Nah, I'm just going to keep asking what it means for a noun phrase like "the blue badger" to be true. And you're going to patronisingly tell me that it's not meaningless drivel, it's too deep for me to understand. I'm sure it impresses some people but not me.

Can you see that there is a difference between the actual sense experience of the desire for meaning and the phrase “desire for meaning”? You seem to be indicating that you are unable to separate the two.

I knew a guy that this reminds me of. Went on and on and on with a hyper abstract sophist doctrinal spiel in which he posed as the holder of answers. He was a Freudian and Lacanian and did indeed have a powerful perspective based on reality (not so with this poser, imo). But he actually came out and said at some point, in print no less, something like, "I too have these human difficulties ..." As if maybe the reader was sitting there thinking, "Wow, this guy is superhuman." It showed his hole card, which was: "I am alienated from myself to the point that I am posing as the god-like messenger handing out the answers and at times I slip and forget to conceal this self-concept, even to the point of thinking others believe it." I'm telling you it's a fanciful persona to the point of delusion with some. Let he who has the ears understand.

Self-hatred can't be directed towards another person (by definition).

Huh????

I still don't know the answer: did you already believe in God when you first watched The Case For Christ?
(It's fine if you did, but if not, I'd want to ask why you watched it, specifically)

You've had what you've called 'unexplainable' events happen, but then go on to handily explain them. Why are you not still considering them 'unexplained'?

Well, I don't think there is, but as I said previously, I think a lot of Christians will agree with me that what you've presented here is just, well...bad. Do you have any Christian friends? If so, what do they say to all this?

Sense experience and beliefs aren't truth apt either. Only the propositional content of them is.

For instance "I have a desire for meaning" can be true or false, but the desire itself isn't true. So when you ask "is the desire for meaning more true..." I don't know what you mean. I don't think there are gradations of truth but even that aside I don't know what you mean by desire being true. You mean it's very important to us? You mean it's something more compelling than propositional truth?

If I'm being charitable I think sometimes there's a very narrow view we fall into that things should be clear and concise in their meaning. But actually that's not always the purpose of words. Sometimes the intent is to be thought provoking and to have the reader piece together their own ideas. Certainly a lot of Eastern writing, even some French stuff and the like, is written in that mindset.

Sometimes it's a bit like asking an author what their book meant, or a lyricist what a song is about, and there's a legitimate answer of "If I could say it better in a few words then I wouldn't have had to write it in the first place".

But I don't think that applies here. Here we're having a discussion on a forum and presumably Craig wants to mean something with his question. It's then that his response that it's impossible because I'm not thinking in the right way strikes me as a flowery way of saying "You're wrong, and there's no point explaining why you're wrong because you're thinking out your arse". That's the point I get snippy because I'm willing to make a good faith effort to understand.

Your evidence, please?

People have had similar experiences due to mental illnesses, narcotics, and even illness. Given that those are all provable causes, they are far more likely to be the explanation than a religious experience, which is so far down at the 'extremely implausible' end of the spectrum of possible explanations as to be almost out of sight.

My question is why you are so willing to believe that you had a highly culturally influenced religious experience, and not attribute it to something else?


I doubt that you get it if your advice is 'to pray'. I have no good reasons to believe that prayer works, even if there's actually something to pray to.

As relevant to this as me quoting the Qur'an would be for you. All it does is raise the issue that asking people to believe in god, so that they can see that he is real, is circular reasoning.

Whilst I couldn't comment on whether or there's a 'a lot' of evidence for Christ, there is undoubtedly evidence for the existence of someone who may have been that historical figure. Whether or not you are personally convinced by that evidence is a different question. I think that the evidence is so weak as to not be convincing, but it's still evidence.


Wrt the bolded, really? If I were him I'd be thinking 'so what if you think that'.

Yes it is. It is more true than any proposition. You think that I am being unfair to you, but I can see that you are pretty lost and will only keep going in circles which is pointless. One of us is stuck and rationality won’t fix it.

I have no idea what it means for it to be true. It's not about fairness, it's about whether that string of words is coherent or not.

It's not like you've attempted to actually explain it. Do you mean it's important? Do you mean it exists?

If an idea you have comes to a complete stand still the first time someone asks you to explain it then it's pretty obvious you don't even understand it.

You are aware that it was common for archers to associate true with good aim, right (“aim is true”)?
You are aware that Christianity, a religion consisting of billions, associates truth with a person, right?

You are acting like the claim that truth goes beyond propositions is my unique idea. You are responsible for your own ignorance on this, not me.

In that context, it means 'accurate'.

In that context, it means 'in accordance with fact or reality'.

So, two different uses of the word 'true'. Not sure how that's supposed to help us understand what you're saying because bladesman isn't alone, I'm confused about what you mean too.

Ok, I am saying that the desire for meaning is in accordance with reality more so than the suppression of the desire by way of propositional thinking.

Desire for meaning present = a move closer to reality
Desire for meaning suppressed = a move away from reality

There is a part of the human mind that is working against our desire to be one with reality. A common way it deceives is by suppressing the desire for meaning and causing us to believe that we already are in accordance with reality. When the desire for meaning presents itself, we become one more step removed from counterfeit reality and one step closer to actual reality. However, the resistance will try to distort this by making us believe that the desire for meaning is distancing us from reality (which is actually counterfeit reality). Or by making us believe that there is no meaning. Or by giving us a new meaning within the counterfeit reality to distract us. And so on.

Welcome to religion. There is no escaping it, which is in part why even atheists regularly visit this forum and/or concern themselves with meaning.

What does it mean for a desire to be "more in accordance with reality"?

I'm not trying to be obtuse but this doesn't mean anything.

It doesn’t mean anything to anyone that doesn’t want their life to become more difficult. It’s meaningful to anyone that prioritizes reality (truth) above anything else.

Now you're back to condescending to me and trying to pretend it's my fault you can't tell us what you mean.

Which means I'm back to thinking you don't really want to be understood. You want to sound like you're saying something deep and meaningful without having to have anything that can be analysed. And it probably works on a lot of people but not me.

I'm beginning to think that Craig is just trolling you....

An analogy for this is learning a new language. You can’t insist that the person trying to teach you the new language only speak in the language you already know. That would be impossible.

Similarly, what exists between our current position and reality is the chaotic unknown. The chaotic unknown is impossible to make sense of. We navigate through it a different way - intuition, pattern detection, awareness, intimation, relationship. It’s like feeling your way in the dark vs seeing with the lights on.

To do this, we have to at least blind one eye to our thoughts. In order to do that, we need the wisdom and humility to realize that we are being deceived. And we won’t do that until we concede that we are stuck.

When we voluntarily blind one of our eyes to our thoughts, then we are given a new eye to help us navigate the chaotic unknown:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye

In Egyptian mythology, Horus offers his eye to his dead father Osiris, and the eye revivified Osiris. Osiris can be thought of as our dead soul. If we give up an eye, then our dead soul gains an eye and is revivified.

It was a comment about evidence for the 'Christ' figure rather than the human Jesus of Nazareth (I'm not a mythicist).



Nothing appeared bolded, but I'm just commenting that people are more likely to pay attention to their friends rather than randoms on 2+2.

If a person that supposedly understands two languages refuses to translate a specific phrase when asked repeatedly to do so, and instead responds "you wouldn't understand" - then that person should stop considering themself a teacher.

imo.

If this saying that in reality we desire meaning, I think that's trivially true to the point of being a truism


This is the bit that has never made any sense to me. I'm failing to see how 'propositional thinking' suppresses anything since it means "a logical conclusion based on the wording of a statement rather than the observation of it" which sounds like an analytic a priori to me, so it must have some content that you're using to suppress your desire for meaning, in which case, what is it? And why is that not also 'reality'?

Same difference for me, you're not acknowledging that christ is the son of god by agreeing that the man might have existed.

Sadly true since it's the content of what's being said that they should be paying attention to, not their opinion of the messenger... so it doesn't help to prove anything that your friends might not agree, and his might agree. It's a shoulder shrug.