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Good sci-fi is about the present

Good sci-fi is about the present

Spirituality


@fmf said
There are theist people like you ~ appealing to their own opinions about more or less the same "fixed direction" that you say your belief in supernatural causality gives you ~ on opposing sides of all these issues and many more besides.
KellyJay, you skipped this.

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@fmf said
Everyone's moral compass generates decisions that are subjective. Yours. Mine. Everyone.
That is true but not the point.

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@fmf said
KellyJay, you skipped this.
Yes and?


@kellyjay said
That is true but not the point.
Yes, you're right, what I said is true. But, aside from that, you are mistaken: it's the central point.


@fmf said
Yes, you're right, what I said is true. But, aside from that, you are mistaken: it's the central point.
Upon which Weinbaumian incarnates laughed and danced, twirling about their spiracles and oracles.

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@fmf said
Yes, you're right, what I said is true. But, aside from that, you are mistaken: it's the central point.
Fixed points don't change on a whim; they are fixed; my desire to do this or that doesn't come from something fixed; my desires always come from me. If I'm choosing to lead my life by something outside of my life, it isn't because I'm willing to now, and not later; if that is the process, there isn't anything fixed.

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@kellyjay said
If I'm choosing to lead my life by something outside of my life, it isn't because I'm willing to now, and not later; if that is the process, there isn't anything fixed.
The Bible isn't something "outside of your life".

Your adoption of it was a subjective process.

Your absorption of it was a subjective process.

Your internalization of it was a subjective process.

Your recital of it, having rote-learned it, was a subjective process.

You telling yourself that it is objective is a subjective process.

The notion that you think your belief in supernatural causality makes things "fixed" and immune to "whims" has been undermined by things you have deliberately sidestepped in this conversation.

Chalk the religious ideology that animates you up to "nurture".

It's still a solid part of my "nurture" too.

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@fmf said
The Bible isn't something "outside of your life".

Your adoption of it was a subjective process.

Your absorption of it was a subjective process.

Your internalization of it was a subjective process.

Your recital of it, having rote-learned it, was a subjective process.

You telling yourself that it is objective is a subjective process.

The notion that you thin ...[text shortened]... eligious ideology that animates you up to "nurture".

It's still a solid part of my "nurture" too.
The only one I think is sidestepping this is you; if something is internal or external matters, I look at a level to see if my lines are straight, I read scriptures to get things like don't steal, don't lust, don't murder, don't comment adulty, or fornication, don't worship false gods, these are not internal things any more than a scale is to tell me how much I weight. I choose to obey the commands, yes, but I didn't write them.

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@kellyjay said
The only one I think is sidestepping this is you; if something is internal or external matters, I look at a level to see if my lines are straight, I read scriptures to get things like don't steal, don't lust, don't murder, don't comment adulty, or fornication, don't worship false gods, these are not internal things any more than a scale is to tell me how much I weight. I choose to obey the commands, yes, but I didn't write them.
Your dependence on scripture and a belief in its supernatural source is an "internal" process and not an "external" one. Meanwhile, aside from our "nature" aspect, all stimuli in forming our moral compasses come from "outside" us.


Sorry for any repetition, but sure, science-fiction can be about the present or talk about it in an allegorical way (as people in Russia, for instance, might have had to do, not so many decades ago), or – branching off from the potentials of the present – it could be more along the lines of "if this goes on (bad things will happen)" or something more like "here we are now, apparently taking a deep breath and a pause because we know what we are like and we have this level of technology and what if we are the first in our sector to sprout beyond our planet? Not sure we are ready for this! Oh, who are we kidding?! We are crazy, vicious people! Elder races of the Cosmos, please contain us until we are mature enough to be allowed out and about."

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@kellyjay said
I read scriptures to get things like don't steal, don't lust, don't murder, don't comment adulty, or fornication, don't worship false gods, these are not internal things any more than a scale is to tell me how much I weight.
If you don't steal and don't murder only because of your religious superstitions, I suppose people around you are fortunate.

I don't care if you "don't lust". I am not interested in thought crimes, let alone yours.

If you think it's morally sound to "don't lust", good for you and your self-anointed "fixed direction".

If you don't worship "false gods", that's OK. But what on earth does that have to do with morality?

And what are "false gods" anyway?

Adultery almost inevitably involves immoral actions; I get that even without religion.

Good for you if you don't approve of "fornication", whatever you mean by that exactly. It sounds pejorative.

I think that declaring your own values to be objective and absolute truths is more narcissistic than it is principled.

Now, go back and address some of the key things I put to you which you just ignored; that's your obligation, to some degree, in a conversation.


KellyJay, if someone ~ let's call him Nigel ~ was so impressed by Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" that he tried to abide by them and incorporated the ideas into his moral compass, do you think that would necessarily make Nigel's "fixed direction" objective and "not internal" and "the Truth" [capital letter intentional] and a "standard" and "measuring tool" and all-round "real as rocks" better than the moral compasses of people who hadn't read the "12 Rules for Life"?


@kevin-eleven removed their quoted post
Don't worry, I just find it ridiculous, even more so if you actually think for one minute you are "harsh".

Your daily efforts to sneer at other people's conversations ~ when you have nothing to say, and stand for absolutely nothing ~ are simply the lowest of low-grade posts on this Forum.

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@fmf said
Don't worry, I just find it ridiculous, even more so if you actually think for one minute you are "harsh".

Your daily efforts to sneer at other people's conversations ~ when you have nothing to say, and stand for absolutely nothing ~ are simply the lowest of low-grade posts on this Forum.
I was going to say something about this but the chickens in my yard are looking elsewhere and I haven't checked my transits yet, so it's quite possible that I might agree with what you have written, eventually.