(July 22, 2013 at 3:35 pm)whateverist Wrote:

(July 22, 2013 at 3:03 pm)BadWriterSparty Wrote: In my reality, torturing baby birds is completely acceptable. Never mind what others think, for you can't judge me based on what I hold to be true!

Is that cunning lingually speaking?

Maybe more tongue-in-cheek?

OK guys, I haven't abandoned you. Caught in stuff needing to be done then driving back to the city where I work, cat being killed by dogs, new nephew being born, and bad internet connections. Yes all in one 24 hour period. But you all have been running off in far too many directions at this point for me to pick up on everything.

Appophenia is right that there are philosophical overtones in this idea. But I posted here because I was introducing a different perspective on the faith vs reason debate. I like to attempt to re-direct ideas into unexpected avenues, bring together disparate streams of thought to see what new ideas result. So yes. philosophical but in the pursuit of questions regarding faith and reason.

I like that Michael brings in the ideas of paradigms in relation to reality. I am actually perceiving a distinction between the abstraction "reality" and the term "real" which corresponds to that which exists or is factual.

I find Max-Greece's responses really interesting. So many intriguing directions to expand and pursue related ideas. I am primarily a visual artist and poet. I like my ideas dynamic (non-static) and multi-valent. I know that probably makes the hard science and math types apoplectic! Sorry for not coloring in the lines all the time! I use the Thesaurus the way you all use the dictionary - instead of the dictionary. I like it much better. And at my age I want to do what makes me happy. Way too much makes me way too unhappy

Will you all forgive me for not answering you all directly but posting the next step I took in my own thought experiment. Perhaps some of you can suggest different terms to express the idea of reality as a conceptual abstraction in this sequence of ideas. end of explanations. I'll give the next step in a separate post to keep the responses from getting really confusing.

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I am proposing that however you express it, we cannot get outside of our own minds our own subjective experience. No matter how hard we try to be objective, we are witnessing, observing, evaluating, analyzing, everything outside and inside of ourselves through the lens of our personal subjective self.

We cannot actually live in some objective "reality" that exists outside of our minds. I see Reality as the abstraction that our mind creates out of all the raw materials of the existent universe mixed and colored by our own psychological, emotional, mental frames of reference. Everyone experiences the external world and their own internal worlds in unique ways. There can be some congruence between our own individual lived experience and that of others. But there is no actual 100% correspondence. Can't be. We all just come close to one another in our experiences and also simultaneously far distant from one another.

My primary point is that Atheists and theists are each using different data sets and applying different mental tools and as such the conclusions cannot be mapped cleanly or even messily onto each other. The questions asked by one cannot be answered by the other.

Atheists, using the selected dataset of information, knowledge and empirical analysis of the material universe which is being passed down and continually developed and advanced through the scientific endeavor, using the mental tools of reason, logic, and skepticism have constructed a reality which does not include God with all the accompanying issues with which religion has saddled that idea of God. The data set, methods, mental tools, and conclusions hold together perfectly and create a reality that is satisfying and cohesive. It frames the experiences of life in a reliable and sustainable framework. The idea of God not only does not fit the dataset but cannot be even theorized based on the methods and mental tools.

Christians (and yes mostly Christians who have made faith a -if not the- key component of their religious beliefs) using the selected dataset of information, knowledge, and yes empirical analysis of a cosmos comprised of both material and spiritual dimensions which is being passed down and continually developed and advanced through well established religious methods, using mental tools of analytic reasoning, logic, and faith have constructed a reality which begins and ends with God and the spiritual dimension of life.

Faith is not the counterpart to reason in the equations of reality construction, it is the counterpoint to skepticism. In other words the key difference which cannot ever be resolved is that not only are the selected datasets of information being used radically different but the actual mental tools are mutually exclusive.

(July 22, 2013 at 10:27 pm)wandering soul Wrote: I am actually perceiving a distinction between the abstraction "reality" and the term "real" which corresponds to that which exists or is factual.

And what distinction are you perceiving and how?

(July 22, 2013 at 10:27 pm)wandering soul Wrote: I am proposing that however you express it, we cannot get outside of our own minds our own subjective experience. No matter how hard we try to be objective, we are witnessing, observing, evaluating, analyzing, everything outside and inside of ourselves through the lens of our personal subjective self.

We cannot actually live in some objective "reality" that exists outside of our minds. I see Reality as the abstraction that our mind creates out of all the raw materials of the existent universe mixed and colored by our own psychological, emotional, mental frames of reference. Everyone experiences the external world and their own internal worlds in unique ways. There can be some congruence between our own individual lived experience and that of others. But there is no actual 100% correspondence. Can't be. We all just come close to one another in our experiences and also simultaneously far distant from one another.

Wrong once again. And this is a good example of how not knowing the actual meaning of words not only leads to miscommunication, but also to bad philosophy.

Here is the progression of your thought process:

We are experiencing the external world through our subjective self.
Therefore, all our experiences are subjective.

We call the object of our experience 'Reality'.
Therefore, effectively, everyone in living in a subjective reality.

We all accept that no one subjective experience is more valid or true than another [insert 'beauty is in the eye of beholder' example here].
Therefore, no one person's 'reality' is more valid or true.

The problem here is that you are using the word 'subjective' incorrectly. And that results in this chain reaction culminating in bad conclusions. Here in the pertinent definition to be considered:

Subjective - existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought.
Objective - being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject.

With regards to any experience of the external world, you are the subject of experience, i.e. one doing the experiencing and the world is the object of experience, i.e. the thing being experienced. If the nature of your experience can be completely determined by the object then your experience is objective - even if it is done by your subjective self. And is the nature of experience is completely determined by your subjective self, then it is subjective. As a matter of course, an experience would have both objective and subjective aspects and it would be a big mistake to conflate the two and regard the experience as wholly subjective or objective. For example, when I perceive an apple and my experience tells me that it is red, round, juicy and sweet, then that is an objective experience. That is being determined by the nature of apple itself and not colored by any of my psychological or emotional frames of reference. That experience depends on the object (the apple) and not the subject (me). On the other hand, the part of my experience that tells me that it is beautiful and delicious is subjective. That is the result of my emotional and psychological frame of reference and therefore is determined by the subject (me) and not the object (the apple). And that is why it would be a grievous error to regard the experience as subjective or objective because it has elements of both.

Now, given that we can identify and therefore disregard the subjective aspects of the experience, the rest of the experience becomes wholly objective. And where the objective aspects of my experience are concerned, there can, should and must be 100% congruence and correspondence with another individual's experience. That's because we do, in fact, live in an objective reality - the reality that determines all the objective aspects of all our experiences - and that reality is the same for all of us. Any in-congruence here is explained by error in perception or by regarding subjective aspects as objective. Which is why the objective experiences containing minimal errors and minimal subjectivity are, in fact, more valid and true than others.

(July 22, 2013 at 10:27 pm)wandering soul Wrote: My primary point is that Atheists and theists are each using different data sets and applying different mental tools and as such the conclusions cannot be mapped cleanly or even messily onto each other. The questions asked by one cannot be answered by the other.

Atheists, using the selected dataset of information, knowledge and empirical analysis of the material universe which is being passed down and continually developed and advanced through the scientific endeavor, using the mental tools of reason, logic, and skepticism have constructed a reality which does not include God with all the accompanying issues with which religion has saddled that idea of God. The data set, methods, mental tools, and conclusions hold together perfectly and create a reality that is satisfying and cohesive. It frames the experiences of life in a reliable and sustainable framework. The idea of God not only does not fit the dataset but cannot be even theorized based on the methods and mental tools.

Christians (and yes mostly Christians who have made faith a -if not the- key component of their religious beliefs) using the selected dataset of information, knowledge, and yes empirical analysis of a cosmos comprised of both material and spiritual dimensions which is being passed down and continually developed and advanced through well established religious methods, using mental tools of analytic reasoning, logic, and faith have constructed a reality which begins and ends with God and the spiritual dimension of life.

Your point fails because there is, ultimately, only one dataset to be perceived and analyzed. You may go about analyzing one subset, but the results of your analysis must be compatible with analysis of any other subset. If they are in contradiction, some mistake has been made somewhere. For example, in science, if the explanation of the physical nature of an object contradicts its chemical nature, then either one or both may be wrong or there is some data being left out of consideration.

Your first mistake in this argument is the assumption that there is, in fact, a spiritual dimension to be analyzed. If there was such a dimension, then it would be within the selected dataset of theists and atheists alike. Your assumption that atheists discard the spiritual dimension of reality in order to create a cohesive and satisfying model is not only wrong, it is insulting. We discard it because we haven't found any subset of reality that pertains to a spiritual dimension. Any datasets pertaining to it we've been provided so far have been subjective in nature.

Your second mistake is thinking that just because you put "analytic reasoning, logic and faith" in the same phrase regarding mental tools, it somehow makes them equally valid. It doesn't. What we have found is that when we use logic and analytic reasoning to analyze the dataset called reality, the resulting model represents reality most accurately. And when we build a model of reality using faith, the resulting model is unreliable, varying and most often wrong.

So, in conclusion, there is only one dataset to be analyzed. You may analyze that dataset (reality) using different tools (reason or faith) and end up with wildly different conclusions (models of reality/paradigms/worldviews etc.). That these conclusions cannot be mapped onto one another does not mean both are equally valid because one of them can be mapped better to the actual reality, while the other can't. And that, right there, tells us which is the better tool for the job.

(July 22, 2013 at 10:27 pm)wandering soul Wrote: Faith is not the counterpart to reason in the equations of reality construction, it is the counterpoint to skepticism. In other words the key difference which cannot ever be resolved is that not only are the selected datasets of information being used radically different but the actual mental tools are mutually exclusive.

Faith is a counterpoint to reason (not a counterpart - which would suggest an alternate but equally valid tool). The dataset being analyzed is the same - even if the tools are mutually exclusive. And the key difference can be resolved by establishing which tool gives more accurate results.

ok guys. I see us all inhabiting both a material universe of many worlds and a mental universe of many worlds. I would love to explore all the worlds of both. I really do see many different realities. I see the reality of the atheists, of the Christians, of the humanists and of the Buddhist, of the secularists and of the religionists. I have always loved all of them. Each provides a coherent, cogent, profoundly meaningful, rational and empirically verifiable explanation of our lived experience both in the material and in the mental universe(s).

These are landscapes of reality for me. But I realize that for many of you these are closed data sets, exclusive and un-modifiable models of a singular and uncontested Reality as such - you all just disagree about which reality is really real. Where I see a massive cliff of a thousand square feet to explore I see so many deeply invested in just trying to butt each other off the same two-square feet of cliff face like rams running repeatedly straight ahead to head butt the other off the cliff.

I wanted to entice some companions to explore the intriguing possible alternative models of reality that I see and can get to with a little conversation with inventive minds. But I'm really not into fighting over any of this cliff. There are some interesting minds here but I keep having to dodge all the head butting.

But you all do seem to be having a great deal of fun with each other in your own way. I just have a lot of life going on to take care of so can't probably do justice to the conversation as I should.

(July 25, 2013 at 7:10 pm)wandering soul Wrote: ok guys. I see us all inhabiting both a material universe of many worlds and a mental universe of many worlds. I would love to explore all the worlds of both. I really do see many different realities. I see the reality of the atheists, of the Christians, of the humanists and of the Buddhist, of the secularists and of the religionists. I have always loved all of them. Each provides a coherent, cogent, profoundly meaningful, rational and empirically verifiable explanation of our lived experience both in the material and in the mental universe(s).

These are landscapes of reality for me. But I realize that for many of you these are closed data sets, exclusive and un-modifiable models of a singular and uncontested Reality as such - you all just disagree about which reality is really real. Where I see a massive cliff of a thousand square feet to explore I see so many deeply invested in just trying to butt each other off the same two-square feet of cliff face like rams running repeatedly straight ahead to head butt the other off the cliff.

I wanted to entice some companions to explore the intriguing possible alternative models of reality that I see and can get to with a little conversation with inventive minds. But I'm really not into fighting over any of this cliff. There are some interesting minds here but I keep having to dodge all the head butting.

But you all do seem to be having a great deal of fun with each other in your own way. I just have a lot of life going on to take care of so can't probably do justice to the conversation as I should.

You can hold whatever strange and delusional views of reality you like, but the fact is, there can be only one view that provides a "coherent, cogent, profoundly meaningful, rational and empirically verifiable explanation of our lived experience".

(July 26, 2013 at 3:59 am)genkaus Wrote:

(July 25, 2013 at 7:10 pm)wandering soul Wrote: ok guys. I see us all inhabiting both a material universe of many worlds and a mental universe of many worlds. I would love to explore all the worlds of both. I really do see many different realities. I see the reality of the atheists, of the Christians, of the humanists and of the Buddhist, of the secularists and of the religionists. I have always loved all of them. Each provides a coherent, cogent, profoundly meaningful, rational and empirically verifiable explanation of our lived experience both in the material and in the mental universe(s).

These are landscapes of reality for me. But I realize that for many of you these are closed data sets, exclusive and un-modifiable models of a singular and uncontested Reality as such - you all just disagree about which reality is really real. Where I see a massive cliff of a thousand square feet to explore I see so many deeply invested in just trying to butt each other off the same two-square feet of cliff face like rams running repeatedly straight ahead to head butt the other off the cliff.

I wanted to entice some companions to explore the intriguing possible alternative models of reality that I see and can get to with a little conversation with inventive minds. But I'm really not into fighting over any of this cliff. There are some interesting minds here but I keep having to dodge all the head butting.

But you all do seem to be having a great deal of fun with each other in your own way. I just have a lot of life going on to take care of so can't probably do justice to the conversation as I should.

You can hold whatever strange and delusional views of reality you like, but the fact is, there can be only one view that provides a "coherent, cogent, profoundly meaningful, rational and empirically verifiable explanation of our lived experience".

Wouldn't that depend on who you ask? I think you will find many views of reality that fulfil all of those criteria for those that hold them, whilst, at the same time you will not find any view that is universally accepted.

(July 26, 2013 at 4:03 am)max-greece Wrote: Wouldn't that depend on who you ask? I think you will find many views of reality that fulfil all of those criteria for those that hold them, whilst, at the same time you will not find any view that is universally accepted.

Notice the part about being rational and empirically verifiable? That criteria does not change from person to person. So no, I would hardly find any views that fulfill all those criteria - even for the person holding them regardless of what that person believes.

(July 26, 2013 at 4:10 am)genkaus Wrote:

(July 26, 2013 at 4:03 am)max-greece Wrote: Wouldn't that depend on who you ask? I think you will find many views of reality that fulfil all of those criteria for those that hold them, whilst, at the same time you will not find any view that is universally accepted.

Notice the part about being rational and empirically verifiable? That criteria does not change from person to person. So no, I would hardly find any views that fulfill all those criteria - even for the person holding them regardless of what that person believes.

The strange thing is that there are believers in all variants of religion that will claim their belief to be rational and empirically verifiable - with countless others to back up their opinion.

I would argue that this necessitates accepting that rational and empirically verifiable does indeed vary from one individual to another. William Craig Lane is a good example of someone who believes all the above about his own arguments.

(July 26, 2013 at 4:26 am)max-greece Wrote: The strange thing is that there are believers in all variants of religion that will claim their belief to be rational and empirically verifiable - with countless others to back up their opinion.

I would argue that this necessitates accepting that rational and empirically verifiable does indeed vary from one individual to another. William Craig Lane is a good example of someone who believes all the above about his own arguments.

That's my point - there claiming that it is rational and empirically verifiable doesn't actually make it so and finding supporters for the claim would simply be appealing to popularity. If their view is actually empirically verifiable, then what's stopping him from emprically verifying it to others?

The reality is that we are largely in agreement. The problem, as I see it, is that even if you have a rational and empirically verifiable belief you can't verify it to everyone because they won't accept your proof or verifications. In fact it is extremely difficult to identify a single universally accepted truth about anything.