materialists: convince me that immaterial things don't exist

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I think OH just hit on an interesting distinction, and it’s prompted me to ask for a bit of clarification from you: what do you mean by “making a difference to your actions”? Do you mean the actual existence of immaterial things (that we can’t sense and don’t affect us in any way) affecting our actions, or simply the belief in such affecting our actions? I’ve been interpreting you according to the former, in which case I couldn’t say that unverifiable immaterial things could have any affect, but if you simply mean the belief, then I could entertain certain differences (although it might be splitting hairs).

No, a BIV couldn’t be agnostic about being a BIV (I appreciate Putnam’s argument), but it could be agnostic about the existence of immaterial things. In other words, he couldn’t deny the reality of the world he experiences, but could deny that what he experiences in that world is all there is.

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Feelings, ethicality aside, are a natural occurrence. When one is overcome with anger, fear or greed, etc, he doesn’t sit and talk and converse pleasantly about it; he is too caught up in it. Why talk of it? Obsessed with the idea that someday, somehow you will control or conquer that feeling, as an attempt to show to others what a belief has molded you into, you introduce inventions of immaterial nature. Even if you were not able to master the task in this life, you extend life into another arena of the ever popular immaterial highlighted afterlife.

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While I can’t fully qualify the following statement, thus far I seem to be in complete agreement with OH. I do think that a sincerely held belief in the immaterial can (ought and must) result in behavioral changes. Pretty much every religion would stand as evidence for this. What my system does is necessarily eliminate the agnostic position. You either act as though the immaterial exists (with its attendant duties and goods – something I touched on earlier).

Which brings us to the next point . . .

I know you do :wink: Because of that, you should be able to see how, if one were to accept that argument (as I do) and that there can be no meaningful difference between the world that we experience and the world that is.

Couple those two arguments and whaddaya get? :slight_smile:

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Sorry, Xun, I’m not sure what you get. Must be the wine (had a few too many tonight).

Let me paraphrase. Tell me if this is right:

The belief itself must have consequences on your behavior. right?

What we experience is how we define what is.

What are the two arguments you refer to? Your two quotes above, or these two from the last of your above quotes:

If it’s the latter two arguments, then what I get is that reality is defined as what you experience it to be. Is this right? If so, do you mean to imply that because we don’t experience immaterial things, then we can’t define reality as consisting of them?

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  1. The only reality we can meaningfully discuss is the reality we experience. Therefore, given a human perspective amongst humans the only reality that can be discussed is the human reality.

  2. Beliefs can only be considered to exist if they react to reality in some manner. Beliefs shape the reality with which we interact and thereby determine our reaction to it.

  3. Immaterial things have no access to reality as defined by 1.

Therefore: Immaterial things cannot shape beliefs and thereby determine our reaction to reality.

Therefore: We should not believe in immaterial things.

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Granted (with certain qualifications).

This is a little ambiguous. What do you mean by beliefs “reacting to reality”? Do you mean they can only be formed via our experiences with reality (i.e. the empiricist doctrine)? What do you mean by beliefs “shape the reality”? Do you mean that once a belief is established, something in reality is changed (namely, our brains and the way the belief is encoded therein)?

Well, I doubt empirical experience is the only way beliefs can be established in the brain. The sheer number of people who believe unverifiable claims on faith attests to this. Knowledge, on the other hand, is another matter.

Ah, but this is where my qualification of 1 comes in. What is the scope of ‘experience’ in 1)? Is it merely sensory perception? Well, then I say, not so fast. Belief itself plays a major roll in our experience of reality. It is an experience in its own right. With it, we experience what we call ‘truth’ and ‘fact’. We also experience ‘possibility’ and the ‘beyond’. Cognition plays more of a roll in human life than simply recalling and analyzing what was once perceived via sensation. It is what permits us to conceive and posit the possibility that there is more to reality than what we perceive and sense. This is not just an idea that is conjured up by cavemen and those who wish to spin a metaphysical outlook of reality, it is fundamental to anyone who is able to think abstractly. I’m not saying it therefore must also be believed, just that it allows for the possibility of entertaining the notion, and thereby furnishes reality - that is, the way we experience it - with the possibility of ‘more’ and ‘beyond’.

To put this another way: you’re right that we are primarily acquainted with reality by our direct sensory perceptions of it, but the way these sensory perceptions are experienced is not such that they present us with the boundaries of reality, but just certain contents therein. To say that we experience that part of reality given by sensory perception as all that there is is to presuppose that the limits of reality have been present with said perceptions. I experience no such limits in my encounters with the world I sense. I experience the things I sense as real, and by way of cognizing reality, I experience the possibility of an extension beyond them.

Imagine, if you will, being locked in a closed room with nothing but white walls surrounding you - no doors, no windows, no indication of a world beyond the room. Suppose you were raised in this room from a time before you could remember (for all intents and purposes, since you were born). Suppose further that you were somehow equipped with the cognitive capacities of a normal adult raised to maturity in the standard way (i.e. by living an ordinary life) (I realize there might be some qualms with this scenario - one might argue, for instance, that such a cognitive capacity couldn’t possibly be developped without thoroughgoing encounters with the real world - but I just ask that we regard this as a thought experiment and grant that ‘somehow’ our subject is bestowed with such a capacity). I maintain that when he looks at the wall around him, seeing no evidence of an extension of reality beyond them, he will still find himself capable of imagining a beyond. Reality must extend further than these walls, he would say. I can’t fathom reality simply ending at them. He would conceive this, not so much because he’s falling back on past experiences he’s had of extension of reality beyond walls, but because it is a simple idea that, merely by virtue of having the capacity to cognize, he is able to entertain.

Well, reality itself - the one we BIWs typically experience - is very much like the white room - not so much in that we find ourselves surrounded by closed off walls, but that even insofar as our senses can perceive only so much of reality, we find ourselves capable of conceiving of ‘more’. And no matter how much more we become capable of bringing into the sphere of sensation (whether directly or indirectly) in virtue of advances in science and tools for measurement, our cognitive capacities keep adding to it, they keep adding the possibility of ‘more’.

This is fundamental to the very experience of thought - it isn’t merely a tool for reflecting on our sensory perceptions, it adds to it, contributing to the way we experience reality.

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Oh grow up child.

And I’m not here to destroy his thread TTG please stop shit stirring. I don’t want to take part in mystical claims about the unknowable, not stopping anyone else nor do I care if this thread dies or runs to 200 pages. Mysticism and arm waving isn’t really my thing though.

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If you were to get out of this trap of BIW knowledge, the question of reality is not there any more for you. The question arises from this knowledge, which is still interested in finding out the reality of things, and to experience directly what that reality is all about. When this knowledge is not there, the question is also not there. Then there is no need for finding any answer. A question about reality which you pose is born out of the assumption that there is a reality, and that assumption is born out of this knowledge you have of and about the reality. … The knowledge is the answer you already have. That is why you are asking the question. The question automatically arises.

What is necessary is not to find out the answer to the question, but to understand that a question you would ask is born out of the answer you already have, which is the knowledge. So, the question and answer format, if we indulge in it for long, becomes a meaningless ritual. … If you are really interested in finding reality, what has to dawn on you is that your very questioning mechanism is born out of the answers that you already have. Otherwise there can’t be any question.

First of all, there is an assumption on your part that there is a reality, and then, that there is something that you can do to experience that reality. Without the knowledge about reality, you have no experience of reality, that is for sure. “If this knowledge is not there, is there any other way of experiencing the reality?” A question was asked. The question was born from the answer. So there is no need to ask questions and there is no need to answer.

Did society create you for the purpose of maintaining the continuity of its own reality? Are you sure you have your own individual ‘mind’ when you are doing the same things everybody else does? Societal indoctrination force is the culprit that prevents you from individuality and yet it suggest that for you to be an individual is a noble pursuit.

There is no problem with our present life. For thought there seems to be one because thought makes comparisons between a) the present state you are in and b) past experiences that were, and future concotions that could be, more interesting. But for the comparisons that thought makes there is no problem with our life as it is; and there is no other life. It is precisely our thought of a better state that prevents us from coming to terms with our life (reality) as it is.

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Is what you think about something the actual something?

Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is ‘you’. There is nothing there inside you other than that.

What is keeping you from being your natural self? You are constantly moving way from yourself. You are dissatisfied with your everyday experiences, and so you want some new ones. You want to perfect yourself, to change yourself. You are reaching out, trying to be something other than what you are. It is this that is taking you away from yourself.

We are all living in a ‘thought sphere’. Your thoughts are not your own; they belong to everybody. There are only thoughts, but you create a counter-thought, the thinker, with which you read every thought. Your effort to control life has created a secondary movement of thought within you, which you call the ‘I’. This movement of thought within you is parallel to the movement of life, but isolated from it; it can never touch life. You are a living creature, yet you lead your entire life within the realm of this isolated, parallel movement of thought. You cut yourself off from life – that is something very unnatural.

You will never be without thought until the body is a corpse, a very dead corpse. Being able to think is necessary to survive. But when you are just your natural self, thought stops choking you; it falls into its natural rhythm. There is no longer a ‘you’ who reads the thoughts and thinks that they are ‘his’.

Have you ever looked at that parallel movement of thought? The books on English grammar will tell you that ‘I’ is a first person singular pronoun, subjective case; but that is not what you want to know. Can you look at that thing you call ‘I’? It is very elusive. Look at it now, feel it, touch it, and tell me. How do you look at it? And what is the thing that is looking at what you call ‘I’? This is the crux of the whole problem: the one that is looking at what you call ‘I’ is the ‘I’. It is creating an illusory division of itself into subject and object, and through this division it is continuing. This is the divisive nature that is operating in you, in your consciousness. Continuity of its existence is all that interests it. As long as you want to understand that ‘you’ or to change that ‘you’ into something marvelous, that ‘you’ will continue. If you do not want to do anything about it, it is not there, it’s gone.

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Hey finishedman, are you speaking from a Buddhist perspective?

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Humanity has placed before itself the model of a perfect man. The idea of the perfect man is born out of the value system that we have created. That value system is born out of the behavior patterns of the great teachers of mankind. Every human body, however, is unique. Nature is not interested in creating a perfect being within a species.

It is just not possible for us to produce enlightened people on an assembly line. If you look at history, even a country like India, which prides itself as a land of spirituality, has produced only a very few enlightened people. You can count them on your fingers. But unfortunately, in the market place, we have many claimants who say that they are enlightened, and they are in turn out to enlighten everybody. There is a market for that kind of thing. The demand and supply principle is responsible for that. But actually an enlightened man or a free man, if there is one, is not interested in freeing or enlightening anybody. This is because he has no way of knowing that he is a free man, that he is an enlightened man. It is not something that can be shared with somebody, because it is not in the area of experience at all.

Is there such thing as a new experience? Suppose you go to a new place. What goes on in your mind, if I may use that word, is that you are always trying to fit whatever you are seeing into the framework of the past. The moment you say that something is new, it is the old that is telling you that it is new. So, it is very difficult for us to experience anything new because, if there is something really new, it is not in particular frames that the old is destroyed, but the totality of the past is destroyed in one great big blow.

My basic question is one question: “Where is this mind that we are so concerned about, that we are trying to understand, study, and change? Why do we talk of a total change in the makeup of the mind? I don’t see any such thing as mind there at all, let alone a transformation or mutation of the mind.” This question has always intrigued me. I tried to get answers from areas of human thought, but nothing helped me to find out the answers to those questions. At that time I didn’t have the certainty that I have today. The certainty I have today that there is no mind is something which I cannot transmit to anybody, however hard I may try, because the very thing which we are using to communicate is in jeopardy, and you are not ready to accept that possibility.

Buddhists made a tremendous structure out of their philosophical thought. They talked of the void. They talked of emptiness. The whole Buddhist philosophy is built on the foundation of ‘no mind’. Yet they have created tremendous techniques of freeing themselves from the mind. All the Zen techniques of meditation try to free you from the mind. The very instrument that we are using to free ourselves from the thing called ‘mind’ is the mind. Mind is nothing other than what you are doing to free yourself from the mind. But when it once dawns on you, by some strange chance or miracle, that the instrument that you are using to understand everything is not the instrument, and that there is no other instrument, it hits you like a jolt.

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Warning: arguing against spirituality makes you feel bad about yourself.

SPIRITUAL PROOFS

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In this material world time has cycles; places change through alternating seasons, and for souls there are progress, retrogression and education.
At one time it is the season of spring; at another it is the season of autumn; and again it is the season of summer or the season of winter.
In the spring there are the clouds which send down the precious rain, the musk-scented breezes and life-giving zephyrs; the air is perfectly temperate, the rain falls, the sun shines, the fecundating wind wafts the clouds, the world is renewed, and the breath of life appears in plants, in animals and in men. Earthly beings pass from one condition to another. All things are clothed in new garments, and the black earth is covered with herbage; mountains and plains are adorned with verdure; trees bear leaves and blossoms; gardens bring forth flowers and fragrant herbs. The world becomes another world, and it attains to a life-giving spirit. The earth was a lifeless body; it finds a new spirit, and produces endless beauty, grace and freshness. Thus the spring is the cause of new life and infuses a new spirit.
Afterward comes the summer, when the heat increases, and growth and development attain their greatest power. The energy of life in the vegetable kingdom reaches to the degree of perfection, the fruit appears, and the time of harvest ripens; a seed has become a sheaf, and the food is stored for winter. Afterward comes tumultuous autumn when unwholesome and sterile winds blow; it is the season 74 of sickness, when all things are withered, and the balmy air is vitiated. The breezes of spring are changed to autumn winds; the fertile green trees have become withered and bare; flowers and fragrant herbs fade away; the beautiful garden becomes a dustheap. Following this comes the season of winter, with cold and tempests. It snows, rains, hails, storms, thunders and lightens, freezes and congeals; all plants die, and animals languish and are wretched.
When this state is reached, again a new life-giving spring returns, and the cycle is renewed. The season of spring with its hosts of freshness and beauty spreads its tent on the plains and mountains with great pomp and magnificence. A second time the form of the creatures is renewed, and the creation of beings begins afresh; bodies grow and develop, the plains and wildernesses become green and fertile, trees bring forth blossoms, and the spring of last year returns in the utmost fullness and glory. Such is, and such ought to be, the cycle and succession of existence. Such is the cycle and revolution of the material world.
It is the same with the spiritual cycles of the Prophets—that is to say, the day of the appearance of the Holy Manifestations is the spiritual springtime; it is the divine splendor; it is the heavenly bounty, the breeze of life, the rising of the Sun of Reality. Spirits are quickened; hearts are refreshed and invigorated; souls become good; existence is set in motion; human realities are gladdened, and grow and develop in good qualities and perfections. General progress is achieved and revival takes place, for it is the day of resurrection, the time of excitement and ferment, and the season of bliss, of joy and of intense rapture.
Afterward the life-giving spring ends in fruitful summer. The word of God is exalted, the Law of God is promulgated; all things reach perfection. The heavenly table is spread, the holy breezes perfume the East and the 75 West, the teachings of God conquer the world, men become educated, praiseworthy results are produced, universal progress appears in the world of humanity, and the divine bounties surround all things. The Sun of Reality rises from the horizon of the Kingdom with the greatest power and heat. When it reaches the meridian, it will begin to decline and descend, and the spiritual summer will be followed by autumn, when growth and development are arrested. Breezes change into blighting winds, and the unwholesome season dissipates the beauty and freshness of the gardens, plains and bowers—that is to say, attraction and goodwill do not remain, divine qualities are changed, the radiance of hearts is dimmed, the spirituality of souls is altered, virtues are replaced by vices, and holiness and purity disappear. Only the name of the Religion of God remains, and the exoteric forms of the divine teachings. The foundations of the Religion of God are destroyed and annihilated, and nothing but forms and customs exist. Divisions appear, firmness is changed into instability, and spirits become dead; hearts languish, souls become inert, and winter arrives—that is to say, the coldness of ignorance envelops the world, and the darkness of human error prevails. After this come indifference, disobedience, inconsiderateness, indolence, baseness, animal instincts and the coldness and insensibility of stones. It is like the season of winter when the terrestrial globe, deprived of the effect of the heat of the sun, becomes desolate and dreary. When the world of intelligence and thought has reached to this state, there remain only continual death and perpetual nonexistence.
When the season of winter has had its effect, again the spiritual springtime returns, and a new cycle appears. Spiritual breezes blow, the luminous dawn gleams, the divine clouds give rain, the rays of the Sun of Reality shine forth, the contingent world attains unto a new life and is clad in a wonderful garment. All the signs and the gifts of 76 the past springtime reappear, with perhaps even greater splendor in this new season.
The spiritual cycles of the Sun of Reality are like the cycles of the material sun: they are always revolving and being renewed. The Sun of Reality, like the material sun, has numerous rising and dawning places: one day it rises from the zodiacal sign of Cancer, another day from the sign of Libra or Aquarius; another time it is from the sign of Aries that it diffuses its rays. But the sun is one sun and one reality; the people of knowledge are lovers of the sun, and are not fascinated by the places of its rising and dawning. The people of perception are the seekers of the truth, and not of the places of its appearance, nor of its dawning points; therefore, they will adore the Sun from whatever point in the zodiac it may appear, and they will seek the Reality in every Sanctified Soul Who manifests it. Such people always attain to the truth and are not veiled from the Sun of the Divine World. So the lover of the sun and the seeker of the light will always turn toward the sun, whether it shines from the sign of Aries or gives its bounty from the sign of Cancer, or radiates from Gemini; but the ignorant and uninstructed are lovers of the signs of the zodiac, and enamored and fascinated by the rising-places, and not by the sun. When it was in the sign of Cancer, they turned toward it, though afterward the sun changed to the sign of Libra; as they were lovers of the sign, they turned toward it and attached themselves to it, and were deprived of the influences of the sun merely because it had changed its place. For example, once the Sun of Reality poured forth its rays from the sign of Abraham, and then it dawned from the sign of Moses and illuminated the horizon. Afterward it rose with the greatest power and brilliancy from the sign of Christ. Those who were the seekers of Reality worshiped that Reality wherever they saw it, but those who were attached to Abraham were deprived of its influences when it shone upon Sinai and illuminated 77 the reality of Moses. Those who held fast to Moses, when the Sun of Reality shone from Christ with the utmost radiance and lordly splendor, were also veiled; and so forth.
Therefore, man must be the seeker after the Reality, and he will find that Reality in each of the Sanctified Souls. He must be fascinated and enraptured, and attracted to the divine bounty; he must be like the butterfly who is the lover of the light from whatever lamp it may shine, and like the nightingale who is the lover of the rose in whatever garden it may grow.
If the sun were to rise in the West, it would still be the sun; one must not withdraw from it on account of its rising-place, nor consider the West to be always the place of sunset. In the same way, one must look for the heavenly bounties and seek for the Divine Aurora. In every place where it appears, one must become its distracted lover. Consider that if the Jews had not kept turning to the horizon of Moses, and had only regarded the Sun of Reality, without any doubt they would have recognized the Sun in the dawning-place of the reality of Christ, in the greatest divine splendor. But, alas! a thousand times alas! attaching themselves to the outward words of Moses, they were deprived of the divine bounties and the lordly splendors!

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2: PROOFS AND EVIDENCES OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

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One of the proofs and demonstrations of the existence of God is the fact that man did not create himself: nay, his creator and designer is another than himself.
It is certain and indisputable that the creator of man is not like man because a powerless creature cannot create another being. The maker, the creator, has to possess all perfections in order that he may create.
Can the creation be perfect and the creator imperfect? Can a picture be a masterpiece and the painter imperfect in his art? For it is his art and his creation. Moreover, the picture cannot be like the painter; otherwise, the painting would have created itself. However perfect the picture may be, in comparison with the painter it is in the utmost degree of imperfection.
The contingent world is the source of imperfections: God is the origin of perfections. The imperfections of the contingent world are in themselves a proof of the perfections of God.
For example, when you look at man, you see that he is weak. This very weakness of the creature is a proof of the power of the Eternal Almighty One, because, if there were no power, weakness could not be imagined. Then the weakness of the creature is a proof of the power of God; for if there were no power, there could be no weakness; so from this weakness it becomes evident that there is power in the world. Again, in the contingent world there is poverty; then necessarily wealth exists, since poverty is 6 apparent in the world. In the contingent world there is ignorance; necessarily knowledge exists, because ignorance is found; for if there were no knowledge, neither would there be ignorance. Ignorance is the nonexistence of knowledge, and if there were no existence, nonexistence could not be realized.
It is certain that the whole contingent world is subjected to a law and rule which it can never disobey; even man is forced to submit to death, to sleep and to other conditions—that is to say, man in certain particulars is governed, and necessarily this state of being governed implies the existence of a governor. Because a characteristic of contingent beings is dependency, and this dependency is an essential necessity, therefore, there must be an independent being whose independence is essential.
In the same way it is understood from the man who is sick that there must be one who is in health; for if there were no health, his sickness could not be proved.
Therefore, it becomes evident that there is an Eternal Almighty One, Who is the possessor of all perfections, because unless He possessed all perfections He would be like His creation.
Throughout the world of existence it is the same; the smallest created thing proves that there is a creator. For instance, this piece of bread proves that it has a maker.
Praise be to God! the least change produced in the form of the smallest thing proves the existence of a creator: then can this great universe, which is endless, be self-created and come into existence from the action of matter and the elements? How self-evidently wrong is such a supposition!
These obvious arguments are adduced for weak souls; but if the inner perception be open, a hundred thousand clear proofs become visible. Thus, when man feels the indwelling spirit, he is in no need of arguments for its existence; but for those who are deprived of the bounty of the spirit, it is necessary to establish external arguments.

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To convince someone that immaterial things don’t exist you need to ask what immaterial things they think do exist and work from there, otherwise you have set yourself the task of proving false every possible creation of the human imagination before even knowing what you are disproving.
So what you really want is the most broad-sweeping meta-answer you can possibly get.

Perhaps you could tell them that anything that can touch a material or interact with material in any way is also by definition a material. Anything else literally cannot be experienced by us in any way and therefore anything you do experience which does not seem to be material is either actually material and you simply don’t understand what it is, or the entirety of its’ existence is contained within your mind.

Although if it is simply a question of what you want to believe, then you can explain the two choices to them and let them pick which one will make them happier:

Immaterialism:
Heaven and Hell! (Destination to be decided by a fickle deity, not necessarily of your choosing.)
Close friendly social group! (don’t listen to them, whoever they are, we don’t know what they believe but we can assure you unlike us they’re evil and we’re not)
Get to avoid those awful lazy sleep-ins on Sunday mornings to go to church instead!
No more pesky thinking! Just believe whatever makes you feel wonderful!
A lovely social group to smile and shake hands with over and over.
A thorough moral code to live by, with priests available for taking questions and giving ambiguous reinforcement whenever it conflicts with your inner moral compass.
72 Virgins! (the same 72 as everyone else??? (worth checking))
Cool secret handshake/funny hat/wine/holy symbol/action figure/ ring/magic underwear!
Totally awesome shrine/symbol/statue/figure to prostrate yourself in front of.

Materialism:
A world makes sense with predictable cause and effect, untouched by the emotional whimsy of gods.
Live by the sense of right and wrong that everyone has instinctually in your heart rather than have your senses of good and evil dictated to you until you think that poison kool-aid is a ticket to an alien spaceship, that killing people who think differently than you is moral, or until you are actually believing literally anything that another human’s imagination could invent.
No arbitrary rules made up by religion wielding human institution for you to follow, no tithes to pay, no artificial social circles cutting you off from the rest of humanity creating strong ‘us and them’ mentality, no hell, no spirits, no ghosts, no pointless paranoia of things that aren’t really there.
Alcohol!

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There are many materialists who believe they can disprove the immaterial solely on the basis of what the immaterial connotes. Otherwise, they wouldn’t really be materialists. They would ask: does the immaterial exist? Well, it depends. What kind of immaterial things are we talking about?

Of course, other materialists aren’t really concerned about disproving the immaterial. They either simply haven’t been convinced of its existence or they hold their beliefs on faith.

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I believe that the materialist position is not that immaterial things don’t exist, but that, unlike the many material explanations for certain phenomena, believing in them is utterly worthless from a pragmatic standpoint. Ghosts won’t pop my popcorn, microwaves will. So, materialists don’t wish to disprove the immaterial, merely to ignore it and discard it as a waste of time (like I probably should have done with this thread). After all, science contains many “immaterial” things, like bosons and leptons and such. I mean, who has ever seen a lepton? Probably fewer people than have seen leprechauns. But the difference is, leptons pop popcorn, and leprechauns don’t. So we should spend more time studying leptons. Because they’re useful.

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There’s a difference between a monitor image made up of electrons striking a screen and the invisible woo woo. One you can clearly see or at least measure with a volt meter, the other is a figment of your imagination, which is pretty much what it sounds like this immaterialism is: creative fantasy. The difference is only in how real people think their dreams are. I don’t have time for silly dreams though, the world is weird and fantastic enough without making up ridiculous things, that smacks of an atavistic attitude if you ask me. I know what you mean about this thread, should of never got in, it started off near the bottom and has gone steadfastly downhill since then. It reminds me of creationism as all things like this do, every single fallacy that they make is repeated here with a sincerity that is bewildering. Fortunately most people draw a sharp line between reality and fantasy, otherwise it would be a wonder how we ever got out of the stone age, let alone harnessed the erratic lepton to make fire and shizzle.

Scientist: Look if I bang these two rocks together it makes a spark and I used it to make a fire!
Mystic: It is the god of fire, he has blessed us all!

Scientist: no really I think its something to do with the rocks themselves, for example it doesn’t work with these two rocks…
Mystic: yes child you are young but you will learn :unamused:
Clansmen walk off laughing at the silly man and his magic stones.

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Right because making popcorn is the most important thing to figure out in life

Translation:
A form of slapstick comedy that has more holes in it than a stack of Baby Swiss. Live by whatever egomaniacal interpretation of physics gives you a hard-on or cry like a little bitch when you realize you taking full control of your life hasn’t worked out as well as you planned. Now that determinism is the reason for your failure it doesn’t really matter that you are part of a tradition single-handedly responsible for the greatest number of human deaths in world history despite gaining public prominence in the modern era.

The fact that you cry yourself to sleep at night every time you look in the mirror or think about your existence up to this point can only be the work of fate. But at least you know morality is only for fools and you aren’t a slave of society, which is why you are annihilating Miller 12-packs like you were getting ready to hibernate and popping vicodins like tic tacs.

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… and the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got vicodin.

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Substitute “making any meaningful progress at all” for “making popcorn”.

Vicodin? Is that really necessary? Couldn’t we at least pretend to be civil?