RE: Shamans and Scientists
July 7, 2009 at 10:13 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2009 at 10:14 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Quote:All life is one.
Love is power.
AND "GOD IS LOVE"
Those statements are called 'tautologies'.
From wiki
Quote:A rhetorical tautology can also be defined as a series of statements that comprise an argument, whereby the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the propositions are guaranteed or that the truth of the propositions cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another self referentially. Consequently the statement conveys no useful information regardless of its length or complexity making it unfalsifiable. It is a way of formulating a description such that it masquerades as an explanation when the real reason for the phenomena cannot be independently derived. A rhetorical tautology should not be confused with a tautology in propositional logic, since the inherent meanings and subsequent conclusions in rhetorical and logical tautologies are very different.
Appeals to the wisdom of the ancients is a common ploy of the gullible,the ignorant and the dishonest,because the claims are often difficult or impossible to discredit.
Several genres of books have sprung up using that principle.In the late C19th it was the Theosophists and the Rosicrucians,among others. In the 1970's there was a veritable industry of books with the theme "God Was An Alien" kicked off by Erik von Daniken..--and I won't even START on the fake anthropologist Carlos Castenada.
I also reject the concept of "love" in the romantic/selfless meaning of the word. Humans are merely another species of animal. THE most powerful and dominating human motivator is self interest. The most powerful and prevalent emotion is fear.
