Tom Storm

I don't think naivety or some kind of purity myth plays a big role in this. The problem is no one has any way of demonstrating precisely what the corr...

Ok, that's useful. Thank you.

Not sure I have ever understood this properly. I don't have a sense of difference (only continuity) so how do I know the me of yesterday is in any way...

That's a nice point. I often think that if there is a true interpretation but it is impossible to identify in practice, is this almost like saying the...

Nice. Thank you This frequently intrigues me. I guess it is difficult to contextualize a thing without a conception of its opposite. I bet there's a c...

Well, we know from the pejorative expression, 'keeping up with the Joneses' that there is something problematic and to be resisted in this superimpose...

Ah... but what precisely does it mean 'to keep up'?

I'm not intending to be provocative, but I've got to ask, do you think you might be holding a romanticized, Western notion of 'orientalism' rather tha...

Thanks. I enjoyed this acute summary of postmodernism. Can you provide a few points more on this? I'm interested that you say this is difficult to che...

Would we need to demonstrate that they intended to misinterpret the Bible? It seems more likely that they are sincere and that the Bible is like a Ror...

I'm not a mythicist, so I'm not saying that Jesus wasn't based on an actual person. Just that we have nothing reliable to go by. This matters when we ...

Incidentally, this is exactly how Christianity functions as it stands (but without the skepticism). Religious folk base their version of Jesus on subj...

Ok, but I would venture there is nothing in the gospels that is true or actually happened. I think we can safely chuck all of it out. :wink:

Surely the big problem here is we have no reason to think anything in the NT is quoting whoever the character of Jesus was based on. The gospels were ...

Please no more about the Jan 6 Capitol attack!

You made an amusing choice of wording and you seek to walk it back. I understand, Comrade, it’s not really that significant.

I'm not saying it's an endorsement of murder - Yahweh as genocidal thug is well understood - just the Noah's Ark story accounts for that. Yahweh's ent...

Like Cain and Abel?

I guess I was wondering if some of those plaintive cries that there is no truth is a type of commitment avoidance.

Do you think that truth is something some people fear?

I'm not entirely sure what point you are making in your OP - that could be my fault. I have no particular gripe against the present era. I don't think...

Yes, but I think the problem for this particular narrow band of thinking is that it overlooks the fact that a god belief provides no objective basis t...

I think this is Sartre. Dostoyevsky alludes to similar sentiment in The Brothers Karamazov but does not put it so directly. "'But what will become of ...

Yep - I'd write it phonetically as Nee-chuh. I imagine Clarky was playing on the average American pronunciation, which is somewhat gaudy.

It's funny how plants come in and out of fashion. I remember when the rubber tree (ficus elastica) was everywhere in the 1970's. It vanished for decad...

Nice. I sit here sipping my glass of oily Victory gin whilst watching a washer woman through my window who is at least a meter across at the hips.

:ok:

If only St Paul had been mostly sober.

Hmm.. I think Occam actually said, Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate. Which means, 'If you don't understand something complex always res...

Thanks

How did you determine that a simulation makes more sense than evolution? Who created the simulation? Is it programmers all the way down?

By the way this is a juicy morsel. Pretty sure I agree. Can you expand in it a little?

:wink:

I watch some YouTube and attend this site which is the sum total of my screen life. I know this is probably going to sound disingenuous, but when peop...

Not sure it is meant to be read as a futuristic novel or sci fi as such. It's a seminal text about politics and society; a kind of meditation on propa...

I'm yet to meet anyone here in this Commonwealth who cares. The best people can say is she did a 'professional job' whatever that is supposed to mean....

1984 it's the story about how truth becomes irrelevant to the ongoing sustainability of a military dictatorship much like North Korea. “Every record h...

I wonder if that's a different phenomenon. One would have to call the era of Joseph Goebbels an era of post-truth and a hallmark of fascism is when th...

Sure, but they never got anywhere. Shakespeare however, when he ran out of neologism, used emojis liberally - :chin: :smile: : :down: :worry: :death: ...

What do you mean by post-truth? My understanding is this is a term used by critics to describe unethical positions held in politics and culture. I don...

I read somewhere that emojis are simply punctuation at its most evolved.

Indeed. And this is a fascinating subject. While I think the 'art' of making judgments is complex and somewhat perplexing, I think it's likely we can ...

Yes, that's a very important one, where it can be known. On this I can only make judgements based on the arguments provided and assembled. Am I convin...

Bloody Communist!

I don't have anything specific in mind. I see people quote Jordan Peterson as an expert on any manner of subjects, for instance - climate change, femi...

Agree. Yes, that's likely too. These days even the notion of an expert is highly contentious. And setting aside philosophical questions about epistemo...

Take me to the corner of Eliminative Materialism and Wishful Thinking. There's an extra $10 in it if you can get me there before @"universeness".

I think this is an important strand of the problem. Vested interest groups have always lied to gain advantage. But when I think about this post-honest...

My own judgment is that there is no ultimate reality or mystery to solve, or purpose to find, nor any thought system that will work or appeal to all. ...

Nice. Good example. In a funny kind of way the die hard supporters of political parties or candidates have never much seemed to concern themselves wit...