Perceptions of Reality

Archer:Man... you're totally misunderstanding me...Morality is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

Uh.. I have no idea what your talking about.And I only used the example you tore apart with some interesting math... so as to demsonstrate it's failure myself. I guess that means we agree that it doesn't hold water..., but I dunno...I presented the counterperspective as a more livable alternative to the weakness of the naturalist implications.Archer, we're just not on the same page, or map.Sorry...Edited by Rob, : No reason given.

Rob:jar;So the rules governing any given system are absolute and determined by the creator/creators of said system? And any violation of them is an 'actual' offense of an objective essential to the system and demands justice?Edited by Rob, : No reason given.

Maybe this will help in explaining why I believe morality to be absolute...Archer:Yes... and that is why 'wrong' things like what happened at V. Tech are wrong.That is why lying about facts is wrong. I'm not talking about ignorance. I am talking about a intentional falsehood. It is absolutely wrong.And telling the truth, even at the expense of our own political expediency is absolutely good.Can you question those examples logically?

That only works if "The Truth" is absolute - and you're still unable to demonstrate that it is.Since your perception (remember that?) of the truth is relative, telling your version of the truth can only be relatively good or bad.

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Very good. You say we're not on the same map, Rob, but I think we're doing fine.Here are some more for you.

Stinky tofu is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Life is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Death is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Science is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Art is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Action is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Inaction is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Beauty is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Ugliness is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Elvis is part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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Elvis impersonators are part of reality. And reality is absolute.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Archer: Oh. So you DO think reality is absolute Logically, yes. Your entire statement depends on equivocation. This is a fallacy.'Wrong' can mean factually wrong (false, unreal, untrue) and morally wrong (cruel, dishonest, immoral).You use the word both ways and take this equivocation as 'proving' somehow that reality and morality are synonymous terms.I know you conflate the two meanings on purpose. Logically, though, you can't do this.One reason why you can't is because it's begging the question to assume the conclusion in one's argument.Another reason why you can't is because you recognize a distinction between these two meanings in the argument. This makes the argument self-contradictory.You do this when you make an exception for ignorance. Falsehoods arising from ignorance, you allow, are not necessarily 'wrong' in moral terms.This acknowledges a difference between factual wrong and moral wrong. The two are not the same._____Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : concision.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

No, the rules are relative and created by the users of the system. They are not the product of the creator of the system. That is simply more of your jabberwocky. Justice has nothing to do with the issue. Your behavior is a violation of the terms and conditions that you accepted.Frankly Rob, I have no problem with your continued failure to actually address points, it allows the readers to see how absolutely bankrupt your theology really is. The readers can see that there is a pattern and the pattern is that for every issue, Rob simply tries to move the goal posts, post irrelevant material from some imagined "Authority" or toss out yet another irrelevant issue like justice as though justice was some absolute.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Of course. You were talking about pictures of reality.You wanted to show everyone your picture of reality. You wanted to let them see how much prettier it is than some other picture. How much more 'liveable' it is (for you) than some other picture is (for you).This is like showing everyone a crisp, shiny new postcard of Los Angeles and a frayed, battered old postcard of San Franscisco and on that basis declaring that living in Los Angeles is better than living in San Francisco.No one can argue with a statement from Rob about where Rob would prefer to live. Rob is the expert on what Rob likes.But it's another thing to start saying 'Because I, Rob, prefer living in Los Angeles to living in San Francisco, Los Angeles is the one right answer for everybody.' Now you treat Rob, and Rob's ideas, as the absolute. You mistake your picture of reality for reality itself.It's well and good to share ideas about models of reality and state why you find one or the other more 'liveable.' None of this says anything about absolutes.Reality is absolute. Pictures of it vary.A picture of reality you can carry around inside your head is not the ultimate reality.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Archer:I never said anything about it being livable. In fact, as the story goes, only one person ever lived it. So He is the leader.It's the hardest thing in the world. As C.S. Lewis said, 'we could never have guessed it.'Not the kind of thing that humans think of. No... we think of things which put us on the top.

Rob in Message 257: Rob in Message 265:

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

You got me there...What I should have said in message 257 (had I been more patient and not caught in this drama) is that the counterperpective takes into consideration, the other needs of the human soul, like the desire to live.

Not sure I agree with you here. These are subjective items and are different for different people. Isn't that just a perception of reality?There are things that people perceive to be beautiful, ugly, moral, etc. and we can discuss these concepts and write books about them, but does that make the perception real? Doesn't that also make every myth, science fiction novel and dream real?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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You assume the human desire to live is not considered in other perspectives. This is false.A fair-minded hearing of other views besides yours will show this to be so.I am not saying you will find other pictures to your liking. You will like what you will like and you will believe what you will believe. These may well turn out to be different things. I am only saying that the human desire to live is considered in other pictures besides your own. You do them a disservice when you say otherwise.It's true that it is easier to sell a product when you can hold it next to a single Brand X and make that Brand X look as unappealing as possible. Evangelists know this. Evangelism has always been about making sales. But if you would be a person of integrity, leave salesmanship behind. Become a person interested in truth. Follow the truth wherever it leads. Let the product endorsements fall where they may.You discredit yourself when you repeatedly step into the strawman fallacy--misrepresenting another view and treating that as Brand X. The exercise is anti-intellectual and anti-truth. Rejecting corrections to the picture from the people in the best position to know only highlights the unreality of it. It does nothing to help you make your case.You have set two pictures against each other: (your idea of) faith against (your idea of) science.Pictures that are blurry and distorted offer a poor basis for making comparisons. How good are yours? Not very. If we grant that Los Angeles is full of human souls filled with a desire to live, it does not follow that San Francisco isn't. Yet this is what you ask us to believe. Your comparison begins with a fallacy.I submit that the world--reality--is big enough to accommodate both science and faith, just as it is big enough to accommodate multiple cities and many ways of living.Postcards cannot do the same. A postcard is two-dimensional and flat. The view it offers is severely restricted. A postcard is not a city. It is not the world.When your pictures of science and faith look incompatible, it's time not to jump to conclusions, but to ask what has been left out of the shot by the people who framed your pictures. It may be time to put the postcards in a drawer and do some travel. See real places. Meet the natives. Make better, more complete pictures for yourself out of your own richest experiences of the real thing.Pictures show us things, hide things, bracket things. Some give us details, some panoramas. We can find them beautiful or ugly or boring or inspiring. We can prefer one to the other. We will gain a better perspective from a gallery than a single image. But in the final analysis pictures are limited. There is always that frame.Reality is everything. Always._____Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Sure. The subjective is also part of reality. You're taking this into some advanced areas for some of our readers... but yes, novels and dreams are real.The content is not factual. But Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a real novel and your dreams are real dreams. I can show you a copy of the novel and your dreaming can be monitored on instruments.Novels and dreams are phenomena of our experience, as are earthquakes and Elvis impersonators. Yes?___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.