(May 20, 2015 at 7:32 pm)whateverist Wrote:(May 20, 2015 at 4:40 pm)Razzle Wrote: I think the value of anything, including truth, is determined by its effect on well-being. That's what 'value' is - a measurement of how something makes us feel. Usually, knowing the truth about things helps us effectively manipulate the world to promote positive emotional states and reduce negative ones, but occasionally, a particular person believing something false will do that instead.
That can't be right. The value to you might be what best enhances your well-being. But the desire for the truth is also about wanting to live in the real world, to accept life on its own terms. Not all of us would choose to take the pill which allows us to stay asleep to the real world.
I don't say everyone must share my perspective though. Those who place a higher premium on maintaining a pre-selected truth are obviously permitted to do so. I support their right to choose right up to the point where they try to enforce some form of Sharia law, in the USA that will more often be an attempt to impose xtian values in secular matters.
Completely agree
I've got no objection to people wanting to believe in a creator or the afterlife and all that good jazz if they genuinely get comfort out of it. Whatever helps you sleep at night honey.
My issue is "religious law" be it Christian, Muslim or anything else. Just because you feel one way doesn't mean we all have to live by it. If I'm not part of the club, I couldn't care less what the club's rules are. I detest the idea of Sharia (or Christian equivalents, which do exist, just without an official name).
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
