uncanni

It seems that even the short posts aren't focused quite frequently.

You must stay away from the discussions with around 2,000 responses. Just because a discussion gets long doesn't mean it can't keep its focus.

I don't know if I'm more sensitive to nastiness than others.

So you believe that we learn from trolling? I see it as toxic, discussion-killing. So do the experts.

Bakhtin's point is that there are dialogic strategies which open a space for broader mutual understanding, and monologic strategies that shut down the...

An angry, insulting, patronizing participant has nothing to teach me.

Is there a philosophy of nastiness, or just a psychology? :nerd:

Of course, you can't force someone who's being monologic and con-trolling to become dialogically-minded. You can't make an angry person happy. So the ...

That is a sad statement, indeed. The moderators, in allowing the tone to be set in such a way, perpetuate the kind of academic cruelty that never shou...

Seriously, this makes me so sad: there is very little affection and joy going on here. When I first came here, a little over three weeks ago, I felt l...

There are women on the forum as well. I am not consumed by competitiveness. I love the rational and polite exchange of ideas and the entire process of...

I'm game, and I'm proposing a reading or a story based on some of the stories in the book of Genesis. Understanding those stories as tremendously comp...

The whole point of that story is about how one lives his life. Zusha recognizes the shortcomings that prevented him from living his life as fruitfully...

That too.

That isn't an accurate description of how Judaism operates (and I don't know what the other Abrahamic religions are). That sounds like Christianity to...

15

S, how old are you?????

I tend to see it as a malignent (in the most evil sense of the word) cancer poisoning and rotting humanity. Hostility is like bloody stool: not a good...

Or a singular peace, existing here on Earth, No shadows on the wall delude the view, In Nature we are always born anew Death nourishes the journey of ...

Genuine concern for other sentient beings?

I think the hostility is tragic.

I have noted a tendency among certain members of this forum simply to react with agression and thinly-veiled insults to statements with which they dis...

Perhaps those who practice evil create their own hell: I personally scoff at the idea of a God who would condemn anyone to eternal damnation, and pref...

Perhaps love is only possible if we understand what hatred is--which doesn't mean we have to indulge in it. To feel hatred may be enough for most of u...

And this, in turn, reminds me of Bakhtin: anyone who insists on having the "final word" wants to shut language down to a single and authoritative (=au...

This has been a fascinating discussion. God as a concept serves many purposes, as enumerated above by various members-- to control, to manipulate, to ...

A good God would practice infinite patience with corrupted souls, and wait patiently for them to get well. A good God wouldn't punish people with floo...

Yes, that sounds quite right. Your poem expresses it beautifully. And yet: Whence evil? Is it uniquely human creation? Is it somehow separate from "Go...

I love it!!! Great questions, Brian. I like the word "God" for its poetic capabilities: it evokes many images and feelings for me. So it's like poetry...

I have stopped reading you because you are repressive, not really interested in an exchange of ideas. So write away, but I won't read your responses u...

Scuse me, but the Torah is Jewish, much older than xtianity.

All I can do is say thank you: you've made my day. You are a generous individual!!

Look at what you wrote to me: If..., then... That leaves me with no response. And when someone tells me I'm not reading correctly, it conjures up imag...

I don't think you'd use fig leaves in battle. I'd say that the Torah is the start of ethics.

Now that's almost fascist in its authoritarianism. You are beginning to scare me.

I don't think you do.

Yes, and this is a blinding and pure moment, fleeting like a dream. Understanding that one is living a moment of truth is a marvellous experience--whe...

Wow!!!!!!!! ‘Life was much too easy in Paradise, And lacked therefore of any real meaning, For without the lows there can be no highs— All that remain...

But how much of the time are they irrationally driven by emotions both conscious and repressed? I think the rational capacity of our species is over-r...

I think you are trying to read Genesis like a contemporary whodunit novel. The way I read it: A&E are banished from the garden and forced to go out an...

What an amazing poem; who wrote it?

What I meant was the A&E's immediate reaction. The snake promises one thing, but after she passes it to Adam and they ate: "Then the eyes of both of t...

I assumed that Everything was God; I thought we came to that conclusion--at least, I had. What is base about existence? If God is existence, then... I...

I read it many years ago, too. Good existential kind of reading, as I recall. But I'm a lot older now and I believe my attitudes and feelings have cha...

Can the being or consciousness itself be part of the creation, in no way extraneous to it?

What if the Mind isn't a part, but the totality of the First and Fundamental Being?

So does this restrict the kinds of propositions about God that one can put forth? I thought I was getting close to consensus with at least some folks,...

Did you really think there would be consensus about this topic? If I'm limited to express what I think will fulfill the expectations of the readers, t...

I thought we did arrive at Infinite. I don't think infinity is all the same; I think there's probably infinite variation.

You're just too irritable, probably bilious. You have a lot of anger, and maybe you're really angry at women. You probably hate feminism; it probably ...