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Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism

Pearls are relative to the audience. I have asked a couple of folks promoting the incredible why here, why a skeptic forum and not a more receptive place?

The answer always is so us skeptical folks can be educated and shown a truth.

If it isn't a deeply held belief then it is a truckload of ego.
And I suspect Scorpion has deep belief that should No be questioned deeply, at least by himself.
 
That would be

JayUtah said:
So only sackett is a swine?
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dreadfully selfish of me. Everyone, each and every one of my fellow posters here, can be as porcine, as piggish, as swineish as his heart desires!

Oink with me, friends! Grunt, squeal, belch! All together!

Come follow me, follow!
Down to the hollow!
Where we shall wallow
In glorious MUD!
 
sackett said:
dreadfully selfish of me. Everyone, each and every one of my fellow posters here, can be as porcine, as piggish, as swineish as his heart desires!

Oink with me, friends! Grunt, squeal, belch! All together!

Come follow me, follow!
Down to the hollow!
Where we shall wallow
In glorious MUD!
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"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig."

Robert Heinlein
 
Scorpion said:
I have nothing against JayUtah , but Sackett contributes nothing to the thread but insults.
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I disagree. He illustrates his points with sarcasm. But he has points, and you ignore them at your peril. The point he made in the post you so hastily and callously responded to with a veiled insult makes a point that several of us have tried to get to you address. There are many fully contrived worlds in fiction and lore that nevertheless manage to achieve a much higher degree of coherence consistency than your version of spiritualism. You cite authors you describe as being in real contact with actual inhabitants of the spirit world. You cite other authors who allegedly lecture in a transcendent state that you suggest gives them greater reliability than without it. Yet you can't manage to stay consistent in your description of this allegedly real world for more than a few posts.

And you know it. You know which question to avoid answering. Sackett's point deserves an answer from you. But as usual you don't have one, so you resort to veiled insults against your critics.
 
JayUtah said:
I disagree. He illustrates his points with sarcasm. But he has points, and you ignore them at your peril. The point he made in the post you so hastily and callously responded to with a veiled insult makes a point that several of us have tried to get to you address. There are many fully contrived worlds in fiction and lore that nevertheless manage to achieve a much higher degree of coherence consistency than your version of spiritualism. You cite authors you describe as being in real contact with actual inhabitants of the spirit world. You cite other authors who allegedly lecture in a transcendent state that you suggest gives them greater reliability than without it. Yet you can't manage to stay consistent in your description of this allegedly real world for more than a few posts.

And you know it. You know which question to avoid answering. Sackett's point deserves an answer from you. But as usual you don't have one, so you resort to veiled insults against your critics.
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I did do an evening class in philosophy in literature, and there are many books to be read some of which may well be inspired, but they do not claim to be the words of God.
I just mentioned the Bhagavad Gita on another thread. It is inspired fiction.
I have a collection of books by Herman Hesse which are also inspiring, such as Siddhartha. Who knows if the spirit world inspired such authors. Charles Dickens was probably inspired. But none of these authors may have known where their ideas came from.
My efforts to promote spiritualism on this forum are obviously inadequate, but there may be others who could put things better. Until I read the text about people on Mars and Venus I thought White Eagle was one of them. All the White Eagle books are very uplifting.
Since I no longer live in London I can't attend the spiritualist association as I used to do and am cut off from the source of more information. I rely only upon what I have heard or read in the distant past. Some of which I have had to disregard.
 
Scorpion said:
I did do an evening class in philosophy...
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[Long, rambling anecdotes deleted, that had little if anything to do with my post.]

My efforts to promote spiritualism on this forum are obviously inadequate...
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Why are you trying to promote spiritualism on a skeptics' forum in the first place?

It's not even spiritualism that you're trying to promote. It's your own private religion, that you admit you pieced together yourself over a long period of time and are now entrenched in. It bears some superficial resemblance to what other people have called spiritualism, but you simply define it differently from minute to minute in order to respond to your critics' pleas for consistency and exposition.

I rely only upon what I have heard or read in the distant past. Some of which I have had to disregard.
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No, at best that only partially explains why you can't tell a coherent story. It's one thing to say you can't remember what you read 20 years ago. It's another thing when you can't stay consistent with what you said yesterday, or an hour ago. I hate to say this, but you're exhibiting the symptoms I've seen in people who had profound schizophrenia and were, at the time, untreated. You're clearly just making stuff up from moment to moment. That has nothing to do with having forgotten what you once read.

Sacket't's question was less about why you can't tell a coherent story and more about how you expect the world to react. You have exactly as much factual evidence favoring your concept of the spirit world as fantasy authors have for their elaborate contrived worlds. So in that respect they're on equal footing with you. But those other authors manage to obtain consistency, coherence, and competeness. Your imagination and invention can't even rise to the vicinity of that level. We're not inviting you to admit your obvious incompetence. We're asking why you think a reasonable person should give your claims any more credence than those of a fantasy author. They have so much more going for them than you do.

It baffles us how you can savage other religions with incisive arguments and a wealth of evidence. But you are utterly incapable of turning that lens on yourself and your own beliefs. We would expect someone who says he has spent considerable time arriving at the conclusions he now holds to have performed the same exercise on his own beliefs. This glaring double standard pretty much turns you into a laughingstock.
 
JayUtah said:
[Long, rambling anecdotes deleted, that had little if anything to do with my post.]



Why are you trying to promote spiritualism on a skeptics' forum in the first place?

It's not even spiritualism that you're trying to promote. It's your own private religion, that you admit you pieced together yourself over a long period of time and are now entrenched in. It bears some superficial resemblance to what other people have called spiritualism, but you simply define it differently from minute to minute in order to respond to your critics' pleas for consistency and exposition.



No, at best that only partially explains why you can't tell a coherent story. It's one thing to say you can't remember what you read 20 years ago. It's another thing when you can't stay consistent with what you said yesterday, or an hour ago. I hate to say this, but you're exhibiting the symptoms I've seen in people who had profound schizophrenia and were, at the time, untreated. You're clearly just making stuff up from moment to moment. That has nothing to do with having forgotten what you once read.

Sacket't's question was less about why you can't tell a coherent story and more about how you expect the world to react. You have exactly as much factual evidence favoring your concept of the spirit world as fantasy authors have for their elaborate contrived worlds. So in that respect they're on equal footing with you. But those other authors manage to obtain consistency, coherence, and competeness. Your imagination and invention can't even rise to the vicinity of that level. We're not inviting you to admit your obvious incompetence. We're asking why you think a reasonable person should give your claims any more credence than those of a fantasy author. They have so much more going for them than you do.

It baffles us how you can savage other religions with incisive arguments and a wealth of evidence. But you are utterly incapable of turning that lens on yourself and your own beliefs. We would expect someone who says he has spent considerable time arriving at the conclusions he now holds to have performed the same exercise on his own beliefs. This glaring double standard pretty much turns you into a laughingstock.
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You pick your words carefully, but you are still calling me a raving madman, which is what Sackett said openly. But you add I am a laughing stock.
What a good job I have confidence in myself or I might get upset.
But I remain certain of some of my psychic experiences, and have nothing but distain for the various psychiatrists I encountered who assumed I am just delusional. So there is no chance posters here are going to affect me.

I have thought about what I believe is probably true, and I still think there is a spirit world and the spirits I have heard from all say there is a God. Which follows that there are angels carrying out Gods plan. It is clear that God remains unassailable and above directly interfering in our lives. Unless you believe in all the bible story's, which I do not.
I still think I am fundamentally right about most things.
 
Scorpion said:
You pick your words carefully, but you are still calling me a raving madman...
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No. You admit that you suffer from untreated schizophrenia. I'm simply noting that your behavior is consistent with that admission. Stop trying to vilify your opponents, and especially stop trying to shove words into my mouth that I never said. I choose my words carefully precisely not to do the things you're desperate to accuse me of. Apologize.

I have thought about what I believe is probably true, and I still think there is a spirit world...
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You're simply reiterating that you have a double standard. We're asking you to tell us what you think everyone else should do when dealing with you and your double standard.

I still think I am fundamentally right about most things.
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And the point is that you apply one standard toward other people and their beliefs, and a completely different standard to yourself and your own beliefs. When we try to get you to think critically about your own beliefs, the way you expect others to do about their beliefs, you either lash out or burden us with tiresome anecdotes.

I'm asking you to be honest with yourself. Will you do that?
 
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JayUtah said:
I'm asking you to be honest with yourself. Will you do that?
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I have been doing that all my life, and my views are the result of my experiences and conclusions. If I could know for sure we are in an accidental Godless universe I would accept that in a minute. But everything I have been through tells me there is more to it.
 
JayUtah said:
Can you explain your double standard?
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I throw out what makes no sense to me in an instant, like when I got rid of my White Eagle books. How is that a double standard. ? Enough personal experience remains for me to be confident of what I believe.
 
Scorpion said:
I throw out what makes no sense to me in an instant, like when I got rid of my White Eagle books.
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Straw man. And no, you don't throw out things like White Eagle and Silver Birch "in an instant." You vacillate between whether it's authoritative or not depending on what you need for the argument of the day.

How is that a double standard? Enough personal experience remains for me to be confident of what I believe.
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But you don't accept "personal experience" from any of the religions you savage. You expect others to respond to the critical analyses you offer of their religions. But you simply ignore others' critical analysis of your own.

The double standard is plain. Explain it or admit you can't.
 
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JayUtah said:
Straw man. And no, you don't throw out things like White Eagle and Silver Birch "in an instant." You vacillate between whether it's authoritative or not depending on what you need for the argument of the day.
But you don't accept "personal experience" from any of the religions you savage. You expect others to respond to the critical analyses you offer of their religions. But you simply ignore others' critical analysis of your own.

The double standard is plain. Explain it or admit you can't.
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I have not thrown out Silver Birch, but I am open to finding fault with his teachings if there is something illogical in it. But I can't be sure because I have only got two books out of nine and therefore I have not read enough of the teachings to be sure of them.
As far as I am concerned other religions, like the three Abrahamic beliefs are full of obvious flaws. Anyone who believes Jonah was swallowed by a whale is in cuckoo land. But its in the Bible and Quran.
I don't ignore criticism of my beliefs, I just don't buy them.
 
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