tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334761054277672365.post4219699934258685055..comments2024-03-22T03:19:38.110-04:00Comments on Forever In Hell: A Different Perspective, but Still Missing the PointPersonalFailurehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03034292023591747601noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334761054277672365.post-22511515898730350092011-01-27T11:22:04.895-05:002011-01-27T11:22:04.895-05:00everything you said below that line I totally agre...everything you said below that line I totally agree with. Nice cherry-picking above it though. <br /><br />JB asks how to tell benign from malignant beliefs, and PF's answer here is by whether or not they're true. <br />By that metric, Chi is bullshit and so are teddy bears.<br />I care far more whether they are hurtful than whether they are true. So does PF, in spite of the brain fart in the end of the post.uzzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02494141255401096538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334761054277672365.post-42591380472295885312011-01-27T00:35:19.937-05:002011-01-27T00:35:19.937-05:00"When my little boy clung to his teddy bear a...<i>"When my little boy clung to his teddy bear as he was dying, I should have told him it's just a stuffed toy, it can't help? I buried it with him. You see a problem there?"</i><br /><br />Uzza, PF never said anything like that. She said the opposite: <br /><br /><i>"I rarely take issue with what makes people happy. For one thing, it's not really my business. For another, I know that happiness is fleeting, yet entirely worthwhile, so if collecting string provides you with happiness, far be it from me to comment."</i><br /><br />.....................................<br /><br />I take a stance somewhere in-between: on the one hand, I'm an skeptic who values truth and I tend to prefer people know it, because decisions informed by truth are usually better than those informed by delusion. On the other hand, I consider myself a Taoist and love the philosophical approach of eastern religon in general.<br /><br />Consider things like Chi. Does it exist? Not really: our bodies generate heat and kinetic energy, but there's no such thing as "life energy". But it's an excellent and useful analogy for the movements and flow of our bodies (anyone who's done Tai Chi knows this). A similar thing could be said about the human mind: it doesn't exist except as an analogy for the millions of disparete but connected processes within our brain, but we think of it as a "thing" all the same. So, in that sense, Chi does exist. The same argument can be made for many things: Yin/Yang, or for example.<br /><br />But these things provide benefit in a rational way: as analogies for reality. They're "true" in the same sense as any analogy or narrative.<br /><br />I should <i>never</i> be a matter of trying to balance spirituality with reality: if putting weight on one pushes against the other, then one of them is false (hint: it's not reality). But in some cases, the two concepts can complement and work with each other, by providing stories or analogies that might not be real in a physical sense, but have value as an abstract construct.Quasarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09398018171200335379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1334761054277672365.post-82969220975077656132011-01-26T15:04:22.187-05:002011-01-26T15:04:22.187-05:00We've been arguing this over at Choice in Dyin...We've been arguing this over at Choice in Dying, and I have to ask, Did we read the same article? Mine was about how non-theological religion (e.g. animism and atheistic Buddhism), co-exist with dogma (eg. Catholic). <br />They're not exclusionary, which allows them to incorporate a scientific world view as people become more educated. It did not say to condemn animism, but to stop being ignorant about it, and that although it is silly it has positive benefits even if they are placebos. <br /><br />Much as I love you PF, your advice to judge religions by how true they are instead of how much pain they cause—fuck that. When my little boy clung to his teddy bear as he was dying, I should have told him it's just a stuffed toy, it can't help? I buried it with him. You see a problem there?uzzahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02494141255401096538noreply@blogger.com