(June 26, 2017 at 10:04 am)Whateverist Wrote:(June 26, 2017 at 1:04 am)KerimF Wrote:
(June 26, 2017 at 2:31 am)KerimF Wrote: But please tell me first, do you trust or not 'your' personal observations and logical reasoning (to analyse them) more than of anyone else?
It happens, I didn't meet yet a mature sane person who can 'fully' trust his abilities to discover his 'deep' nature and the world 'as it is' (far from the great speeches and famous stories).
So when I talk to a person I know in advance he will compare what I may say with what his trusted sources used saying on these days. In other words, one of the main differences of a formal theist and a typical atheist is actually the name/kind of the sources/references that should be trusted for knowing the truth(s).
Not addressed to me but I can't help but make a plug for self reliance here. Of course I trust my personal observations and logical reasoning (and intuition for that matter) more than of anyone else. What choice do I or anyone else have? If I am incapable of applying my own judgement directly what chance would I have in choosing the correct source of guidance? Accept no substitutes: we each have a sensory cognitive array on par with anyone else's. No expert, living or dead, ever started off better equipped than ourselves. Rather than seek a shortcut by looking over the shoulders of others to crib their answers I suggest we make our own choices. Right or wrong, we have a better chance of eventually going right when we allow the consequences of our own choices feed back on our own impulses rather than on those that never issued from us in the first place.
(June 26, 2017 at 1:04 am)KerimF Wrote:
You did well.
And you are the first person I met on the internet (among theists and atheists) who says clearly that he doesn't have any Elite (and books/references written by some Elite) to trust more than he trusts himself.
For instance, is it the first time you write something like this (in atheistforums in the least; after being a member since many years)?