Is it better to be intellectually honest or emotionally honest? Is a balance of the two good or bad? Necessary or not?
What does it meant to be emotionally honest?
If it’s what I think it is (something along the lines of “to oneself be true”) then intellectual honesty is far better because it aids in survival, to wit: “I have carved this spear carefully and critically to ensure it will fly straight” can get you a meal. “I have carved this spear until it feels right” means a miss and an angered mastodon stomping you into the ground.
I mean supported by anything at all besides people’s unsupported word, in contradiction of observed reality; something that there is simply no reason to believe. “Faith” is just a pretty word for lie or delusion.
The uncertainty principle forbids that some information be accessible at all. And you can’t access information FTL.
And you prove my point; in order to justify God even being possible, you need to flee the world. To postulate a place we have no evidence of, operating according to rules we have no evidence of, in order to justify even the possibility of a being we have no evidence of. It’s ridiculous.
Oh, yes they are.
Really. And what is a soul made of ? How does it hold together without matter ? How does it store information ? How does it interact with the brain without being detected ? How to you reconcile the effects of brain damage or drugs and the existence of a soul ? And so on.
Wrong. I am arguing your false attempt to pretend that science and mathematics are just as baseless as religion. To pretend that religion is something else than a contradictory collection of lies and delusions with no evidence and contradictory to known facts, not to mention illogical.
But we don’t live in an irrational universe. That’s why science works in the first place. It’s “assumed” that the consistency of reality won’t go out the window tomorrow because it never has. Unlike the empty guesses of religion, it’s an assumption based on millennia of working, without exception.
But they simply aren’t. We have billions of years of evidence that the universe isn’t random; that’s an “assumption” with a lot of evidence, and shows just how silly it is to compare it to the assumptions of religion that have zero or negative evidence.
The universe IS operating according to rules, not chance. We know what chance looks like, and this isn’t it. And “strange alien unreason” would just be another set of rules.
Well, you’d be wrong. Believers ignore outright disproof of their beliefs all the time.
Yes. “Objectively real” is a term with meaning; “spiritually real” is meaningless gibberish.
Existing as something other than a fiction, lie or delusion. You are using a definition of God that I seriously doubt anyone, even you actually takes seriously. It’s just another example of how foolish belief in God is, that you have to retreat so far from reality to claim he’s even possible.
Really, it gets pretty silly when the first thing people do when trying to justify God is to throw out reality. “He’s outside of spacetime !” “You can’t prove the world exists either !” It helps underline just how silly and unjustifiable the whole idea of God is.
Well, that’s a bit circular, isn’t it? “The past has always been a good guide to the future in the past; therefore, the past shall continue being a good guide to the future in the future”, by way of the past being a good guide to the future…
I think inductive reasoning makes for a fine system, but I don’t think your argument succeeds in externally establishing its validity (which is fine, explanations come to an end somewhere).
My point is that first, it’s a simpler explanation than assuming billions of years of coincidence. And second, that it works, and working is pretty good justification for the validity of a system until someone comes along with something better. And third, that it’s better than religion has ever achieved.
The consistency of the universe IS proof of it’s existence in the way scientists ( and usually other people ) use the term. In arguments like this one, the religious believers try to drag in the mathematical/logical definition of proof, which is much more stringent ( and really unachievable outside of such abstract systems ), in order to claim that “science is just as unprovable as religion”. That’s what is really going on; it’s another attempt by the believers to drag science down to their level.
I wouldn’t expect a soul to drink alcohol or anything else. While the soul is still attached to the body I might expect something else.
That is a great question. I’ve wondered plenty of times. If we are really eternal spiritual beings then why are we here at all?
Perhaps it’s just the experience. Perhaps we come into a world of duality to learn to appreciate the light. I don’t know.
The up side is that we don’t need to answer that question to use a belief system live in the moment and make it better.
And now we’ve entered that area where there won’t be any interesting discussion
You made the statement that most believers believe in an objectively real supreme being. I’ve tried to point out that isn’t necessarily so. According to your own rules, that you’ve stated many times, when someone makes a factual statement it is their responsibility to back it up. Evidently you can’t and this is how you avoid admitting it. That’s fine. If you can’t back it up we’ll just end the discussion here.
Are you sure? Does that mean all those people who believed they could do something that has never been done before should have been intellectually honest and never tried?
I think it’s possible to be both or at least find a pretty reasonable balance. Believing things that are contrary to very clear strong evidence may be intellectually dishonest. Believing something that objective evidence doesn’t even apply to is not.
Believers or non believers thinking their own feelings and preferences don’t influence their definition of intellectually honest, are not being honest. 
I don’t understand the disconnect. Experimentation is based on a hypothesis and a test of that hypothesis (if I mix these two chemicals, then I’ll observe an effect). Intellectual honesty would be noting the results correctly. Intellectual dishonesty would be ignoring unfavourable results or altering the conditions to get desired results while not admitting such alteration has taken place.
I’d go a little further and say claiming things that are contrary to very clear strong evidence is intellectually dishonest, i.e. one tries to speak with authority about things one knows (or should know but won’t admit) are untrue. Simply keeping these opinions to yourself would, I guess, qualify as emotional dishonesty, but I’m still waiting for a definition of that term.
In any case, let’s say Concept A cannot have objective evidence applied to it. Concept B, also, cannot have objective evidence applied to it. Are Concept A and Concept B interchangeable, then?
And I’ve pointed out how silly that claim is. People claim all the time that God does this or God wants that; they make claims that God is this way or that way - claim one makes of something objective. There MAY be somewhere a few weird types who actually believe in your subjective God; but I doubt you could fill a good sized room with them.
No, I’m backed up by all the believers who make it clear that they DO believe that God is a real being. You are the one claiming that all those millions of people are using your personal bizarre definition of God, and apparently lying about it in some vast conspiracy. I’m just taking people at their word about what they believe.
If the soul has thoughts, then it processes information, and that takes energy. Where does this energy come from, and how is it processed by an immaterial thing? I’d say that souls definitely violate the laws of nature as we know them.
Though if they are outside of nature they cannot interact with things within nature, so I don’t know how you have any knowledge of them, never mind evidence of them. You can make up anything you want to, but it is more at the level of fantasy than belief.
To paraphrase Mr. Dooley, the Mormon Church follows the election returns. I’m certainly not denying that churches change some views - the Catholics even believe that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe anymore. But I don’t see any changing the fundamental views. Most of Christianity, anyway. Now Christianity splinters so often perhaps a change creates a new church, not a change in the old one.
I was okay up until the last sentence. All true facts are universal, so if you believe something is a true fact, then it must be universal. But John appears to be just asserting a truth. I’d say truths always effectively start from scratch, though we may build on truths found by others. An atheist making an OP just saying that there obviously is no God, so grow up, would get jeered by the atheist side as much as the theist side. We all need justifications.
True, but it would also be harder for some religious leaders to bully everyone else based on a God they can’t claim knowledge of. Then where would we be?
I don’t mean just in science although I’d say scientists can skew results based on ego and emotion. That doesn’t change the principle though.
I mean anyone who has conceived of doing something that’s never been done and taken the steps to accomplish it, in spite of being told they were wasting their time. They believed in something. Emotional honesty IMO is an essential part of the thing that makes us strive to understand and accomplish.
To thine own self be true is not a bad take on it. I think emotional honesty is equally important to intellectual honesty. Are belief systems are made up of our analysis of the world around us using the intellect and our emotions.
I’d agree with that first sentence although the average joe may not take time to
No.
If they say God opened the window that’s objective. If they say God moved in their heart that’s subjective. Even if they say God helped them get a job, or helped Uncle Bob stop drinking, it’s spiritual.
People do believe God heals the sick and the physical body is objective, but that doesn’t mean they think God is objective. It means they believe God can effect objective things.
I’ve already said they think God is real. That’s not the issue.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work. When I said believers are more likely to give to charity Kalhoun asked to see some statistics and I provided them. You’ve stated something about believers as fact that now you can’t or won’t back it up. That’s okay.
No doubt that happens but I think it still reflects a gradual and persistent change. When the church I used to belong to changed its name and started ordaining women a couple of splinter groups broke off but the main body of the church accepted the change and moved on.
I phrased that poorly. I meant nobody’s concept of truth started from scratch. I suppose if you go back to infancy it did, but the point was that all people gather their belief system from their environment with it’s good or bad influences.
What do you mean John appears to be asserting a truth? I agree that true facts are universal. The truth will eventually sift the myth from fact.
better off?
Well, what established something as “science” is that it can be repeated elsewhere, by different scientists, so while it is possible that some particular scientist can bias a result to his liking, other scientists can just as cheerfully contradict his work.
Okay, but that doesn’t get any closer to defining what emotional honesty is.
Why? One person devoutly believes in God. Another person devoutly believes in Zeus. For these beliefs to not be interchangeable, there has to be a distinct observable difference between them. Can you suggest one?
No, it’s objective. It’s the equivalent of claiming that the government is making people do things with mind control rays, the claim that an outside force is affecting you.
:rolleyes: Oh, please. Anything that can do that IS objective.
No, you are simply ignoring the obvious, in order to push an incredibly distorted argument. I doubt that anyone has ever bothered to poll how many consider God to be objective, since the number would be 99.9+ %. You are the one making a bizarre claim about God and how people think about him, without evidence that anyone, anywhere actually buys into your idea. You are describing a God that has the characteristics of something objective, insisting that it be referred to as subjective, and deluding yourself that you’ve done something other than clumsy word games.
That happens in religion as well. People disagree about the nature of god and god’s relationship to us and our relationship to each other. One persons work contradicts the other. It’s just a longer harder process with religion because the subject matter isn’t as concrete.
Okay, Emotional honesty id being consciously aware of what you feel and being honest with yourself and others about it. The search for truth must include the truth about ourselves. Remember this started with a comment about the purpose of life.
A distinct difference to whom and on what level? For what purpose? The difference is within the believer.
Ahhhh now the going in circles. Very productive. Who said it’s an outside force?
really? Perhaps you can explain how a placebo works.
Since I’ve asked you several times now to back this up and you’ve offered nothing, which sadly is par for the course for you, we are now officially done talking about this until you do.