I’ve been thinking about truth, and how, as I believe it is constrained only by reality, not by our personal opinions of it. What I am talking about isn’t about you or me; the topic is whether a belief about anything can be true and not be part of reality itself. I am saying no: all truth is constrained by reality, not by my or your personal opinions of it or of each other.
One of the very sad consequences of identity politics is that we lose sight of that, and truth becomes wrapped up in personal personas. So when we think about who we are or others, the truth becomes what we think about them, but that is not healthy if we alone define truth; when in REALITY, it is only opinion.
This is very hard to get past. If someone thinks they are defined only by what they think of themselves, any disagreement is, to them, an attack on who they are, which turns nearly all disagreements into personal assaults at times. This is why so many disagreements here get personal and nasty: we blend our personal opinions about ourselves and others into these discussions, without being able to dissociate a discussion’s topic from who we are speaking to.
It is impossible to show an error in what we think if we think all of our thoughts are true because we have them.
@KellyJay said" the topic is whether a belief about anything can be true and not be part of reality itself.'
I’ve been thinking about truth, and how, as I believe it is constrained only by reality, not by our personal opinions of it. What I am talking about isn’t about you or me; the topic is whether a belief about anything can be true and not be part of reality itself. I am saying no: all truth is constrained by reality, not by my or your personal opinions of it or of each other ...[text shortened]... ble to show an error in what we think if we think all of our thoughts are true because we have them.
such as 'transgender (sex)"
is a belief that cannot sustain the reality
@KellyJay saidThis was well thought out.
I’ve been thinking about truth, and how, as I believe it is constrained only by reality, not by our personal opinions of it. What I am talking about isn’t about you or me; the topic is whether a belief about anything can be true and not be part of reality itself. I am saying no: all truth is constrained by reality, not by my or your personal opinions of it or of each other ...[text shortened]... ble to show an error in what we think if we think all of our thoughts are true because we have them.
Thank You.
@KellyJay saidSo I was right. You can't get response in Spirituality, so you come here with your hit parade, your twisted reality.
I’ve been thinking about truth, and how, as I believe it is constrained only by reality, not by our personal opinions of it. What I am talking about isn’t about you or me; the topic is whether a belief about anything can be true and not be part of reality itself. I am saying no: all truth is constrained by reality, not by my or your personal opinions of it or of each other ...[text shortened]... ble to show an error in what we think if we think all of our thoughts are true because we have them.
Keep these posts in the Spirituality Forum, where they belong.
@KellyJay saidOf course it's possible to show an error in thinking. Scientists prove themselves and each other wrong all the time. And they write it down. The entire course of scientific training and education is centered on disproving and displacing known 'truths'.
I’ve been thinking about truth, and how, as I believe it is constrained only by reality, not by our personal opinions of it. What I am talking about isn’t about you or me; the topic is whether a belief about anything can be true and not be part of reality itself. I am saying no: all truth is constrained by reality, not by my or your personal opinions of it or of each other ...[text shortened]... ble to show an error in what we think if we think all of our thoughts are true because we have them.
Take any course in critical thinking or the scientific method. They'll teach this. One of the best exercises you can do is to train your mind to question itself.
@Sleepyguy saidKelly believes a man in the Bible named Balaam had a conversation with a talking donkey.
You can't twist reality, which I think was the point of the OP.
This is not a guy who cares about "reality".
@wildgrass saidI agree as we define our variable, be very clear about the tolerances, make sure we don’t create exceptions or ignore red flags that would show us errors, we can find our errors. Dealing with reality and its constraints what is weeded out are errors, but grand assumptions on key points may hide our short comings.
Of course it's possible to show an error in thinking. Scientists prove themselves and each other wrong all the time. And they write it down. The entire course of scientific training and education is centered on disproving and displacing known 'truths'.
Take any course in critical thinking or the scientific method. They'll teach this. One of the best exercises you can do is to train your mind to question itself.
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@vivify saidI think people can deny truth right in front of them for several reasons, even accepting some truth as long as they miss the main theme they do not want to be true. Just because you see something as true and want to reject it, you can, which is why my own assumptions should be the ones I worry about most. If I do not worry about them the most, it isn’t the truth I am trying to find, but only to be right.
Kelly believes a man in the Bible named Balaam had a conversation with a talking donkey.
This is not a guy who cares about "reality".
Trying only to be right prevents me from being corrected. I cannot see my errors if I refuse them out of my desire to be right. The whole world can be wrong or right about anything. A single iota of personal opinion does not alter truth, which is why being grounded in reality is so important.
You worry about the Biblical narrative, and that alone colors everything. Does your “reality” have the answers to the mysteries of life? Looking at all that we do see, can what we know be validated by a universe driven by unguided processes? Is it all so functionally complex that it needs not only agency to put it together but also to maintain it?
If so, choosing the wrong narrative would color the entire universe, allowing us to avoid being corrected by denying that something we cannot prove happened, right or wrong, especially a few singular events which could be true given the narrative they are in. You reject all of those events as possible only because you dislike the narrative it is in; it is the narrative, not the events, you are really rejecting.
The number of atoms required to form molecules, the number of molecules required to form cells, and the number of cells required to form a human body together indicate that the organizational burden involved is not trivial. Even under a conservative description, if we consider only the encoded biological instructions used in development and maintenance, a reasonable lower bound is on the order of 109 bytes, or roughly one gigabyte. That estimate follows from the human genome, which contains approximately 3.1 to 3.2 billion base pairs in a haploid set; because each base pair can be represented by two bits of information, one full genome corresponds to roughly 6.2 to 6.4 billion bits, or about 775 to 800 megabytes, with diploid human cells containing roughly twice that amount of DNA sequence information. There are a lot of things that must be right just in getting the material correct, but more important than that alone is how it is arranged and maintained.
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@Sleepyguy saidOh, give him two seconds. The other shoe he'll drop next is that the ONLY 'reality' is God.
You can't twist reality, which I think was the point of the OP.
These religious arguments need to stay in Spirituality. If he can't get any comments there, then maybe he needs to change his agenda. Otherwise this becomes the Religion forum next. Him posting religious posts here reduces the value of religious posts that are actually posted where they belong.
If I don't want to hear about Clans here, I don't visit the Clans forum. That is how this should work, so that you can only visit the forums you want, instead of being forced to read posts you don't care about. I try not to read KJ's monopole posts in Spirituality, now I have to be on the lookout for them in the Debates Forum? That's just not right.
@Suzianne saidIf it is offensive to you that some topics fit in more than one place, why do you bother posting in them? It isn’t like you add anything to the discussion; you just keep complaining that it gets brought up. If you weren’t complaining, would you have anything to say at all?
Oh, give him two seconds. The other shoe he'll drop next is that the ONLY 'reality' is God.
These religious arguments need to stay in Spirituality. If he can't get any comments there, then maybe he needs to change his agenda. Otherwise this becomes the Religion forum next. Him posting religious posts here reduces the value of religious posts that are actually posted w ...[text shortened]... Spirituality, now I have to be on the lookout for them in the Debates Forum? That's just not right.