(May 25, 2015 at 6:56 am)Little Rik Wrote: Definition of words well before they come printed in a dictionary come from a cultural system build over hundred if not thousand of years like in this case about the word sentient.Really? And these centuries-past eastern people were speaking English at the time, so that they could define "sentient" differently? Why are all of the other words in that guy's comment perfectly easy to understand in the modern age, but only the one word that completely upends your bizarre little apple cart must be viewed in terms of word usage by ancient cultures?
The words sentient, tamasic and rajasic have been used for thousand of years in the eastern religions and yoga and they just mean good, bad and in between good and bad.
Look, you screwed up. The support you used for one of your beliefs completely messes up one of your other beliefs. You can try to salvage it by re-defining the key word into uselessness, but that only works for a person so locked into his dogmatic view that he would prefer to re-define reality rather than face it. And as I pointed out before, that's your problem, not mine.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould