All those things are not equivalent ideas and comparisons, you know. Charlatans and hypocrites are bad. Worshiping a Cabbage Patch doll is almost certainly a sign of mental illness. Worshiping Allah, moving to a jungle in Guyana, going door to door as a missionary, handing out flowers at the airport and tithing 10% of your income are all eqaully valid acts expressing one’s personally and sincerely held belief systems about God and the nature of the universe.
Are you really agnostic?
I’m an agnostic. So while I do, personally, find some things more believable and likely than others, I don’t dismiss others out of hand..because I’m an agnostic: I don’t know and I don’t think it’s knowable at this point in our evolution.
The only reason I singled out the Cabbage Patch doll is because it is a manufactured object, and therefore no one has any reason to believe that it deserves worship. However, if someone who otherwise appears sane expressed a sincere belief that the manufactured object had been revealed to them to contain some spirit or being that chose to inhabit it, I might even consider adding the doll to the list.
I just appreciate consistency in one’s logic. If one dismisses the possibility of anything metaphysical, fine. But if you know you don’t know, then you don’t know, and there’s no real reason to think that Christianity might be true but a Universal Mind is ludicrous - the lack of evidence for both is the same. So while you might personally find yourself more persuaded that one is more possible than the other, there is no objective standard for saying that one absolutely IS more possible than the other, so neither genuinely warrants more or less scorn than the other.
AS for the Dr. Phil thing, it certainly appears you may be right, but it doesn’t actually make any sense, given that Oprah is the producer of the show, and as such has the power to tell Dr. Phil to not book a guest.
So my next query would be the nature of the contract between them…and king world and the other parties. But since part of the contract includes Dr. Phil never airing opposite Oprah, making it clear that the idea of competition was not on the table, it seems likely that Oprah does have the power to stop any unwanted poaching.
Easily the dumbest remark in the thread so far. Asie from the fact that Oprah had giveaways once a year, do you have some way to explain how she and Ellen “bribe” the people at home to watch and give them their great ratings?
How could you possibly “find” her anything at all, never having seen a single show? Do you generally make such conclusive, concrete, not to mention harsh, judgments about things you have absolutely no meaningful knowledge of?
Yes they are. All magical beliefs are equally irrational.
Agnosticism is a position on what can be proven. Much of the woo pushed by Oprah is provable bullshit.
All magical beliefs are equally irrational. It’s also fatuous to say that we “don’t know” whether some magical beliefs might be true. Impossible things can be safely assumed to be impossible until proven otherwise. You can’t disprove the existence of wood sprites, hobgoblins or Isis either, but we don’t act like those things are entitled to any default presumption of possibility. Non-existnece is the logical default. Belief in magic without evdience is irrational, and being routinely taken in by con artists the way that Oprah constantly gets taken (or holding prayer circles to combat “the forces of darkness” during vampire movies) is fucking DUMB. I bet she’s fallen for Nigerian email scams. That’s no stupider than falling for mediums.
Of course it was. I realize that you believe that your opinions are Absolute Truth, but that’s just your belief, not reality. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it is your reality, because of course it is.
But your reality is not THE reality…again, I recognize that this is outside your understanding, but that’s ok too.
I agree she does have charisma. I saw some documentary about her that showed a clip from her time as a member of a local TV news team. I can only say that she practically shone personally. It was that obvious.
But I’m not a fan. Charisma is not enough to make me buy a product she endorses, send her money, vote for her, find her ideas intriguing and subscribe to her newsletter, etc. And it says nothing about her actual honesty, intelligence or any other quality. But you don’t become a billionaire by being stupid (about business, at least).
Neither is yours. Or mine.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” --Philip K. Dick
Rather, your definition of narcissism is different from others. Personally, I confine “narcissism” to a pathology. I wouldn’t call Oprah a narcissist.
From the Ebert link above. He was talking to Sophia Loren about a perfume she was endorsing:
O.K., Diogenes the Cynic, let me get this straight. Oprah has been the host of a TV show with her name on it for the past 25 years. She has owned a magazine with her name on it and her picture on the cover each issue for the past 11 years. (There’s a second magazine with just “O” on the cover.) She has published five books with her name on the cover. She runs a website with her name prominently displayed. She has a TV network with her name on it. She has a satellite network with her name on it. From these various businesses she has made $2.7 billion dollars, making her the richest American woman with a self-made fortune. You say that this makes her a narcissist, although it doesn’t fit the definition of a psychological pathology. Whatever you call it, it has made her a fortune.
You have posted to the SDMB almost 18 times a day for almost 9 years. That’s more total posts than anyone else in the history of the SDMB. Has it made you a fortune?
