The Limits of Empathy!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Castout

Many people confuse between expression of faith and knowledge.

"God hardened Pharaoh's heart" is an expression of faith. it can only be understood by people who share the faith. And that statement even stemming from faith is not necessarily baseless as the person saying it is saying it out of whatever personal knowledge he had of God.

And once again you mistake "belief" for "knoweldge".

Ultimately the person who said "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" has made the realization that God ultimately has authority over all including people's attitude. He is saying that God ultimately has everything under His control/rule.

You know call believing "realization". That is deceptive, but still no "knowing", but "believing" (as long as we do not assume the person in question was mentally ill - schizophrenia for example - and heared voices in his head).

To those people reading it especially ones without faith nor understanding of the person who said it will find it absurd and even repelling or offensive.

The only offensive thing here is that it offends the intellect to mistake believing for knowing.

PS:It may even be an expression of knowledge but one which most of us never understand thus the controversy. Reading the scripture is not as simple as reading any book. often a sentence carries double meaning. What is literal and implied or the meaning evade people understanding despite the obvious to some. Many without faith will find so many writings to be weird and absurd.

There once was a man who believed he could fly. He was so certain and beyond any doubt about his ability to fly, that he claimed he really knew indeed that he could fly, and his knowledge was strong and confident. One day he climbed on a tower, moved his arms and jumped down. Before he impacted on the ground and died, he all of a sudden realised the difference between knowing and believing, and for a second he indeed knew something for sure: he knew that he could not fly.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by Skybird

And once again you mistake "belief" for "knoweldge".


You know call believing "realization". That is deceptive, but still no "knowing", but "believing" (as long as we do not assume the person in question was mentally ill - schizophrenia for example - and heared voices in his head).


The only offensive thing here is that it offends the intellect to mistake believing for knowing.


There once was a man who believed he could fly. He was so certain and beyond any doubt about his ability to fly, that he claimed he really knew indeed that he could fly, and his knowledge was strong and confident. One day he climbed on a tower, moved his arms and jumped down. Before he impacted on the ground and died, he all of a sudden realised the difference between knowing and believing, and for a second he indeed knew something for sure: he knew that he could not fly.

Umm no I'm not mistaken.

You are unwilling to understand and or unable at the same time.

I never claim I know everything. Yet I know some of the things.

I'm only aware that people like you can never understand and I begin to accept it. So thus I shall not waste my words.

I know and I'm not mistaking believing with knowing.

I just want to say that the proof of God is the consistency and the truth of what is said about Him on the scripture, whether you knew it in advance or NOT. But each person must make the journey of stepping into the knowing from the believing.

And to Skybird
There once was a man who believed he could fly. He was so certain and beyond any doubt about his ability to fly, that he claimed he really knew indeed that he could fly, and his knowledge was strong and confident. One day he climbed on a tower, moved his arms and jumped down. Before he impacted on the ground and died, he all of a sudden realised the difference between knowing and believing, and for a second he indeed knew something for sure: he knew that he could not fly.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Castout

Umm no I'm not mistaken.

You are unwilling to understand and or unable at the same time.

I never claim I know everything. Yet I know some of the things.

I'm only aware that people like you can never understand and I begin to accept it. So thus I shall not waste my words.

I know and I'm not mistaking believing with knowing.

Yeah. Sure.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Yeah. Sure.

Yeah sure on your yeah sure.

You know you know something from experience of course provided that the experience is real. If the experience was useful and able to be used it proves to be real.

if the experience wasn't useful or untrue or cannot be used then the experience must not be real.

Tod learns that he could go to school faster each day if he walked through a shortcut. He arrives quicker to school if he uses the shortcut so he knows that what he learned is true. Had the shortcut made him to arrive longer consistently than he used to then we must say the shortcut knowledge is a false knowledge or merely his belief and that would be a false belief.

[Skybird]

If only you would do like Tod and walk that path yourself. But you don't. You imagine in your fantasy how you walk a path you do not know and just imagtine to be there, and you listen to that voice inside your head that tells you that it is shorter. And this imagination, this fiction of yours you then claim to be your experience and knowledge. It's like a dog chasing its tail like crazy, but getting nowhere.

However. As I see it, you are always in midflight down that tower, and whether your learn before you hit the ground or not, does not really effect me in any way.

You know you know something from experience of course provided that the experience is real.

Yeah, you have written that god speaks to you and you can actually see peoples souls, yet you wrote commending a very sick twisted multiple murderer as a decent person.
Experience would suggest you are away with the fairies

The word of God (Bible) is a Spirit filled message for simple people to understand basic truth ( ie the prodical son). The Bible was not written for the educated or powerfull leaders, the truth has been hidden from them, what they have is what you read here, explanation.

It was and is the powerfull and educated elite who grabbed the word and used it for themselves to control the poor and its been that way ever since.

When Jesus came it was to free us from our sin, but just as importantly to free us from the law as written by the powerful and educated.

Freedom is the right we all have to speak our minds, and to do so without control. Therein is our problem, that is why Jesus came to free us from sin and law and the control of the liars and cheats in politics.

The song has been trying to tell us for years "I was blind, and now I can see" hundreds of people sing this song daily without the Spiritual understanding of what they are singing. easy aint it.

[MH]

Originally Posted by sidslotm

The word of God (Bible) is a Spirit filled message for simple people to understand basic truth ( ie the prodical son). The Bible was not written for the educated or powerfull leaders, the truth has been hidden from them, what they have is what you read here, explanation.

It was and is the powerfull and educated elite who grabbed the word and used it for themselves to control the poor and its been that way ever since.

When Jesus came it was to free us from our sin, but just as importantly to free us from the law as written by the powerful and educated.

Freedom is the right we all have to speak our minds, and to do so without control. Therein is our problem, that is why Jesus came to free us from sin and law and the control of the liars and cheats in politics.

The song has been trying to tell us for years "I was blind, and now I can see" hundreds of people sing this song daily without the Spiritual understanding of what they are singing. easy aint it.

I cant really say that Jesus did a good job by looking at what little i know about history of Christianity.

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

A theory is usually proferred after some evidence points in that direction, not before. If the construct is believed beforehand, and is the basis for the theory rather than the other way around, it ceases to be science, if it ever was to start with.

Under current philosophy of science, what you state is false. To be scientific, a theory must be testable, in that it can be proven wrong (not right as it is impossible to prove something right). You do not even need to offer any evidence, so long as it is testable. Testability is what makes something scientific.

A perfect example of this is what is going on in the physics world right now, where the theory of relativity is looking like it is going to fall. This theory has been tested many many times, and has not been proven false. Yet now suddenly there is evidence that the theory does not work. This goes to show the basic concept in philosophy of science, that a theory that has been tested 0 times, is just as valid as one that has been tested 10000000 times. Theory is valid if it is testable until the point that it fails in testing.

Also you cannot gather evidence until you have a working theory to start with, as you don't know what you are searching for or what connections you are trying to make without a theory and a deduced hypothesis.


As for the whole religion debate, I am staying out of it as I have better things to do than try to demonstrate to the blind the difference between belief and knowing (which I think is silly, as we can't truly know anything either). We are all infinitely ignorant.

Here is a favorite quote of mine which captures human knowledge in my view perfectly, by C.G. Jung.

"Science is the art of creating suitable illusions which the fool believes or argues against, but the wise man enjoys their beauty or their ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the Unknowable."

[Skybird]

"Die Wirklichkeit wird weniger von uns gefunden als vielmehr erfunden." (Paul Watzlawick, psychologist, psychoanalyst, on radical constructivism) --> "Reality does not get so much discovered by us, butgets invented/constructed."

„So we are not dealing with the universe in front of us, which will remain an eternal mystery for us, but we deal with a model of a universe that we can create inside our head as we like. For all of us, not cosmos itself is the object of our examination, but it’s dance with our mind.” - (John Wheeler, US physicist, translated from the German).

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

Under current philosophy of science, what you state is false. To be scientific, a theory must be testable, in that it can be proven wrong (not right as it is impossible to prove something right). You do not even need to offer any evidence, so long as it is testable. Testability is what makes something scientific.

Point taken. This is probably why I'm not a scientist. Or is that the other way around?

Also you cannot gather evidence until you have a working theory to start with, as you don't know what you are searching for or what connections you are trying to make without a theory and a deduced hypothesis.

Hmm. I thought that in certain cases (gravity) the theory was created in an attempt to explain an observed phenomenon. Shows what I know.

As for the whole religion debate, I am staying out of it as I have better things to do than try to demonstrate to the blind the difference between belief and knowing (which I think is silly, as we can't truly know anything either). We are all infinitely ignorant.

That's what I always say. I, on the other hand, don't have anything better to do, and I don't have the intelligence to know when to stop beating a dead horse.

[MH]

In science there is a lot of blind belief established on faith.
Scientists don't like their own theories to crumble.
Good example is resent Israeli Nobel prise winner who had been expelled from academy and laughed at for more than 10 years.

[August]

For a bunch of Godless Atheists (yeah I know that's redundant) you people quote the Bible more often than the most irritating of door to door missionaries.

Regardless of where you fall in the religion debate you should understand this:

The Bible was written by humans for the benefit of humans to describe a deity concept that we barely comprehend let alone understand. Anyone that takes the Bible, the Koran, Torah or any other religious text as pure unadorned fact misses the entire point of why they were written.

But I guess it is a lot easier to play "Gotcha" with individual bible passages, often taken out of context, in order to get the goat of those who do believe that there is a force greater than ourselves in the universe.

[MH]

Originally Posted by August

For a bunch of Godless Atheists (yeah I know that's redundant) you people quote the Bible more often than the most irritating of door to door missionaries.

Regardless of where you fall in the religion debate you should understand this:

The Bible was written by humans for the benefit of humans to describe a deity concept that we barely comprehend let alone understand. Anyone that takes the Bible, the Koran, Torah or any other religious text as pure unadorned fact misses the entire point of why they were written.

But I guess it is a lot easier to play "Gotcha" with individual bible passages, often taken out of context, in order to get the goat of those who do believe that there is a force greater than ourselves in the universe.

As Godless and soulless as i'm agree a lot with you here.
I must be really confused person.... but religion is not an option for me.

[August]

Originally Posted by MH

As Godless and soulless as i'm agree a lot with you here.
I must be really confused person.... but religion is not an option for me.

Well FWIW MH I've never seen you play the Gotcha game.