want to refer to a past post, then quote it.

Or better yet, actually post an argument or line of reasoning.

But one way or another, I'd say its time to put up or shut up; you've been all bark and no bite so far on this thread. And you're not fooling anyone by pretending I'm ducking or avoiding you- I obviously have not gone anwhere, I'm still waiting patiently for you to pose some of these mysterious questions you keep hinting at.

I used to wrestle with eels. It was just something to do when I was bored.

But I finally had to stop it because I could never get the slime off me, and respectable people began to think of me as, well... slimy.

I loved those eels. I just couldn't be with them anymore.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

"You're black" says the raven to the crow... How many times have I requested that you actually post these unanswered questions you keep mentioning? And how many posts do you fail to do so, yet still post some bluster about how I'm avoiding your questions? (hint: at least the past 4 or 5 posts now...)

If you can't spit it out already, I'm going to consider your hat having been withdrawn from the ring. I don't have any interest in playing your little game. If you have something to say, say it, otherwise I'm done wasting time reading or responding to your inane posts.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I don't have any interest in playing your little game. If you have something to say, say it, otherwise I'm done wasting time reading or responding to your inane posts.

You can’t hurt me anymore. I am over you!!

(Oh, please ... please, give me just one more chance? I know I can change.)

 

[ArtieE]

If you can't spit it out already, I'm going to consider your hat having been withdrawn from the ring. I don't have any interest in playing your little game. If you have something to say, say it, otherwise I'm done wasting time reading or responding to your inane posts.

This forum has an ignore list. It's under User CP. I gave up on him too a while back. Sheer waste of time.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

This forum has an ignore list. It's under User CP. I gave up on him too a while back. Sheer waste of time.

Heartbreaker!

 

[Falvlun]

Which would be self-defeating; if "truth is relative" is true, then it is only relatively true, which means that for some people, truth is absolute.

Already addressed that in post #957. It was the part you cut out when you quoted it in your post #961.

It's actually a pretty succinct theory. It would explain why you can't understand a relative truther's POV, and why a relative truther wouldn't agree with yours.

 

[Falvlun]

That first example seem like something that is a matter of opinion than knowledge.

Ah, but it wasn't "knowledge" that we were talking about there, but truth.

 

[Willamena]

Unless, of course, the truth is that truth is relative.

For that to be true we'd have to be able to show two conflicting claims both being true. I don't think that's possible but maybe someone has an example.

Person A considers a particular piece of art to be good. Person B considers a particular piece of art to be bad. Both statements are true to the people in question.

As for the belief in god, maybe the act of believing does essentially create a godlike entity in their life.

I don't know how such a view would account for things like a disagreement as to the number of steps up to my apartment.

A better example is found in the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each blind man reported accurately and truthfully, to the best of his ability, what an elephant "was like." Sighted people do no differently (as can be evidenced by the differences of understands in this thread).

That doesn't prevent them from becoming the self-appointed arbiters of blind mens' experiences.

Putting my Willa thinking cap on, one might say that someone who believes that truth is invariant would of course see a world in which truths were invariant. A person who believes that the truth is relative would experience a world in which truth was relative.

She can probably explain it better. I don't fully believe it myself, though I do think there is an aspect of truth (hahaha) in the concept.

I can try. Belief follows behind truth, taking the subservient position (everything is subservient to truth). So, rather than "believing truth," awareness of the true proposition is believing. Rather than belief in invariability forming an invariant world, the truth of an invariant world informs belief, just as the truth of a malleable world informs belief. Both are available for understanding, because neither is actually the world--they are pictures of the world. Wordworld.

I should not have responded earlier to the question about "relative truth." Truth isn't the proposition, as much as we address it that way to talk about it. Truth, that unconscious switch, informs every proposition. It's the universal property that nothing can be without. It's "the innermost decision that we cannot but obey."

 

[idav]

A better example is found in the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each blind man reported accurately and truthfully, to the best of his ability, what an elephant "was like." Sighted people do no differently (as can be evidenced by the differences of understands in this thread).

That doesn't prevent them from becoming the self-appointed arbiters of blind mens' experiences.


I can try. Belief follows behind truth, taking the subservient position (everything is subservient to truth). So, rather than "believing truth," awareness of the true proposition is believing. Rather than belief in invariability forming an invariant world, the truth of an invariant world informs belief, just as the truth of a malleable world informs belief. Both are available for understanding, because neither is actually the world--they are pictures of the world. Wordworld.

I should not have responded earlier to the question about "relative truth." Truth isn't the proposition, as much as we address it that way to talk about it. Truth, that unconscious switch, informs every proposition. It's the universal property that nothing can be without. It's "the innermost decision that we cannot but obey."

Yet what the blind men are experiencing are pieces of truth, the truth that lies beyond interpretation of said truth.

 

[Willamena]

Yet what the blind men are experiencing are pieces of truth, the truth that lies beyond interpretation of said truth.

How so? Does sight somehow grant an ability to interpret where other senses do not?

 

[idav]

How so? Does sight somehow grant an ability to interpret where other senses do not?

They had one piece of the puzzle and tried to guess the picture from one clue. That isnt easy, the complete picture becomes clearer as more pieces are added. Each sense just give one truth aspect, its this frequency and this temperature and is emitting radio frequencies and it continues to build to give a full picture. There are many ways to see something but our interpretations arent always accurate without enough evidence.

 

[Willamena]

They had one piece of the puzzle and tried to guess the picture from one clue. That isnt easy, the complete picture becomes clearer as more pieces are added. Each sense just give one truth aspect, its this frequency and this temperature and is emitting radio frequencies and it continues to build to give a full picture. There are many ways to see something but our interpretations arent always accurate without enough evidence.

They only had "one piece of a puzzle" from the perspective of the sighted person, who professed for them a puzzle with more pieces than them, by relation to each of them. Each man, blind and sighted, is actually on equal footing: he has the picture that is the sum of his senses and interpretation. It is accurate in the sense that there is nothing else to be "more accurate." There is no real "complete picture" for any of us beyond what we each put together. Even the interpretation "the complete picture beyond what I've put together" is a piece of that individual's picture.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

They only had "one piece of a puzzle" from the perspective of the sighted person, who professed for them a puzzle with more pieces than them, by relation to each of them. Each man, blind and sighted, is actually on equal footing: he has the picture that is the sum of his senses and interpretation. It is accurate in the sense that there is nothing else to be "more accurate." There is no real "complete picture" for any of us beyond what we each put together. Even the interpretation "the complete picture beyond what I've put together" is a piece of that individual's picture.

So... not knowing the number of jigsaw puzzle pieces in the box means that you can consider the few pieces you've put together as the whole picture?

 

[Willamena]

So... not knowing the number of jigsaw puzzle pieces in the box means that you can consider the few pieces you've put together as the whole picture?

You mean those imaginary pieces?

If you are the blind man by the analogy, who is your sighted person?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You mean those imaginary pieces?

What are you talking about?

If you are the blind man by the analogy, who is your sighted person?

The lack of a sighted person in the analogy doesn't mean that the blind man has a complete impression of the elephant by touching its ear; it means that the blind man can never be perfectly sure whether his impression is complete.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Already addressed that in post #957. It was the part you cut out when you quoted it in your post #961.

You mean this?

I don't know how such a view would account for things like a disagreement as to the number of steps up to my apartment.

Putting my Willa thinking cap on, one might say that someone who believes that truth is invariant would of course see a world in which truths were invariant. A person who believes that the truth is relative would experience a world in which truth was relative.

How does that address the fact that truth as relativity is self-defeating?

And what about my questions regarding how belief in a god "creates a godlike entity in their life"?

And not only is such a view self-contradictory (and thus dead on arrival), it is patently false- nobody can hold such a view in their day to day life, because truth and facts are objective, and we behave as such; if the cat is on the couch for me, it is for you too. Obama is the president of the US for me, for you, and everyone else, whatever you happen to believe. If you believe the coffee shop where we are supposed to meet for lunch is on the corner of 42nd and Grand when in fact its 46th and Grand, it won't be "true for you"- you'll simply be late for lunch.

As I said before, people who argue for such a position put down their pen or step away from their computer, and disavow relativistic truth. So not only is it logically untenable, its functionally or practically unworkable as well.

And this whole relative truth business is usually just a misguided attempt to make people feel better about having mistaken beliefs, or for not being willing to critically examine their own views. Its ok if your view is false- it can be "true for you", even though it is not true "for" anyone else. As if we all live in disconnected fairy-tale worlds where we can fashion reality as we wish... if only!

Basically, "relative truth" is a cop out. Objective truth is not all there is- any artist or any lover can tell you that- but it is the only sort of truth there is.