It's a very personal process. You don't lose a faith trough argument or persuasion; you lose it through intellectual growth or experience. Once you ha...
The bible has an explanation: You should never have taken that fruit; it was forbidden for your own protection. The notion that having this awareness ...
Meant by whom? Over most of human history, never mind biological history, infant and early childhood mortality was always high, and accepted as the na...
No. They do not exist for us. Nothing exists for us. The fluke that we have this big massive imagination and even more massive self-valuation doesn't ...
I've heard that argument. You believe that "something" exists; you give it a capitalized generic name, but no identity, no past, no human contact, no ...
Of course not. Pretend you believe to lull the believers into a false sense of security and then trash their holy book? What is that supposed to accom...
It wasn't given or granted, as others have pointed out - life just happened. But that brief spell/blink of an eye business is an appalling insult to b...
Nor have you. That may be true, or it may not, but neither possibility supports any of your premises, or any of your cause-effect assumptions. It's th...
Okay: Nobody should. We just want to, because we feel that desire to live, and the fact that we continue to live as long as we are able proves that fe...
Which is why I didn't specify number of years, or any civilized societies between pre-agricultural ones and our own. And an awful lot of pension to pa...
The concept came long before the state. In all social animals, there is a period of maturation during which the offspring are considered too young to ...
Yes, you said that. Several times. But I assume you didn't mean it, because if feelings aren't genuine, neither are thoughts. Society is just making y...
There is a distinction to be made between victimization - systemic, or habitual or protracted persecution of a person or group and being the victim of...
Only, the subject here was not persons or their character, but their emotions. As in: all our feelings are fake; they have no authenticity; therefore ...
The OP stipulates that he's trying to quit, and has his family's support. Of course we are. It's almost impossible to do the right thing - even when w...
Nobody explained what 'genuine' means, or how you can tell whether feelings are genuine or counterfeit. I have to go on, at least I find out! Then I'l...
Me too - unless I'm in the forensic lab or on the jury. I do agree about developing a BS detecting system over time. It's unfortunate that many use a ...
That's a fairly comprehensive checklist for critical judgment. Mine is almost identical, though I list in a different order. The "truth" is elusive, a...
The OP scenario is a small town, wherein everyone knows that this person is trying to dry out. The store clerk is not required to diagnose or pass jud...
They don't. The public has to manage damage to the citizenry and infrastructure from harmful behaviours - the health and law-enforcement and property ...
Ho-kay, that's a lot of feeling, and it may be partially authentic/original (as distinct from 'genuine', which has not been defined), though it's fami...
And some are realistic enough to know that attempting to find out the absolute truth of anything could take a lifetime and yield no results. However, ...
It's been called sin tax, and I don't think there an attempt at deception. The increased price may prevent some young people from starting the vice, b...
Not at all. Various kinds of help were always available, but I didn't ask until I seriously decided to quit. The people close to me were very co-opera...
No, it's not. It's asking the questions: Where do feelings originate? What do genuine ones feel like? How do they become non-genuine? Why should anyon...
If later - and every minute he's delayed - his chances of recovery improve. If he's trying to resist the temptation, he needs all the help he can get....
This is one of those cute tail-eating propositions, isn't it? If nothing we feel is genuine, the bother of living isn't genuine, since we're not genui...
In my town? No, you won't. The guy in the hardware store knows about you; the girl at the drugstore won't sell you cough syrup with alcohol in it; if ...
What makes you think you know more about reality than I do? But then, I'm still not clear on what you mean by feeling, emotions or genuine. Or why inf...
A no-brainer, if you look at a small town like a clan. Everybody is his brother's keeper. If you're a farmer and somebody in the town is hungry, you b...
This, or something like it, I know from experience. There are different methods - solitary contemplation works for me; for someone I know who suffers ...
So, it makes you more sensitive to others, more empathic? Those are frontal lobe functions, abstract thought, symbol-making functions, far from the pr...
That's interesting. What 'things' do you feel when meditating that are different from the things you feel when connected to the outside world? And how...
It's what Vulcans do to control their otherwise volatile emotions. Social conditioning is aimed at the same thing: to keep a rein on feelings that cou...
What are feelings? Wouldn't you have to be quite clear on their definition and origin before you could begin to assess their genuineness? Don't you ha...
There isn't any! That's the beauty of it: no requirements to fulfill, no deadlines to meet, no justifications or excuses or alibis to concoct. Unless ...
Yes, it will always be corrupted, and will need to be reformed periodically. So, when you're setting up the checks and balances, why not also build in...
I have a slightly different take on this. The baby doesn't dream of dragons or evil: its world revolves around meals, nappy changes and cuddles - but ...
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