Altruism as good as sex and chocolate?

[Victus]

Lily wrote

I have often wondered, Victus, why it is that you use my messages, or those of others, as a pretext for bowharding about something else entirely.

Because your posts are often devoid of meaning on their own.

Lily wrote

Does not the fact that I put "see" in quotes, suggest to you that I am talking about the brain creating images?

No. Seeing something entails there being something in the environment to see. You admitted that it was a 'vision' (read: hallucination), and therefore not 'seeing'. Go read a few papers and learn the difference.

Lily wrote

And this is, soberly speaking, hilarious: I don't know, I try not to assume about the beliefs of people who mentally ruminate for brownie points from an invisible father-figure. This is exactly what you do and give us theists more than our share of belly-laughs.

I makes me laugh too, but the logic is sound. If the beliefs of an individual or group are not based on logic, then using logic to predict or infer upon their further beliefs is futile.

[Gnosital]

Lily wrote

I should never say never because that is one of the many things I am always wrong about. So, perhaps you will not be surprised that I want to respond to this. I have never understood the peculiar venom with which you have tried to insult me; it always seemed inexplicably over-the-top. Now that I understand (or think I do), I will offer you an apology and a few words of explanation. They are yours to mock or ignore, as you please.

I loved teaching (I am an administrator now and rarely in a classroom) from the first day I stood in front of a class as a TA with knees shaking from stage fright. I suppose, as my subject was part of the required core curriculum, that I must, literally, have had a thousand students pass through my life during my teaching years. Most of them were average or a little above. Some were brilliant. A few were ... not. I even had a couple of quite mentally ill and a con man (or two).

Yet, I realized from almost the beginning that as a teacher, it was in my power to hurt them or encourage them. I could (in a small way) help them on their way to achieving their goals or help them shape new ones. It was/is awe inspiring and, at the same time, a grave responsibility. I could never see people in quite the same way, after becoming a teacher. Each person is precious, has a history, hopes, dreams, sorrows, etc. That recognition was, I believe, the decisive turning point in my conversion-- but, I digress.

I do admit that being new to the forum world, I took far too seriously the huffing and puffing and the sometimes monumental blowharding (if you will permit me to coin a verb) that goes on. I was horrified by what you wrote. However, if you had responded that you were blowing off steam and to lighten up, I would have been so happy because that I would have understood. Or so I think. I do know that I was genuinely repelled by the level of "discourse" that was the standard among people who are mostly educated adults. It still baffles me though it no longer has the power to shock me. I am not sure that is a good thing. But once innocence is lost, it stays lost.

It is funny that you think I am nasty, venting vitriol (Rat's words), etc. I am not, I don't think. I am certainly tactless, which is bad enough. But too many of you equate being disagreed with with "nastiness". That is something I cannot understand. Steve took the high road by biting his tongue. I took the low road by refusing to accept it. C'est la vie.

I am, however, genuinely sorry that you felt that your integrity and intelligence and ethics were being disparaged. I was asking a real question, however tactless. I thought I was asking if teaching was your thing, since I had never seen you express satisfaction with your students. I still haven't to this day. But, I assure you that I never equated your possible dislike of teaching with a lack of intelligence, ethics or integrity.

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ALRIGHT! WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LILLY??????

Victus wrote

No. Seeing something entails there being something in the environment to see. You admitted that it was a 'vision' (read: hallucination), and therefore not 'seeing'. Go read a few papers and learn the difference.

Du lieber Gott! Go read a dictionary and learn how "see" can be used in a sentence.

Moreover, I didn't "admit" that Revelation was a vision. Everybody, everywhere, at all times, who has ever read it knows that. How? The author of the book states it clearly in the opening lines of Chapter 1. I know, I know. I admit it. That was a truly nefarious scheme to fool everybody ...

[Sternwallow]

Lily wrote

This is why I simply cannot be bothered to try to engage you in any sort of coversation[sic]. It would be hard to top this for sheer dishonesty. And dishonesty it must be, since you have to know that this particular book describes a vision that John says he had. How can one have vision (or a dream, which the author states the book might be describing), if one does not actually "see" something?

Do we think God looks like a burning bush because that is the concrete form God took on to reveal himself to Moses?

If you aren't simply having fun blowharding here, I will express my very deep regret that you were born with no imagination. Your life will have been seriously impoverished, if that is the case.

My quote simply states that, to the extent that He looks like a person, He looks like an old guy with white hair and wearing robes. It is completely reasonable, therefore to comprehend the various descriptions of God as an old guy sitting on an actual throne situated in the sky above the solid dome of the firmament.

If that is not what God looks like, why did the author of Revelation bother to write it down? Further, if it is not accurate that would be another lack of truth mark against the rest of the Revelation and, by extension the whole Book.

You say that my imagination is impoverished. This is evidently your attempt to compliment me since vitriol is foreign to you. When evaluating a document for correctness, it is not appropriate to exercise imaginative speculations about how God might have meant passages like "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

Gnosital wrote

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ALRIGHT! WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LILLY??????

Irr explains it all: http://ravingatheists.com/forum/view...233587#p233587

[The Judge]

Lily wrote

Does not the fact that I put "see" in quotes, suggest to you that I am talking about the brain creating images?

The brain creates images in the visual modality by nervous excitation of the visual cortex. The brain therefore creates images that are then "seen."
This can be a normal, everyday visual process or an aberrant neurophysiological process where things are perceived or "seen" [created by the brain] in the absence of external stimuli. The latter is of course a hallucination.

Either way this semantic hair-splitting must not detract from the fact that christers believe that this “vision” and many others like it in the buybull (e.g. Paul’s probable seizure on the road to Damascus) are somehow the real manifestations of “god” rather than the resultant aberrant perception as a symptom of potentially severe brain pathology that they really are.

The Judge wrote

The brain creates images in the visual modality by nervous excitation of the visual cortex. The brain therefore creates images that are then "seen."
This can be a normal, everyday visual process or an aberrant neurophysiological process where things are perceived or "seen" [created by the brain] in the absence of external stimuli. The latter is of course a hallucination.

Either way this semantic hair-splitting must not detract from the fact that christers believe that this “vision” and many others like it in the buybull (e.g. Paul’s probable seizure on the road to Damascus) are somehow the real manifestations of “god” rather than the resultant aberrant perception as a symptom of potentially severe brain pathology that they really are.

Precisely! This is why "Prophets get no respect in their own villages". All the locals know the dude's whacked in the head.

Lily wrote

Du lieber Gott! Go read a dictionary and learn how "see" can be used in a sentence.

Moreover, I didn't "admit" that Revelation was a vision. Everybody, everywhere, at all times, who has ever read it knows that. How? The author of the book states it clearly in the opening lines of Chapter 1. I know, I know. I admit it. That was a truly nefarious scheme to fool everybody ...

So, you're saying Revelations, which is a series of visuals, is bullshit? Not the accurately inspired word of god? Ok, good to know.

You may want to get the rapture people and fill them in on this new development, I don't think they get the same memos you do.

[The Judge]

Rat Bastard wrote

Precisely! This is why "Prophets get no respect in their own villages". All the locals know the dude's whacked in the head.

Indeed Ratty. Well they do say that every village has one!

Heh, I have this great visual at the moment...three atheists looking at some "evidence", and all three looking at each other in wonder, and saying, "Tsk, how does anybody believe this crap?". this is classic: :rolleyes:

[Victus]

Lily wrote

Du lieber Gott! Go read a dictionary and learn how "see" can be used in a sentence.

Moreover, I didn't "admit" that Revelation was a vision. Everybody, everywhere, at all times, who has ever read it knows that. How? The author of the book states it clearly in the opening lines of Chapter 1. I know, I know. I admit it. That was a truly nefarious scheme to fool everybody ...

If it wasn't true, then it has no meaning.

[Gnosital]

gnosital wrote

ALRIGHT! WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH LILLY??????

Lily wrote

Du lieber Gott! Go read a dictionary and learn how "see" can be used in a sentence.

Moreover, I didn't "admit" that Revelation was a vision. Everybody, everywhere, at all times, who has ever read it knows that. How? The author of the book states it clearly in the opening lines of Chapter 1. I know, I know. I admit it. That was a truly nefarious scheme to fool everybody ...

OH.... nevermind. There you are.

Sternwallow wrote

My quote simply states that, to the extent that He looks like a person, He looks like an old guy with white hair and wearing robes. It is completely reasonable, therefore to comprehend the various descriptions of God as an old guy sitting on an actual throne situated in the sky above the solid dome of the firmament.

It is your uncomprehending, literal mindedness that I am exclaiming over and that I am quite genuinely regretting on your behalf. It shuts out the world of poetry, fantasy, etc. I am not kidding when I express horror that such a thing could be true. Since I have never come up against anyone as literal as you, I simply have not been able to believe it and have taken great offense at the questions you have repeatedly put. They cannot possibly seem genuine to someone who does enjoy imaginative literature, ambiguity, fantasy, poetic language, et al. I am deeply, deeply sorry, if you have been perfectly straight forward and honest in your questions all this time. Such literalness is outside of anything I have ever experienced and is something I am having a really hard time accepting, much less dealing with.

If that is not what God looks like, why did the author of Revelation bother to write it down? Further, if it is not accurate that would be another lack of truth mark against the rest of the Revelation and, by extension the whole Book.
You say that my imagination is impoverished. This is evidently your attempt to compliment me since vitriol is foreign to you. When evaluating a document for correctness, it is not appropriate to exercise imaginative speculations about how God might have meant passages like "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

How can anyone examine a dream or vision for correctness? In what other form would the author "see" or imagine (to pleae Victor) God, heaven, or angels other than in the forms of the poetry and cosmology of his time? And if his vision was of real things, i.e. if something was really being revealed to him in a vision, it would still have to be in forms that he could recognize and convey to others. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Perhaps it will help, if I describe to you what I used to tell my German I students, in order to help broaden their cultural horizons (the reason, supposedly, we make students suffer by learning of foreign languages). If I say house and a German says house, we are talking about an object that has, obviously, a great deal in common but also has marked differences. The easiest way to convey this was simply to show pictures. When we had a lesson about going to someone's house for dinner, it was an opportunity to explain why you don't bring the hostess white carnations. There were a million more like that. I used to have a book, written mainly for American businessmen, to explain these kinds of things because it is so easy to give offense in complete innocence.

Later, when they got to 4th semester and started reading short stories, I had to teach them about other kinds of cultural differences. Even about differences in the way we interpret our spatial environment (I was much under the influence of Edward T Hall in those early days-- http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/13) He talks in one of his articles or maybe in his book (The Hidden Dimension) about a German short story dealing with the degradation and total breakdown of a family. The final lines of the story merely say that the house was empty and all the doors (interior) were open. That is an unmistakable signal to the German reader that the end has come. But it has to be explained to Americans that open doors are a sign of disorder.

Then, later, when I taught Beowulf, the Song of Roland, et al. I had to start by having the class discuss how different cultures and ages have understood concepts like loyalty, honor, etc. It isn't understood the same way in every age by every culture.

Does this make sense to you?

So again, I insist, like every other literature teacher that it makes all the difference in the world when something was written, what the author's cultural environment was like; what the idioms mean(t), and whether you are reading history, poetry, vision literature or short stories, when you try to interpret ancient literature.

It is certainly true that there are readers who have taken Revelation literally and there are those who, ignoring Christ's plain words that no one, not even he, knew when the end would come, have confidently predicted the date and hour of the end. So far, we are still here and they have slunk away. So what? Sad for them but if they won't listen to Christ, there isn't much else one can do but let them find out the hard way.

Gnosital wrote

OH.... nevermind. There you are.

Aww. Have a heart! The man needs to know that there are figurative and literal uses of words and that those uses are perfectly legitimate.

[Gnosital]

Lily wrote

Aww. Have a heart! The man needs to know that there are figurative and literal uses of words and that those uses are perfectly legitimate.

Do you honestly think that a doctoral candidate in neuropsych doesn't know that?