Bye folks.
And this is why debating this stuff is pointless. Without a firm footing of what the object of contention is, god, and belief in this case, or how such objects may be approached and talked about in such a way that is accessable to people outside of one’s own personal ethos and experience…
The debate just becomes a competition of attention span and tolerance for tangents. Both of which frankly, when it comes to religious topics or topics which have components of them, I don’t have.
During these posts I’ve repeatedly said what I count as valid examples of “holding a belief”, and what I think the difference is between believeing and knowing is. I’ve also put forth what I think is a reasonable argument for why I say “we can not know” within the boundaries of my terms, and this is also important, I’ve tried to do so as clearly and accessably as I can.
Let me re-emphasize the word reasonable, as in practical, functional in wider society.
You guys haven’t. Simple as that. You have failed to engage me at my level, failed to convince me that you were ever really trying, especially on the part of you Fixed. Which is a pity. As a teacher, my instinct is to simplify things, to educate, yours just seemed to be to use your greater width of reading to bludgeon and dismiss. Neither of which is useful, unless your intent is simply to dominate. Which, this being a very sparsely populated internet forum is meh, silly, or symptomatic of, well, eh forget it.
Karpel, ok, so I’ve apparantly straw-manned you. Sorry. That was simply what I understood the gist of your posts was about. My bad. But also your bad. Perhaps you assumed I’m smarter than I am, perhaps you assumed we naturally share some parameters of what is acceptable as a basis for making decisions, behaviour etc. that we don’t. Whatever. Do you feel this was a successful ending to our interactions…?
I still believe what I believed at the beginning. But now I believe you and fixed are lesser than I thought at the outset.
You believe presumably exactly the same things that you began with, and that’s fine. And now think I’m a fool to boot, that’s also fine. I’m old, I’ll get over it lol.
But in summary, we didn’t do very well. Which is sad, especially for three people who profess to be intelligent.
On the other hand, from a maintaining my English pov. still a win for me.