Where did The Bible originate from?

GOD IS DEAD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO5MytakLy8

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@spendius,

Well, at least you are not disputing that the bible is an oppression tool made by men to use on other men.
If you don't mind letting others to jerk all your strings then that is your choice. But then don't start moaning when someone takes away all your civil rights. But I guess it doesn't really matter as long as you are doing as you are told.

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@Cyracuz,

You have not understood the point I'm afraid Cyr.

We allow people to tell us what to do because we benefit from them doing so as long as they have to answer to us every few years and alternatives are on offer.

We do what we are told in our own interests. Not doing what we are told is unthinkable. The joint would seize up in 10 minutes.

You're a danger to yourself.

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@joefromchicago,

It seems logical. Do you disagree?

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@spendius,

I understood your point spendius, but you didn't understand mine.

I would never allow anyone to tell me what to do on the faith that it will be for my own good, and yet I do as I am told frequently. I would never empower anyone to act on my behalf unless I trusted them and knew everything they intended to do. And yet there are people I place this trust in.

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@Cyracuz,

I don't bother about such things Cyr. Life is much too short. I keep out of the way most of the time. If you imagine people to be pretty harmless and generally kind and considerate they almost always will be.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

It seems logical. Do you disagree?

That reality is a construct chosen by each individual? No, that doesn't sound logical at all.

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@joefromchicago,

But that isn't what I said joe.
I said that choice is the mechanism used in deciding how we relate to experience. Ultimately, our power to imagine is the source of all our knowledge. From all explanations we are able to imagine, the most acurate one (a matter of social consencus) is generally thought of as reality.
In science and most other walks of life today we make informed, rational choices. At least, we percieve ourselves to do so. But in the long evolution that has brought us to this day choices haven't always been made by these ideals. I am wondering how much of our reality as we percieve it today is a result of the conditioning that is the consequence of previous choices.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Ultimately, our power to imagine is the source of all our knowledge.

How do you define imagination Cyr. Does you definition include memory and perception? If so you might as well say "we" are the source of our knowledge.

We knew that. If you like to talk of imagination in a certain way which suggests to inattentive readers that you are an imaginative person then it's okay be me. I understand. Being imaginative is so sexy.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

In science and most other walks of life today we make informed, rational choices.

That should spell the end of civilisation as we know it. And of a sense of humour.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

I am wondering how much of our reality as we percieve it today is a result of the conditioning that is the consequence of previous choices.

If you mean choices of our forbears I should think most of it. Nearly all of it.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

But that isn't what I said joe.

Well, no, not in those exact words. Here's what you said in response to my question of how you determine "actual truth:" "No, it's by choice, and that's my point. The world is as you believe it to be, and what you believe is what you chose to believe, consciously and subconsciously." I'm not sure how "the world is as you believe it to be" differs markedly from "reality is a matter of choice," but you, of course, are free to explain and expand upon your remarks.

Cyracuz wrote:

I said that choice is the mechanism used in deciding how we relate to experience. Ultimately, our power to imagine is the source of all our knowledge. From all explanations we are able to imagine, the most acurate one (a matter of social consencus) is generally thought of as reality.

How do you know that?

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@joefromchicago,

It differs in that the second doesn't say who the choser is. Not all choices that affect you were made by you.

I know from having the experience that I have a choice.
Sometimes people, if they are provoked in certain ways, react instantaneously. Emotional attatchments can make us forget that we have a choice altogether if they are strong enough.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Quote:

Well, no, not in those exact words. Here's what you said in response to my question of how you determine "actual truth:" "No, it's by choice, and that's my point. The world is as you believe it to be, and what you believe is what you chose to believe, consciously and subconsciously." I'm not sure how "the world is as you believe it to be" differs markedly from "reality is a matter of choice," but you, of course, are free to explain and expand upon your remarks.

I know you steer clear of me Joe but Bertrand Russell explained it with his refutation of Behaviourism where he has Dr Watson watching a rat, as well he might seeing as how much DNA we have in common with rats.

He can describe what he sees using certain agreed vocabularies which others observing can use to agree with him that what he sees is what they see. If he is professor the students who learn those vocabularies get good grades. It's simple, as the cute puppet meerkat is always reminding everybody in the Market.com advert.

You see the good doctor observing the rat by choosing to see the scene as he sees it. Not that you ever can. Ultimately. But the closer you get the higher are the grades. And ultimately is where Cyr is taking us. We can't be using common sense in those far out regions now can we? Dr Watson is in the scene for other observers in a way he isn't for himself. They are actually being invited to observe him and the rat and in a manner which makes no distinction between the two. Which could lead to low grades. Or even to throwing all your notes up in the air and galloping off into the distance, like the early settlers might be said to have done.

We do see what we choose to see. Huxley describes in Doors of Perception an attempt on LSD to see reality without one's choices being present. He seems to have been gobsmacked. Artists have been playing with the idea for centuries. Look closely at the Mona Lisa.

Look at a looker with trapped eyes, ball and chain job, and the eyes of a guy with similar ideas who isn't fettered. And she's hardly moved a muscle.

It's a good job we do choose what we see and that how we choose was chosen for us by our forbears in the foggy ruins of time.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

It differs in that the second doesn't say who the choser is. Not all choices that affect you were made by you.

Well, you're the one who came up with this notion of "choice" in relation to reality. But "choice" means nothing if it's not the subject's choice. Someone else's "choice" doesn't constitute a "choice" for the subject. Even you agree with that, since you said: "what you believe is what you chose to believe..." (emphasis added).

Cyracuz wrote:

I know from having the experience that I have a choice.

That's not what I asked. I asked how do you know that "ultimately, our power to imagine is the source of all our knowledge."

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Name anything that is not real.
You can't. It will become real by virtue of the naming, if only as real as a thought can be.
It seems to me that consciousness is a creative process.

But you are right that choice means nothing if it's not the subject's choice. But one man's consciousness is not separated from another's. Their individual choices have effects beyond the percieved borders of the selves.
But the self is meaningless if not contrasted to the whole. Still, our beliefs that human consciousness is individual and separate, and that it doesn't make sense to see it in any other way, make the idea that choice is a factor in deciding what is real sound strange.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Name anything that is not real.

A unicorn.

Cyracuz wrote:

You can't. It will become real by virtue of the naming, if only as real as a thought can be.

I can't conjure real unicorns solely by means of my imagination. At most I can create the image of a unicorn. You might argue that the image is real, but it's not the image of a real unicorn. Those are two different things. Or are you suggesting that there's no difference between the image of a unicorn and a unicorn?

Cyracuz wrote:

But you are right that choice means nothing if it's not the subject's choice. But one man's consciousness is not separated from another's.

How do you know that?

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

A unicorn is real. It is, as you say, an image.
I think you are using "real" in the more or less randomly defined way as having physical existence. By the definition you use to say that a unicorn is not real, a thought, basically anything that is not physical, would have to be said to be not real as well.

But your claim that you cannot conjure a "real unicorn" (a physical creature) by means of your imagination is a matter of social consencus. "Real unicorn" is also suggested by you to discredit "fantasy unicorn". You impose that distinction since it is meaningful on objects that are both physical and relfected in consciousness.

And since other human beings are objects in my perception, and I am an object in the perception of others, it seems to me that consciousness is best described as an internally tangled sense of reality in which individuality is derived from the whole.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

A unicorn is real. It is, as you say, an image.
I think you are using "real" in the more or less randomly defined way as having physical existence. By the definition you use to say that a unicorn is not real, a thought, basically anything that is not physical, would have to be said to be not real as well.

First of all, it's not a "more or less randomly defined way" of thinking of a unicorn. There's nothing random about it at all. As I said before, the image of a unicorn isn't the same thing as a unicorn. It may be a real image of a unicorn, but it is not the image of a real unicorn. If a thing has or is supposed to have a physical existence, then it is not a random distinction to insist that it have a physical existence, and things that purport to be physically "real" must, by definition, have some kind of physical reality. Unicorns do not have any kind of physical reality, and so unicorns are not real.

And if you're still having trouble distinguishing between the image of a unicorn and a unicorn, I suggest you post your reply on the image of a computer.

Cyracuz wrote:

But your claim that you cannot conjure a "real unicorn" (a physical creature) by means of your imagination is a matter of social consencus.

How do you know that?

Cyracuz wrote:

"Real unicorn" is also suggested by you to discredit "fantasy unicorn". You impose that distinction since it is meaningful on objects that are both physical and relfected in consciousness.

I'm not "discrediting" fantasy unicorns, nor am I making any distinction between "fantasy unicorns" and "real unicorns." Those two categories are identical.

Cyracuz wrote:

And since other human beings are objects in my perception, and I am an object in the perception of others, it seems to me that consciousness is best described as an internally tangled sense of reality in which individuality is derived from the whole.

How do you know that?

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Physically real isn't what we are talking about, is it?
We are talking plain real, and in that sense of the word everything that is experienced is real. Whatever our respective viewpoints on that may be, if we were to reach an agreement on it in the course of our discussion that agreement would form what we would regard as "the fact of the matter" or reality.

You are not discrediting unicorns, but you are disputing their reality by imposing conditions that are superfluous in deciding if they are real or not.

Physical reality is not all of reality. Some concepts, like fantasy creatures, are considered real by all of us even though they are not physically manifested. They are familiar to us as fictive creatures in an imaginairy world, and in that sense they are real. Other concepts start as conscious movement that then manifests physically. Ideologies, for instance.

1 Reply

Where did The Bible originate from?

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