Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Okay, I agree 'you don't understand'. Obiously when you don't understand, you are not entitles to comment on either side.
Unless you are Kumar!
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Gratitude, Compulsion, Idiocy or Nobility?
- Thread starter Kumar
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Unless you are Kumar!
21 meter salute!
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I.e., your standard excuse when you can't answer questions. You were presented with facts. To be more specific, you were presented with facts you could easily verify yourself; it's not as if Chandra Bose's works are difficult to find, for example. But it seems that it's all about saving face with you. Since you are obviously unable to face contrary facts, you invent an absurdly absolutist standard of proof and try to foist it onto your critics, meanwhile you run and hide from the fact that your own authors don't even meet your own mild standard of proof. Meanwhile you don't lift a finger even to verify your own sources, yet for some reason expect your critics to meet you halfway in the name of "harmony."
Mojo opined that you are the world's worst Jain. I'm not sure about that, but you certainly violate most Westerners' preconceptions about believers in Eastern religions. The stereotype Hindu, in Western estimates, is meek, honest, very down-to-earth, generally unburdened by contrived attitudes of morality and responsibility. You are quite the opposite. You have lots of personal baggage that you're going to need to get rid of if you want to be taken seriously as an exemplary Jain, or even as a moderately sufferable person. You come across as just as petty, prideful, hypocritical, and dogmatic as the Fundamentalist Christians in America, who are generally irritating to nearly everyone except their own kind. I promise you the image you're painting is not a personality you want to continue to cultivate. And as long as your argument is based on moralization, your own behavior will continue to be relevant.
So stop frantically waving your hands about "absolute and final" proof, which isn't even something you believe in. Stop whimpering about how nobody is respecting your religion. Stop making excuses for ignoring facts. Stop arrogantly lording your supposed superiority over everyone. Once you correct those annoying flaws, then perhaps you'll be in a position to engage on a solid intellectual footing. Until then, you know where my response to Bhagchandra is. I suggest you either get to work on it or make friends with the fact that Bhagchandra's claims have been successfully refuted and that you have no basis from which to claim Jainism is a scientific religion.
No issue. I can understand truth is bitter and bit írritating, currently. Bit common.Anyone can take benefit of non A&F part and degrade others on it. Esp when all are with him. It means, entitle self to non A&F but degrade other on non A&F. Very easy esp when all are on one side. Still, they can súcceed, but it will not be appreciable even to self in heart.
Not A&F in above. Fact should be A&F tó really taken it as fact. Avoidance is noted.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
All achievable proof is non-absolute, including the proof by which we make our most arduous decisions. The distinction between absolute and non-absolute proof exists only in your head, and doesn't impress anyone here.
You have been presented with facts that contradict your beliefs. You first tried to dismiss them as mere "interpretation." Then you proposed to disregard them because they didn't meet the absolute standard of proof that you keep trying to foist. Then you tried to shame your critics away from pressing those facts because you argued the insulted your religion. Clearly if anyone find the truth bitter and irritating, it is you.
And as far as standards of proof go, we're still looking at why you would set a standard of proof for expertise that your own authority cannot meet. Your inattention to to that controversy tends to undermine the basis by which you are wagging your finger at your critics for their supposed indifference to standards of proof.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Asked and answered. I have presented the facts, which you have not cared to verify. You are unable to reconcile those facts with your beliefs. You have expressly stated that you are further unwilling to do so, even to the extent of determining how reliable those facts are. Your pretense for that unwillingness is your unsubstantiated insistence that the presentation doesn't meet some absurd, unrealistic standard of proof. Let me know when you are prepared to face facts, as you certainly have no basis for accusing others of evasion.
If all you can do is mumble "A&F" incoherently over and over, then I don't see why any thinking person would need to waste any more time on you.
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bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I would add to the above that history is, in a very real sense, final. Once a thing has happened it can not unhappen. Many of the responses to allegations made here require only a cursory look at the most elementary, obvious history that should be known by anyone who is not hiding under a rock to be utterly disproven, and even then, we see backpedaling and equivocation, the suggestion that "coulda shoulda woulda" trumps did. It doesn't.
You can prate on about how religion ought to be, but history shows how religion has behaved, over and over, here and elsewhere, since the distant mists of bygone times. Mushy language and creaky logical falsehoods do not change that.
You can prate on about how religion ought to be, but history shows how religion has behaved, over and over, here and elsewhere, since the distant mists of bygone times. Mushy language and creaky logical falsehoods do not change that.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Which, from a more rational point view view, is the lazy way out. Understanding the real-world universe is hard work. There are certainly rewards for those who do it, but there's simply no easy path to that truth. Yet that's exactly what religion tries to blaze. Rather than hard-won, hard-tested observation and inference, religion just contrives a dogmatic set of easy answers. Then it creates a cover story for those answers that declares the wisdom to have been received from on high, thus transcending the problems of empiricism. It's a set of purely propositional knowledge with a shiny gold wrapper proclaiming it to be "absolute and final" because it comes from some imagined, indisputable font of truth.
And the appeal to the weak-minded and lazy is obvious. Nothing is more comforting to someone struggling to understand the world and his place in it than an allegedly indisputable edict showing him a precise way and assuring him he will never have to question it. Many people want to be told who to vote for, what not to eat or drink, whom they should hire, etc. We are naturally drawn to circumstances that limit the work of understanding, and some are quite willing to embrace faith in order to have that convenience.
But it's still the lazy way out. And when it comes time for people who have accepted the easy path to make headway in the real-world universe, it often produces frustration and tears. While they may have accepted a set of easy answers and may have fully bought into the divine provenance "absolute and final" fantasy, they will soon encounter people who best them due to a more empirical approach. Especially insidious is when the religion's "absolute and final" claim is disguised as a "natural origins" claim. Nothing teaches people to think less than telling them what they've learned is self-evidently true.
And let's not trivialize those extreme cases. But we also have to consider that it justifies mild acts of oppression that are paradoxically more difficult to combat. Morally, it's a no-brainer to say we shouldn't kill people in the name of religion. But the moral calculus becomes murkier when we propose forbidding more reasonable things like alcohol and meat on the basis of religion. After all, they're only silly dietary restrictions. They don't have a big impact and are easily borne. And there are secular reasons also for adopting them. So why not? Is there any objection other than a childish desire not to be regulated? (There is an apocryphal story about a Maoist Chinese dictionary that defined "freedom" as "A Western euphemism for lack of discpline.")
You can see how easy it is to shift the burden of proof to require defense of basic freedoms from even the most well-intentioned but ill-founded attacks. No, someone who wants to have a glass of old-vine Zinfandel with his steak should not have to bear the burden to prove he is justified in those things when disapproval comes only from a contrived moral framework falsely attached to a fairy-tale of infallibility.
Reasons matter. After the Dark Ages, anyone who who proposes a restriction based on moral disapprobation has increasingly found it necessary to offer up also a secular reason for it. And that's as it should be, except that doing so makes it easier to lie about the real reasons for doing something. Moralizations tend to be absolute, while secular reasons tend to be more subject to critical thinking. Aside from Mormonism's blanket prohibition against drinking alcohol, you can have a well-reasoned discussion about what policy should apply to obtaining and consuming it, and what standards of behavior are expected from those who indulge. This recognizes the complexity of cost-benefit analysis, and correctly recognizes that the mere desire to want to indulge is sufficient to grant a basic right to. (Ascetes typically have a realy hard time with this concept.) None of that would be possible under an "absolute and final" moral dictatorship.
Similarly we can have a well-reasoned discussion about food policy, both in terms of optimal diet as well as planetary sustainability. Many people are interested in eating healthy. But we have discovered just in the past few decades that there is no set of simple, single propositions that result in optimum alimentation for everyone. Simple answers aren't the answer. And other people aren't interested in optimizing for health, or longevity, or disease avoidance. One-size-fits-all religious edicts don't help here either. Foisting them while flying the flag of false infallibility clearly causes more harm than good, either from a dietary perspective or a basic-freedom perspective.
Probably the silliest example of religious types trying to hide their true motives behind lame secular justifications has been the same-sex marriage debate in the United States. First, there wasn't even a very good attempt to hide the moral disapprobation. It was rampant in the advertising. But the alleged secular concerns of costs to society, optimal child-rearing, and so forth were properly eviscerated in court. They were simply not factually true, and focusing time on them simply distracted from the real reasons for imposing a policy.
And since the Renaissance, through the Reformation into the Enlightenment -- Kumar, these are broad periods in Western history -- religions have increasingly tried to show secular justification for their proscriptive and restrictive diets. Those that include dietary restrictions, for example, inevitably try to show that dietetics literature supports their beliefs. What we find, however, is that a sober view of the facts rarely validates that support. What we really know about diets at this point only partially validates -- and also partially contradicts -- what religions tell us. The actual measured effects of child-rearing among same-sex parents is utterly not what the religious folks told us.
And finally we arrive at Bhagchandra -- such nonsense as Dharma being what science calls ether, speciation being the result of transmigration of souls, particular scientists confirming that plants have human emotions. All these are false claims of secular confirmation. They serve only to prove that even religions as putatively saintly as Jainism are willing to lie to the world to bolster their credibility. Reasons matter because if you tell me there is a secular reason for obeying your religion, and there turns out not to be, I'm immediately going to suspect that you're trying to mislead or deceive me. And that's not a suspicion that someone should want to face if he is trying to grab the high moral ground.
Not every finding of fact that we can ask religion to reconcile has an inductive leap into which the "A&F" wedge can be driven. Chandra Bose's writings on plant responses comprise a finite body of work. It is possible to exhaustively survey that work and determine whether it contains any specific claim. If it does not, we can know that absolutely and finally. There's no inductive leap under those circumstances. There is no reason to supposed some wormhole will magically open and deposit a copy of Chandra Bose's work from an alternate universe in which he says what Bhagchandra said he did.
That's really it. There is no guarantee of absolute-and-final proof anywhere for anyone, but at the same time there are a bunch of irresponsible, duplicitous religious types running around pretending to have all the answers and arrogantly turning up their noses (or boo-hooing in mock indignation) when uncomfortable facts come their way. This is part of what skeptics hope to correct.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Can't disagree with that.
Presenting a self thing over and over is stubbornness and odd preceptión somewhat líke I am only right. Thoúgh non A&F. He just see what he has presented not others what they had. Avoidance is noted. Fact should mean A&F truth and one shoúld note use it if he is not A&F in truth. Probàbly, some other term will better suít for yet non A&F truth. Otherwise people can be misguíded by such wrong interpretation.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
What am I avoiding? I presented the facts and invited you to respond. You refuse. You just blabber on incessantly about "A&F". Looks like you're the one avoiding things.
Peregrinus
Graduate Poster
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What can be clearly seen through 49 pages in this thread and a depressingly large number of pages in a depressingly large number of other threads is that the misguiding seems to center on yourself. You go in circles. You ignore facts. You spout philosophical nonsense. You ignore rational thought patterns. And you commit grievous acts upon the English language.
No, look. Moreover do not use above bold letters if your basis is not A&F. Interpreting a tree just a fruit tress, though partial true, but can misguide people because that can also be a toxic fruit. So take care.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Grievous and unnatural. What's abysmally rude and arrogant is how he ignores everything I've written in the past two hours, including two posts that discuss the notion of "absolute and final" proof, and declares that I am in "avoidance." That takes a special kind of willful ignorance.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
If you had bothered to read anything I've written in the past ten hours, you'd have your answer about how "A&F" affects my rebuttal of Bhagchandra. It looks like you're simply more interested in bashing away at the keyboard without applying a single neuron. You have no answers, so you're just entrenching yourself behind your favorite straw man.
Actually A&F is very much required in science because its introductions can also be of serious side effects giving nature which may not be seriously required in those whose introductions are not so. It may be a natural duty of of skeptics or religion, to see negative side of anything esp of those to which they are perceived odd. Yes, because things are not A&F, they can easily find negative side of anything and make basis of that by ignoring that there can also be other side of coin. It is well apparent here, when OTHER SIDE is discussed. But I feel, they should be equanimious by giving sufficient weightage to adversities or to adverse effects or not.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Expressly no. You are not a scientist, and you have absolutely no idea what standards of proof prevail there. Do not arrogantly presume to have knowledge you don't have.
I have to remain within limits of my opted religion. Read wrong beliefs in Jainism. Still I gone against it on one point just to care your odd insistance which you have avoided. No insistance on others. I can not doubt my religion and devoid off from its beneficial affects of loosing faith effect and effects from its religious practices--natural, scientific, logical or supernatural(non A&F part of science).
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, you've already admitted that you filter facts according to your religious beliefs. That doesn't stop them being facts. Since you do this, you don't get to whine that people are oppressing you by presenting facts that dispute your beliefs.
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Yes, we can not impress others to behave in our manner. It is very difficult to achieve A&F fact.