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It has become abundantly clear that people are insanely preoccupied with definitions down to trivial minutia.
I guess it’s why humans to our knowledge are the best engineers, engineering requires precision and as a species we’re good at it.
Social definitions however are an entirely different matter. When creationists argue that atheist can’t exist because of some weird apologist arguments it has gone to far. What’s breaking my heart is all this cancel culture stuff I’m hearing about, like gatekeepers in the LGBT community and so on, like there are almost an infinite number of ways we can treat each other like shit.
Screw the group be you.
Concerning atheism, if you tell me you believe in no gods or higher powers I accept it. If you go to talk about your past lives I’m not going to consider it proof you aren’t an atheist, although I may tell you that you’re in error, but that’s because I disagree, not because I’m attacking what you say you are.
Save that for the trolls.

Novelty 8 Feb 27
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21 comments

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7

There is only one way to understand what someone says, but there are many ways to misunderstand. A misunderstood word can start a war, mostly flame wars. However, sometimes a person dotes over a word as if they were the mother. It's annoying.

I kind of see there is one thing meant by the speaker, unless they were thinking outloud and trying to understand something. Yet there seem to be a multitude of ways to misunderstand, because we view it through our own lens.

Always good to listen and try to shut off inner judgements or interpretations coming up while they are talking and really Be with them, curious and wanting to.really get what They mean. Instead of trying to figure it out through your past experience of the words said.

6

Beavers are Wonderful engineers.

I wish I had a beaver to engineer. Oh, wait. I should not have written that.

Spiders spit great nets. SILKworms are the ultimate captive species....ever hear of free range silk ?

4

Ants are good engineers. As for atheists who have lived before you need to show me a little proof.

Funny, I was thinking about ants also, as I read "Novelty"s post. Maybe it was telepathy. Is telepathy a proven scientific force, and has anybody ever calculated it's limits? My dogs use it so I believe it is real. But I digress.

@MissKathleen I knew you knew too!

@MissKathleen davidfishel.net, LOL

@MissKathleen

@MissKathleen Not famous but I've recorded a lot. That was the title song to my second album, in 1979. I don't have an I Phone and don't want one. I use a laptop because I like to see the whole picture! I Phones are a trap, addicting, and dangerous on the highway.

@fishline79 Every time I hear the phone ring I keep thinking this has happened before.

@DenoPenno You too?!

@MissKathleen No, I never meant to imply that you did. I couldn't know that.I was just saying that since I do alot of photographs, I can't imagine working them on a 2x3 " screen!

@MissKathleen Yes, a lot better but I can't afford one. I have a friend who refurbishes Dell Latitude laptops and sells them for $80.00! I use a T-Mobile 'Hot Spot" for Within Fi and I only have 6 GB for $30.00 a month. I operate on a shoestring. I can always go to the library if I need more.

@MissKathleen No Kroger but we have Wegman's and others. No problem.

4

It seems to me most Americans are obsessed with the labelling and grouping of people and things. I am not.

4

This is why I have come to the conclusion that I do not belong with any group. I just want to live my life as I want skipping and singing Disney songs. In all honesty I agree with your sentiments. I never really understood the purpose of trolls or their role in life.

4

It can be ridiculous to focus on small differences . If you don't believe then that's it

bobwjr Level 10 Feb 27, 2020
4

I just find all the things we believe it don't believe interesting. not wrong or right because it is or isnt my experience. But cool to know the person in their entirety and be with it. I love to get to know people and ay in the contrast.

When it comes to trolls, if people are mean spirited, or ha e the need to proselytize their belief or lack of belief, it just doesnt make for a new experience that can add to ours. I call staying in the contrast John Mayer mentions it in "Love Song for no one"
I used to disagree and found I am much more interested in sharing my opinion than others are listening to it.
Ignore trolls, they add nothing to.enhance the dance.

3

It has occurred to me that belief in gods is one of a number of settings our consciousness is capable of supporting. Heck it can even accommodate our unfailing self approval. But seriously, we know that our conscious minds and the identity we acquire around the exercise of these conscious minds are a product of consciousness. Clearly consciousness has several other plates spinning at the same time; our sense of self is not its only accomplishment.

Does God exist? I'm pretty sure consciousness can support a number of products in addition to ourselves. If one's family and culture expect a God, I'm pretty sure that is doable. Which god? Which ever one(s) are in play in the culture. But what informs the manifestation of that god? Well it certainly has a wider range of material at its disposal than our conscious minds do. In fact, living as we do so much within the role/identity we acquire in these conscious minds there is a natural problem with obtaining the big picture which the totality of our consciousness possesses. The band width of conscious minds is pretty limited. So if the god one believes in is capable of acting as a conduit for that bigger picture which our conscious minds cannot directly access perhaps that is a pretty good work around? That way the organism which we are can benefit from our conscious capacity to think in very focused ways on a specific task while keeping aware of the big picture vicariously through our relationship to our co-product of consciousness which we call god.

Obviously 'God', so conceived may or may not be capable of playing the same connective role which an all-in faith relationship could. Equally obvious is the fact that 'God' would be devoid of omni-powers, would not be a unified being with a separate existence, and certainly would not be in any position to hand out any kind of afterlife. Perhaps seeing through gods in this way destroys their capacity to connect us which the true believers have?

I think that's a great comment!

Tempest in a teapot. The alleged word gawd is gibberish. End of story. Stop enabling delusional people. Quit capitalizing Nonsense Sounds.

@Larry68Feminist or you can quit telling other people what to do. I'd suggest you look at why it upsets you so much. I'm not a conformist atheist and I'll damn well think and write about what I please. Not interested? Bugger off.

3

I follow Groucho's philosophy!
I'd never join a group that would accept people like me!

3

Rene Descartes walks into a bar, sits down and orders a drink. When he finishes the bartender asks if he would like another. Descartes replies, "I think not" and POOF, he disappears!

@MissKathleen I can't claim it as my own but it's one of my favorites.

@MissKathleen Most people don't get it, but then, most people don't get anything!

@MissKathleen OMG, wait 'til you're my age!

@MissKathleen I thought you were younger. I must be going by your portrait. (if that IS your portrait)

@MissKathleen You look fine! I don't think it really matters. After all, beauty is skin deep n'est pas!

3

I accept anyone in my life that is not destructive to me or my mine. I can tolerate differing philosophies, religions, nationalities, ethnicities, gender identifications or sexual orientations. I draw the line if they insist that I conform to their thinking.

Criminal theocrats pass religious laws upon us all and wage illegal wars with our brave military against other religions for polluter oil war crime profiteering bankster zionism. AMERICAN ATHEISTS cannot pretend belief is a private right when 6 million women die each year denied life saving abortions and/or deadly disease preventing condoms by the Vatican control over the World Health Organization and other theocracies.....you can't fight great evils pretending to be tolerant of beliefs that sustain great evils in power and dominance

Locally religious businesses cost us taxpayers extra money because faiths demand public services and interfere in schools while paying less or zero taxes

3

Past lives sound like Scientology. Just finishing Bare Faced Messiah. The story of L Ron Hubbard. Talk about bat shit crazy. Actually Hubbard really sounds a lot like trump.

L. Ron Hubbard made his name writing science fiction/fantasy in the 50s/60s - a period when I was devouring the works of Clarke and Asimov, also Robert Sheckley. [en.m.wikipedia.org]
Most of Hubbard's output I did not rate at all well.

@MissKathleen Good postulation. I wonder ........ ? 🤣

@MissKathleen ... nor have any desire to so do.

@Petter Actually I believe he started in the mid-30s. He just got more crazy, insane after his establishment of Scientology in 1950.

@rogueflyer Judging by history, you probably do need to be mentally unsound to found a religion.

@Petter LRH actually said, "If you want to make a lot of money you need to start a religion." So he did.

2

Thg e definitions come from the subtlety of the use of language. Words very often have three or more meanings. This being the case in debates people use different meanings of the words to manipulate the conversation to confuse the listeners. This ic a common tactic used by apologist. Words sich as agnostic, atheist, and spiritual often have differing meanings to different people. It is a big pain in the butt, but it ia important to often make definitions clear and agreed upon so the opponent remains honest. People like the preacher Matt Powell often use these tactics to claim a "win" in arguments that were never made.

2

In a complex and technical world definitions are critical. Definitions save you hundreds of words as long as everyone agrees on the definitions, and that's why definitions are defined. Symbiotic, reciprocal, polynomial, etc. In my profession: dependent, reenterable, relocatable, polymorphic, maskable, interrupt, rotational delay, synchronous, bidirectional pairing -- if this list seems long, every one of those gets a chapter in a textbook.

2

"It has become abundantly clear that people are insanely preoccupied with definitions down to trivial minutia."
When it comes to philosophy, religion, religious philosophy and philosophy of religion, absolutely. All the terms are ambiguous or ill defined and used in different oft conflicting or contradictory ways.
So "what do you mean by that? How are you using term X?" are chronic conditions.

It is like that for a lot of aspects in life as well, and some things like engineering demand that.

The problem with definitions is not that they vary, but that people cherish they usage they favor, and have a hard time letting go of their favored usage rather than try to comprehend something new to them. In some cases in religious thought it can cause a cognitive dissonance, which is emotionally painful.

2

Immanuel Kant says human reason works that way. It's very nature is to unify ideas. That nature, he says, is what made it impossible for people to come to any other rational conclusion than the concept of a single god. This works great, as you say, in the world of experience when reason finds its expression in its application to nature. Where reason goes wrong, he says, is when it follows its natural course beyond the world of experience and starts getting dogmatic about things it knows nothing about; things like god, the soul and immortality.

So true! How quickly people accept as axiomatic what simply cannot be justified in any unprejudiced manner. The authoritativeness of the Bible being one which I can tolerate understanding the culture. But the supposed existence of a separate class of reality known as the 'supernatural' which just leaves me sputtering. With great effort I can engage on that topic too but with no real sympathy.

The Bible however is interesting culturally. I've been trying to understand what supports god belief and culturally an agreement to reason around a single source book like this probably has unifying advantages. Obviously the proliferation of denominations shows that it hasn't been an unqualified success but still it gives them something to ground their speculation in. I couldn't do it but then I wasn't successfully inculcated into that tribe.

2

Agreed, groups foster inequality, they were all formed as a means of being different for whatever reason. Then the bashing of other groups starts....
the biggest problem are the violent groups, but they all share a common start. To be different, usually starts from disagreements in another group. A new one is started.
There are good groups but most others are control issues...

1

If I want to have a serious discussion with anyone, defining terms is important to make sure we are discussing the same thing. The risk is that the discussion devolves into nothing more than a debate over definitions, and any opportunity to develop a common perspective to widen the discussion becomes less and less likely the further it goes. How can someone have an intelligent opinion about something if they can't even tell me how they define it?

And then there are the trolls and assholes. You pay your money, you take your chances.

1

It seems some (most) people have a herd mentality. That don't want to be who they can be, but would rather try to conform to other people's ideas of who they should be.

JimG Level 8 Feb 29, 2020
1

If you want to clarify something then you turn to a definition. It is however a field of mines which annoys some people because they cannot go there.The cure is to try doing it on something you REALLY want to change. If you succeed in getting a few people to agree with you . I takes millennia to get ALL people to agree with you. That is Humans for you!

1

There's nothing wrong with making definitions clear and precise, even with social terms and categorizing people.

The problem comes when people think their definition is the right one.

There is no such thing as a right definition or a wrong definition.

If you care about someone, you want to understand them and you want good communication. If someone is trying to tell you something, forget your own definition and use their definition. If you don't know their definition, recognize that you don't know it, and don't just assume your own definition.

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