RE: What do people hate/dislike about you?
December 24, 2017 at 12:24 am
I think a lot of theists consider me arrogant for my perspectives on psychology as central to my worldview, and with my latest comments on the subject, add to that bigoted and hypocritical. But I just wanted to clear that up once and for all... so if they want to consider me those things, all I ask is that they understand the point I was trying to make before making those judgments, because as it stands I believe it was taken as a blanket judgement against all theists, which it certainly was not. The point I was trying to make was that I do not trust nor seek certainty, especially when it comes about through gut feelings, 'signs', and coincidences; I have played enough games of Mafia to know that when the game is played emotionally immersed and reliant on those three aspects, feelings of absolute certainty, to the core of your being, abound but are 9 times out of 10 completely wrong; you think the scum (mafia) are players x,y, and z, based on those three aspects along with all the connections and patterns you think you've found in the data (ie player's posts)... but then it turns out it was players a,b, and c. So my point was that to the extent a theist argument a) promises certainty, and b) promises it by means of looking for signs and coincidences... then I do not find it credible. And this is not from the perspective of 'you do this and I do not do this', which is how I believe it was taken, but from the perspective of 'we all do this... because we are all both irrational and rational at times... and need to be aware of it and guard against it'; that at the end of the day, certainty is a feeling, and an unreliable one at best when achieved emotionally.
Whatever anyone may think, I am not certain about the god question... I am not a Gnostic atheist; I have my own deeply personal questions and doubts in that regard, but my point here was only that I do not find this particular type of theist argument convincing as a means to address those questions, but other types of arguments, such as those based on logic or philosophy or that address subjects of interest to me such as consciousness, I find more, at least potentially, plausible/convincing.
It was tactless of me to name names in that thread, in trying to illustrate my point by example, and even more tactless/naive to use the word 'delusion' to describe it, given the negative baggage that surrounds the term, so I apologise for that, but unfortunately that's a mistake I often make because of my own comfort with the use of such terms in my own life to describe my own mental states. Basically, I don't see delusion, or any other mental state, as something to fear but something to try and understand and tame. In Mafia for instance, it's a constant battle, and a constant learning experience of trying to reduce its occurrence, fighting an ever-present tendency to 'go with your gut'... I'm much more grounded than when I first started playing, but the potential is still always there and needs to be guarded against in order to play a more rational, and therefore reliable, game.
