Is God against homosexuality?

[Brandon1]

I'll gladly take the light Buddhist perspective at this point.

I still believe in absolute goodness.

And that's fine, but we have to remember for every good thing there is something infinitely evil bc our universe and the Buddhist religion is about balance. Unfortunately if everything was good, then that good would eventually become perverted into something evil over time. So even evil has its place in the eternal balance.

 

[BIGBULL29]

Unfortunately if everything was good, then that good would eventually become perverted into something evil over time. So even evil has its place in the eternal balance.

And that is very true. I won't disagree with you on that.

Thanks for that piece of enlightenment.

 

[Brandon1]

And that is very true. I won't disagree with you on that.

Thanks for that piece of enlightenment.

If we don't enlighten one another how can we learn from one another?

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Look, everything is relative. Why do we try to know the mind of God when we are nothing but human? All our holy books only amount to the best morality we can come up with. They have also been rewritten and translated dozens of times and when that happens, we lose the original context of the text. Sure, we strive to do good in whatever God we believe in, but until God Himself comes down and tells us what the deal is we don't know.

You live a pretty pathetic excuse for a moral life of you imagine that our 'holy books' are in any measure the 'best' morality we can come up with.

The bible, Torah, and Koran, to name three, are the morality of Bronze - middle age authoritarians.
And the morality of today is so far superior and so far removed from those ignorant tracts as to render them pure barbarism.

Your final sentence comes closest to the truth... Except of course, in that we know nothing of God at all...other than the stories you stipulate to be unverifiable... And that makes God unverifiable, too.

In fact... Since WE demonstrably invented those stories, and we demonstrably define what we consider moral... That means that We alone are responsible for creating the morality under which we might live.

It is perfectly sane to simply assert that, FROM HERE ON OUT, it will be considered immoral to mistreat homosexuals in any way shape or form.
Perfectly sane to say that we, as a people, no longer accept racial prejudice, gender prejudice, or class distinctions as tolerable, nor defensible.
And it doesn't fucking matter WHAT your antiquated fantasy story has to say about it, because it's idea of morality no longer applies.

Life HAS gotten better, at least in the west, for a whole bunch of formerly oppressed groups of people.
And that was entirely OUR doing, in spite of the delusions of religion suffered by multitudes.

The Pope, today, is trying desperately to FORCE his church to come up to speed with the modern morality that arose against that church's wishes, and without any help from any God.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Wrong on so many levels. "No one can know internally except that which I chose to express" or whatever and then creates the thought process of the hypothetical fat wife and what she really meant by asking the question. Truth is, you project that on her when in reality, her "private, internal existence" could differ greatly. We all lie when we feel it's necessary and the same with the truth because ultimately, overall, we don't choose to hurt the feelings of those around us. The truth of the matter is lying is always wrong because it's deceitful. Can it have a positive result? Of course. In the same way, telling the truth can lead to negative events. But that becomes the message receiver's issue, not the sender's. If you ask "do these pants make me look fat" and they do, the response should be "yes, they do". Question asked and answered. If feelings are hurt, that's on the fat person to either don't ask the question or lose weight or get bigger, more flattering pants. If I tell you "no, they look fine", I've spared your feelings but then also hurt you by allowing you to go out in public not looking your best. So yeah, everyone picks and chooses when they're going to lie or not and we defend the wrongness of it by saying things like, "I was trying to spare your feelings" or some other such thing. That doesn't make it right.

You prove yourself wrong in your own reply. You admit we all lie, and often for the purpose of not hurting one another.
And then you directly contradict yourself by saying it's always wrong because it's deceitful.

But you utterly fail to effectively equate deceit with 'harm'. You merely assume deceit to be 'wrong' without any reasoned framework to define it as such.

It is demonstrably wrong to cause harm if you can avoid doing so.
And if telling the truth caused someone harm, then telling the truth Must be wrong in that context.

This proves deductively that a lie simply can not be categorized as 'always' either wrong nor right.

There is no way you can prove deceit to be inherently harmful. For every instance of it causing others pain or harm, I can cite an example of it being kind and merciful.


And, you really appear to lack the intellectual depth to comprehend the real point of the post you lable as wrong.... You fail to rebut nor respond to the core assertion that we, ourselves, are seldom honest to ourselves. That we inhabit lies we call 'beliefs' that we use to gloss over things about ourselves and our actions that we all actually know to be false.

If you can not ask an honest question, then how can I give an honest answer?

And if you genuinely imagine that, within your own mind, you are utterly honest with yourself, then you are not even self aware enough to recognize your own internal deceits.... How could you ever say out loud anything truthful, when you can't even see the lie you tell yourself?

And if you Are aware of your internal self deceptions... Then you must admit that the person you most deceive is yourself.

What possible purpose could self deception serve? Other than to shelter your own psyche from the harm you would suffer from the truth?

We pretend we are a certain thing, be that Irish American or Italian American, Catholic or Atheist.... It is all just an identity we have chosen or had imposed upon us that we have no real claim to.
If my name is Callahan, it doesn't mean I went through the potatoe famine, nor the prejudiced oppression of Irish immigrants. If my name if Goldberg, it doesn't mean I suffered in a concentration camp, and the relatives that I might have had whose ancestors died there, are people that never existed to me and that I can not miss.

But we buy into these narratives and lie to ourselves that these histories affect Us, in some way, and can thereby perpetuate generational prides or grievances, joys and sorrows we never actually suffered.

The truth is we are, each of us, alone, born into the culture, morality, and experiences of our Own lives, only. Yet we swaddle ourselves in deceits... To give us some sense of continuity with a past or a future, so that we can assuage our terrible finite mortality... to create for ourselves causes, and meanings and injustices in which, really, we have no true stake.

And, of course, there are our own internal neuroses, pettiness, and jealousies, that we lie to ourselves about on an hourly basis... lying so well to ourselves that we can pretend we tell the truth to say we don't feel that way.


But... Of course... I must be wrong. You go ahead and explain to us all how clear cut is deceit and the role it plays. Go ahead and describe to me a world in which no one was ever deceitful.
and how you have never told yourself a tale to mollify your own conscience....

Again, anyone thinking they are honest is lying to themselves.

And if you want to Claim that deceit is always wrong, you are gonna have to offer some reasoned argument to to back that up. Assertions are not arguments.
They convince no one.

 

[554279]

Again, anyone thinking they are honest is lying to themselves.

And if you want to Claim that deceit is always wrong, you are gonna have to offer some reasoned argument to to back that up. Assertions are not arguments.
They convince no one.

I think you gave an honest answer

Don't feel up to trudging through the thread but I think what you say here fits into many categories.

Well done.

 

[alcor972]

Alcor



What is it like being gay where you live? How are you treated and how do you locate other gay guys?

Levi…

I think that people on my island are rather against homosexuality… and they just tolerate it as they can’t anyway suppress it after all… lol.

In response to that tolerance… I have to hide my feelings… and avoid showing signs of tenderness or love with a man in public areas…

Once that tacit contract between me and my people understood and respected… lol… I am relatively free to look for men as I want…

I prefer meeting men on a beach located at the southern end of my island… It’s a relatively isolated place embedded in an environment of lagoons and mangroves…

It’s not an exclusive place for gay men… there are also people making trekking… some fishermen on the lagoon sides… and has my road to pass near them… I keep my eyes down to the ground in a semi-shameful attitude as I think they perfectly guess what I’m looking for there…

Last time I went to this beach… last Tuesday, lol… I met two men… a Black man and after a French White man…

I think I’m still very uncomfortable with myself… but it must be more because of my own errors in my way of leading my life than because of my people’s disapproving on my sexuality… that does exist but not so strong to prevent me from being a happier man… lol.

Thank you, Levi.

 

[temptotalk]

We pretend we are a certain thing, be that Irish American or Italian American, Catholic or Atheist.... It is all just an identity we have chosen or had imposed upon us that we have no real claim to.
If my name is Callahan, it doesn't mean I went through the potatoe famine, nor the prejudiced oppression of Irish immigrants. If my name if Goldberg, it doesn't mean I suffered in a concentration camp, and the relatives that I might have had whose ancestors died there, are people that never existed to me and that I can not miss.

But we buy into these narratives and lie to ourselves that these histories affect Us, in some way, and can thereby perpetuate generational prides or grievances, joys and sorrows we never actually suffered.

The truth is we are, each of us, alone, born into the culture, morality, and experiences of our Own lives, only. Yet we swaddle ourselves in deceits... To give us some sense of continuity with a past or a future, so that we can assuage our terrible finite mortality... to create for ourselves causes, and meanings and injustices in which, really, we have no true stake.

I agree with most of what you said..except of course bits of the above. Please don't slip into that dude. It's very shaky territory. Yes we do just adopt (or are adopted by) religion. That i can totally agree with but there are still people suffering and being made to suffer for things they have no control over (as well as the past...and i mean real suffering). While i don't understand the pride aspect i can totally understand the suffering. And thats because things aren't peachy keen as of yet. Bunches of good has been done but when you have a group of people whose rates of suicide are much higher then others then ya can't exactly call it just an adopted narrative. Cause problems still exist on some level.

And as much as i would like to agree we aren't alone. Basically yes. The basic premise of life is that we go through it alone. Until that is, large groups of people target other groups of people. At that point people are brought together whether they like it or not.

Ah just two more cents.

 

[freeballininnyc]

Phil, you talk a lot but say very little that has anything to do with anything. Just because I don't address or rebut a certain piece of the conversation really only means that I have little to add to that specific part. You said it is demonstrably wrong to cause harm to someone if you can avoid doing so. In my previous analogy, answering the question honestly, to me does less harm than lying to the person. If they don't want me to be honest, they will learn not to ask me questions that they really don't want the answer to.

Further, if it demonstrably wrong to cause harm to someone if you can avoid it, why must you name call and be so judgmental of people's intellect, as you put it, in this thread? You can surely avoid that. Therefore, by you're OWN statement, you are wrong.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

I agree with most of what you said..except of course bits of the above. Please don't slip into that dude. It's very shaky territory. Yes we do just adopt (or are adopted by) religion. That i can totally agree with but there are still people suffering and being made to suffer for things they have no control over (as well as the past...and i mean real suffering). While i don't understand the pride aspect i can totally understand the suffering. And thats because things aren't peachy keen as of yet. Bunches of good has been done but when you have a group of people whose rates of suicide are much higher then others then ya can't exactly call it just an adopted narrative. Cause problems still exist on some level.

And as much as i would like to agree we aren't alone. Basically yes. The basic premise of life is that we go through it alone. Until that is, large groups of people target other groups of people. At that point people are brought together whether they like it or not.

Ah just two more cents.

Its no shaky territory.

I am not referring to people who ARE or HAVE suffered. I referring to people who believe that a set of beliefs they happen to hold, BUYS THEM partial ownership of suffering they never endured, and of which they have no real conception.

I know Black people who DO, daily, suffer the injustices of racial prejudice. But not one of them has the slightest idea what living your entire life as a SLAVE actually felt like. And yet, Some Black people want to take the stance that they have some ownership of that mantle of victimhood, in addition to the Actual, real victimhood they suffer.

There are white people who buy into the the white supremacist mindset of the Confederacy... but they were never rebels, they never had their property in the form of slaves taken from them. They drive around with flags on their trucks and voice grievances on which that they have no legitimate claim. Its just a belief set they adopt that excuses hatred and bigotry against Blacks and Jews and Yankees.


Today- we see a privileged white man, who lived for 60 plus years as a privileged white man, just DECIDE that he's now a "woman", and everyone is expected to celebrate the "bravery" of his being transgender ( at the safest time in history to Be transgender ) and we are all expected to accept that his 'choice' to be a woman is sufficient to make him one.

But is it? He never was raised as a girl in the 60s where societal expectations of him were crippling to future career prospects. He never went thru puberty and menses, nor the predatory behavior of young males trying to get in his pants... Never had to find himself unexpectedly pregnant and make the choice to terminate or give birth, never suffered the social ostracization of his community for whatever choice that might have been. Never crashed against the glass ceiling, nor pay inequity. Never went thru childbirth, nor made the conscious choice to not give birth, nor even had to deal with the sorrows of wanting children and being unable to conceive.

In short... Bruce Jenner has lived NONE of the experiences that form the real context of being a 60 year old woman in the west today.
As far as he knows, being a woman is wearing sexy clothes and having men hold open the door for you. ( not to mention ridiculously lucrative, to do this so publicly with full access to the Kardashian celebrity machine. )

And while every one is celebrating Jenner's decision to pretend he knows what it is to be a woman. we had the case of the white girl who 'decided' she was Black.
Except, of course, she was NOT celebrated, because much of the black community felt she was "appropriating" their cultural claims to suffering and victimhood.

So.... what is the truth?

Can a lifelong man just change his outfit and be the equivalent of a lifelong woman?
Can a Girl born to white privilege just jeri-curl her hair and get a spray tan and be the equivalent of a person born Black enough to be unable to pass as white?

And what about "cultural appropriation?" A black celebrity wears a replica of a Native American Bonnet... and there is a hew and cry over appropriation of 'sacred symbols'... But Native Americans made and sold replica bonnets for nearly a hundred years. It was a way of making money off of tourists. But now its suddenly an offense to WEAR the bonnet sold by a Native American?

Our identifies are almost entirely lies. Narratives we have decided to choose.

You can be a White woman, who believes that white women in the west have it pretty cushy. And you can be a White Woman who thinks that women are the perpetual victims of a patriarchal oppression.
These two women, with nearly identical life experience can witness a Guy hold a door open for a woman... and one will see a gentleman, treating a woman as a precious being who wraps men around her fingers like taffy. And the other will see the condescension of paternalism and objectification literally harming an innocent victim.

And what is the ACTUAL difference between the "experiences"? Nothing but a belief system that is provably not true in any way.

The man might simply hold the door open for ANYONE, of any gender, age or race, without the slightest thought other than the fact that he had already pulled it open and they were arriving at the door at nearly the same moment.

The two women's experiences are NOT true- they do not see a truthful image of the world, but the world created by a brain that paints the world they see based upon the beliefs they hold.


A black man gets pulled over by a cop. He sees just another instance of being hassled for "driving while black".
The cop, however, doesn't even realize the driver is black until he walks up to his window, but he instantly gets the resentment of the driver for a prejudice he didn't actually feel.... he was just looking for cars with expired registrations on their plates, like his boss told him to.

What is the truth? Does the fact that the black driver HAS been pulled over for driving while black on other occasions warrant his assuming that Every time he gets pulled over its racism? and the cop a racist? Or os this just a convenient lie he tells himself to exculpate his not registering his car and occasionally speeding? ( i.e.- he's not getting all these fines because he keeps breaking the law- he gets them because he's Black )

I mean, there is certainly real prejudice that impacts Black lives... but how much of what they assume to be racial, isn't?
How might it change their viewpoint if they were to believe that only HALF of the time its a racial thing?

Or- to revisit another thread- suppose they were to believe that their treatment in this culture was only Incidentally about the color of their skin? What if they were to believe that what is really going on is that they are picked on because their community has a high poverty rate, and their skin color is just a flag that identified them as being economically powerless to fight the justice system?

If they saw every 'oppression" as being more about Green, than Black... would they then find common cause with poor whites and hispanics, and thereby have to coalition powerful enough to force political and cultural changes?


Sorry- but the depths to which our own self deceits run are abyssal.

The world we see is nothing but an illusion created by our brains within the mental space of our cortex. Our brain takes a very limited amount of information about the world around us, and, using our own belief systems as the framework, builds those stimuli into the full illusion of the world we imagine we inhabit.

And so, what you THINK about the world shapes the world you see.

And when we lie to ourselves about who we are, what we suffer, or what histories we "own" the world we see around us is a reflection of that lie.

If Bruce Jenner can just decide to be a woman... and be one. Then any of us can just decide to be something else.

Being raised a Native American, or a catholic is truly meaningless. Its just the story you bought into.

The only things you truly own are the things that happen to you... and as demonstrated above... even the things that happen to you are shaped and colored and distorted by the lies we have chosen to believe about what we are experiencing.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

Phil, you talk a lot but say very little that has anything to do with anything. Just because I don't address or rebut a certain piece of the conversation really only means that I have little to add to that specific part. You said it is demonstrably wrong to cause harm to someone if you can avoid doing so. In my previous analogy, answering the question honestly, to me does less harm than lying to the person. If they don't want me to be honest, they will learn not to ask me questions that they really don't want the answer to.

Further, if it demonstrably wrong to cause harm to someone if you can avoid it, why must you name call and be so judgmental of people's intellect, as you put it, in this thread? You can surely avoid that. Therefore, by you're OWN statement, you are wrong.

Then you lack empathy. Because you are more concerned with how YOU feel about lying- for yourself, than you are with the Harm others suffer for your pride.

Sorry. I may say a lot... but thats because its an actual argument. that puts forward ideas with supporting reasoning and analogy.

You might try wading thru what I say a little more carefully, because its a good example of HOW to actually THINK THRU the things you decide to believe to see if they make any actual sense.

Your reply is essentially this : YOU want to FEEL that you are HONEST for your own self image. You could give a shit about other's suffering.

That proves that your "honesty" is both selfish and immoral.

 

[Exbiker]

... or they are scientists who think that we were products of evolution in a universe that is full of chaos.

That's nonsense.

Science is the opposite of belief in chaos.

It suggests that the universe operates according to rules and principles which operate across all of spacetime, and at every scale from the inifitisimal waves which constitute quanta of energy and particles of matter, to the vast elegant swirls of galaxies, and clusters of galaxies.

Rules which can be uncovered and understood using observed evidence, logic, and scientific, publicly verifiable methods. Which are demostrably and consistently productive. Not fiction.

It is a fatuous LIE to say that science believes in chaos.

Hope this helps

 

[temptotalk]

Its no shaky territory.

I am not referring to people who ARE or HAVE suffered. I referring to people who believe that a set of beliefs they happen to hold, BUYS THEM partial ownership of suffering they never endured, and of which they have no real conception.

I know Black people who DO, daily, suffer the injustices of racial prejudice. But not one of them has the slightest idea what living your entire life as a SLAVE actually felt like. And yet, Some Black people want to take the stance that they have some ownership of that mantle of victimhood, in addition to the Actual, real victimhood they suffer.

There are white people who buy into the the white supremacist mindset of the Confederacy... but they were never rebels, they never had their property in the form of slaves taken from them. They drive around with flags on their trucks and voice grievances on which that they have no legitimate claim. Its just a belief set they adopt that excuses hatred and bigotry against Blacks and Jews and Yankees.


Today- we see a privileged white man, who lived for 60 plus years as a privileged white man, just DECIDE that he's now a "woman", and everyone is expected to celebrate the "bravery" of his being transgender ( at the safest time in history to Be transgender ) and we are all expected to accept that his 'choice' to be a woman is sufficient to make him one.

But is it? He never was raised as a girl in the 60s where societal expectations of him were crippling to future career prospects. He never went thru puberty and menses, nor the predatory behavior of young males trying to get in his pants... Never had to find himself unexpectedly pregnant and make the choice to terminate or give birth, never suffered the social ostracization of his community for whatever choice that might have been. Never crashed against the glass ceiling, nor pay inequity. Never went thru childbirth, nor made the conscious choice to not give birth, nor even had to deal with the sorrows of wanting children and being unable to conceive.

In short... Bruce Jenner has lived NONE of the experiences that form the real context of being a 60 year old woman in the west today.
As far as he knows, being a woman is wearing sexy clothes and having men hold open the door for you. ( not to mention ridiculously lucrative, to do this so publicly with full access to the Kardashian celebrity machine. )

And while every one is celebrating Jenner's decision to pretend he knows what it is to be a woman. we had the case of the white girl who 'decided' she was Black.
Except, of course, she was NOT celebrated, because much of the black community felt she was "appropriating" their cultural claims to suffering and victimhood.

So.... what is the truth?

Can a lifelong man just change his outfit and be the equivalent of a lifelong woman?
Can a Girl born to white privilege just jeri-curl her hair and get a spray tan and be the equivalent of a person born Black enough to be unable to pass as white?



And what is the ACTUAL difference between the "experiences"? Nothing but a belief system that is provably not true in any way.

The only things you truly own are the things that happen to you... and as demonstrated above... even the things that happen to you are shaped and colored and distorted by the lies we have chosen to believe about what we are experiencing.

I am not referring to people who ARE or HAVE suffered. I referring to people who believe that a set of beliefs they happen to hold, BUYS THEM partial ownership of suffering they never endured, and of which they have no real conception.

This is why i said you were on shacky ground. Cause really how exactly would you know personally if a person were/is suffering or not. That statement alone calls a lot of people's lives into question. First let me say that i'm not all knowing. And then let me say that neither are you. When it comes to suffering you can't put a nice little tag on it and say that a person hasn't or isn't.

I'm sorry but If racism completely ended today i would not be saying the same thing. If sexism ended today i would not be saying the same thing. If homophobia ended today i would not be saying the same thing. All of those things haven't ended. Which means those people do have ownership. Not because they want to but because they have little or no other choice.

If someone takes a shit on your lawn and refuses to clean it up. There are no laws against it in this hypothetical. What happens then? Isn't the choice of action then up to the lawn owner? Don't they have to stop what they're doing and decide what to do now?

Sure it isn't always the case but really where would humanity be if racism/discrimination/sexism/blah/any of that stuff had not existed in the first place?

And i don't even with the bruce jenner thing. I had suspected some things there before it even happened. And said about as much. I have no problem with someone wanting to do that and get surgery(the bits kind). After that they are officially a woman. And yes it takes a certain amount of suffering to get there but i wouldn't say they were lying or deceiving themselves. Bruce jenner maybe. And yes there was privilege there. How else would he have afforded it? It doesn't mean that privilege was a bad thing. No. Going on to disappoint the very people looking up to you is what did that.

Can a lifelong man just change his outfit and be the equivalent of a lifelong woman? No. Not in my book.
Can a Girl born to white privilege just jeri-curl her hair and get a spray tan and be the equivalent of a person born Black enough to be unable to pass as white? No. Not in my book.

What can happen though is surgery and science. If the peen got a cut and the skin got a darkened then hails yeah. Why? Cause a sacrifice was made. One that had to come out of respect.

And as much as it pains me to say. No religion isn't just nothing. Don't get me wrong. The books and stories are nothing. To me they are silly little lies few should take seriously. But...if it weren't for religion there would be no soup kitchens. If it weren't for religion there would be no humanitarian efforts. Saving the planet....saving the animals....saving the anybody or anything. Empathy didn't and never will come out of science. As much as i hate saying so science, philosophy, psychology, sociology and all the rest are just about learning who we are as human beings with in a specific time frame. It doesn't strive to change us on an emotional level. For that aspect humanity needed religion.

(Eww i just threw up in my minds inner mouth)

Sure, we all live our lives by lies but that doesn't mean those lies are inherently bad. You know this. I think you've said this.

And all of this is why i hate talking about multiple subjects/issues/points all at once. Difficult to fully keep up. Oh and i know what you're thinking. But temp if it weren't for religion then...yeah well you're probably right. At the same time it gives a bunch of other stuff people NEED. Like compassion. Like community.

Really though. All these topics are gonna be stuck in my head for like the next five hours. And alls i wanted was a sandwich.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

There is literally nothing that religion offers that can not be obtained WITHOUT believing in ridiculous fairy tales about forever.

Community can be built around ANY meaning you choose. And you can choose any meaning.

Providing examples of how our entire self image is MOSTLY a lie is not suggesting that it could be otherwise. We craft a self image for a purpose.

However... If we are not AWARE that our self image is just a lie we tell ourselves.... Then we are mistaking a useful lie for Truth. And that leads to dogma, and to hatred and to exclusion.

You can not move yourself to kill or mistreat others, unless you are so emotionally invested in your own storyline that you feel it is TRUTH and any disagreement with that truth a form of assault.


My point is that....what if.... What if we were all aware that our self images are just narratives.
That it's just the gender we Prefer. Or the ancestry that interests us or with which we find relevance.... But we understood that this meaning it confers is SELF SELECTED... And no different in its lack of truthfulness than any other persons selection?

Wouldn't we be kinder to each other simply because we would see our own beliefs and others differing beliefs to be no different than Star Wars fandom versus Game of Thrones fandom?

Would the black community stop looking for a narrative centered n color and perhaps find that a narrative centered in poverty not only better explains systemic injustice... But suddenly forges aliances with ALL people suffering under the systemic injustice of poverty? Wouldn't That narrative to cling to confer greater power to effect real change by conferring greater numbers to their cause? ( while making skin color into the incidental thing we all WISH it were )

And to those still concerned about honesty... Isn't living in full acceptance of the fact that my identity is just the story I choose... And no reflection of anything inherently 'true'.... The closest I can ever come to being truly honest?

Once more. I would not take Anyone's stories away.

I would only have them realize they are just a story.... And that they have the power to chose whatever story offers them meaning... And that the meaning is even better, deeper, when you know it is no form of Truth... But a story created by mere people to invent meaning. Because only We Can invent meaning.

What difference could it make that a bunch of Christians believe in a story that says God hates fags?

It's JUST a story they like.

And if you're gay, you can pick any other story you please that says you're fine the way you are... As long as you realize that it's still just another story.

 

[temptotalk]

There is literally nothing that religion offers that can not be obtained WITHOUT believing in ridiculous fairy tales about forever.

Community can be built around ANY meaning you choose. And you can choose any meaning.

Providing examples of how our entire self image is MOSTLY a lie is not suggesting that it could be otherwise. We craft a self image for a purpose.

However... If we are not AWARE that our self image is just a lie we tell ourselves.... Then we are mistaking a useful lie for Truth. And that leads to dogma, and to hatred and to exclusion.

You can not move yourself to kill or mistreat others, unless you are so emotionally invested in your own storyline that you feel it is TRUTH and any disagreement with that truth a form of assault.


My point is that....what if.... What if we were all aware that our self images are just narratives.
That it's just the gender we Prefer. Or the ancestry that interests us or with which we find relevance.... But we understood that this meaning it confers is SELF SELECTED... And no different in its lack of truthfulness than any other persons selection?

Wouldn't we be kinder to each other simply because we would see our own beliefs and others differing beliefs to be no different than Star Wars fandom versus Game of Thrones fandom?

Would the black community stop looking for a narrative centered n color and perhaps find that a narrative centered in poverty not only better explains systemic injustice... But suddenly forges aliances with ALL people suffering under the systemic injustice of poverty? Wouldn't That narrative to cling to confer greater power to effect real change by conferring greater numbers to their cause? ( while making skin color into the incidental thing we all WISH it were )

And to those still concerned about honesty... Isn't living in full acceptance of the fact that my identity is just the story I choose... And no reflection of anything inherently 'true'.... The closest I can ever come to being truly honest?

Once more. I would not take Anyone's stories away.

I would only have them realize they are just a story.... And that they have the power to chose whatever story offers them meaning... And that the meaning is even better, deeper, when you know it is no form of Truth... But a story created by mere people to invent meaning. Because only We Can invent meaning.

What difference could it make that a bunch of Christians believe in a story that says God hates fags?

It's JUST a story they like.

And if you're gay, you can pick any other story you please that says you're fine the way you are... As long as you realize that it's still just another story.

There is literally nothing that religion offers that can not be obtained WITHOUT believing in ridiculous fairy tales about forever.

I agree there isn't but..is there anything of that sort? Something that doesn't use ridiculous fairy tales about forever? Anything that teaches peace, mercy and empathy without the bullshit? As far as i can tell there is nothing of the sort and never will be. Cause man needs religion for that sort of thing. The second someone adds emotion to any law it will be the end of mankind.

Science teaches how a man is killed.

Law teaches the punishments of killing a man.

But only religion and others even come close to saying that a man should not be killed.

I agree. Community can be built from damned near anything but only religion and the fear of forever hell can keep certain types of people from killing other types of people. However much of a lie it is.

I agree we do create a self image and yes it is a lie and yes it does drive us away from each other but really for that to even come close we would have to accept just how bad we are as a human race. We would have to accept all the horrible things we ignore on a daily basis as apart of us. Accept that global systems on down to intellectual ideas are all mute and useless across the board. Hell even having in writing ability is cause for detriment to others and is a lie in and of itself.

Cause really. What is intelligence but yet another lie we've told ourselves. Isn't that definition just an accepted idea based on group think/majority rule. What about class? What about the higher ideas and how you have to be of a certain universal privilege to even hear about them.

Wouldn't we be kinder to each other simply because we would see our own beliefs and others differing beliefs to be no different than Star Wars fandom versus Game of Thrones fandom? Sad to say but no. Humanity doesn't have that ability. We're talking over 7 billion people.

Would the black community stop looking for a narrative centered n color and perhaps find that a narrative centered in poverty

This. This is why i said what i said. Because the generalities get made that way. Even those wanting to do good sometimes cause the opposite. No. The black community is not looking for a narrative centered in color. The black community already knows theres a narrative centered in color. They're just waiting for everyone else to finally get it. Same goes for native americans and all other races. There has always been narritives placed on others. It's just that not everyone gets a voice or is heard and understood fully.

Black Unemployment Rate 2015: In Better Economy, African-Americans See Minimal Gains

If it were just about poverty do you honestly think that....

In February, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 10.4 percent, while the comparable rates for whites, Hispanics and Asians were 4.7 percent, 6.6 percent and 4.0 percent, in that order, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Not now and not ever has it been just a narrative blacks look for. Blacks don't have to. They face the reality every...single....day. And this is part of the reason i say what you desire isn't possible. Cause it isn't even possible in the one that says they want it.

Now i know what you meant to say. And i know how you meant for it to come off but we need the specifics now more than ever.

 

[temptotalk]

Its no shaky territory.


So.... what is the truth?


And what about "cultural appropriation?" A black celebrity wears a replica of a Native American Bonnet... and there is a hew and cry over appropriation of 'sacred symbols'... But Native Americans made and sold replica bonnets for nearly a hundred years. It was a way of making money off of tourists. But now its suddenly an offense to WEAR the bonnet sold by a Native American?

Our identifies are almost entirely lies. Narratives we have decided to choose.

You can be a White woman, who believes that white women in the west have it pretty cushy. And you can be a White Woman who thinks that women are the perpetual victims of a patriarchal oppression.
These two women, with nearly identical life experience can witness a Guy hold a door open for a woman... and one will see a gentleman, treating a woman as a precious being who wraps men around her fingers like taffy. And the other will see the condescension of paternalism and objectification literally harming an innocent victim.

And what is the ACTUAL difference between the "experiences"? Nothing but a belief system that is provably not true in any way.

The man might simply hold the door open for ANYONE, of any gender, age or race, without the slightest thought other than the fact that he had already pulled it open and they were arriving at the door at nearly the same moment.

The two women's experiences are NOT true- they do not see a truthful image of the world, but the world created by a brain that paints the world they see based upon the beliefs they hold.

The only things you truly own are the things that happen to you... and as demonstrated above... even the things that happen to you are shaped and colored and distorted by the lies we have chosen to believe about what we are experiencing.

Gotta say. You hit way too many topics to address and each an every one of them is an offshoot of some sort of stereotype. Really i can't even.

 

[185248]

Let's take a day out of a persons life who chooses to fib....Wake up and

You prove yourself wrong in your own reply. You admit we all lie, and often for the purpose of not hurting one another.
And then you directly contradict yourself by saying it's always wrong because it's deceitful.

But you utterly fail to effectively equate deceit with 'harm'. You merely assume deceit to be 'wrong' without any reasoned framework to define it as such.

It is demonstrably wrong to cause harm if you can avoid doing so.
And if telling the truth caused someone harm, then telling the truth Must be wrong in that context.

This proves deductively that a lie simply can not be categorized as 'always' either wrong nor right.

There is no way you can prove deceit to be inherently harmful. For every instance of it causing others pain or harm, I can cite an example of it being kind and merciful.


And, you really appear to lack the intellectual depth to comprehend the real point of the post you lable as wrong.... You fail to rebut nor respond to the core assertion that we, ourselves, are seldom honest to ourselves. That we inhabit lies we call 'beliefs' that we use to gloss over things about ourselves and our actions that we all actually know to be false.

If you can not ask an honest question, then how can I give an honest answer?

And if you genuinely imagine that, within your own mind, you are utterly honest with yourself, then you are not even self aware enough to recognize your own internal deceits.... How could you ever say out loud anything truthful, when you can't even see the lie you tell yourself?

And if you Are aware of your internal self deceptions... Then you must admit that the person you most deceive is yourself.

What possible purpose could self deception serve? Other than to shelter your own psyche from the harm you would suffer from the truth?

We pretend we are a certain thing, be that Irish American or Italian American, Catholic or Atheist.... It is all just an identity we have chosen or had imposed upon us that we have no real claim to.
If my name is Callahan, it doesn't mean I went through the potatoe famine, nor the prejudiced oppression of Irish immigrants. If my name if Goldberg, it doesn't mean I suffered in a concentration camp, and the relatives that I might have had whose ancestors died there, are people that never existed to me and that I can not miss.

But we buy into these narratives and lie to ourselves that these histories affect Us, in some way, and can thereby perpetuate generational prides or grievances, joys and sorrows we never actually suffered.

The truth is we are, each of us, alone, born into the culture, morality, and experiences of our Own lives, only. Yet we swaddle ourselves in deceits... To give us some sense of continuity with a past or a future, so that we can assuage our terrible finite mortality... to create for ourselves causes, and meanings and injustices in which, really, we have no true stake.

And, of course, there are our own internal neuroses, pettiness, and jealousies, that we lie to ourselves about on an hourly basis... lying so well to ourselves that we can pretend we tell the truth to say we don't feel that way.


But... Of course... I must be wrong. You go ahead and explain to us all how clear cut is deceit and the role it plays. Go ahead and describe to me a world in which no one was ever deceitful.
and how you have never told yourself a tale to mollify your own conscience....

Again, anyone thinking they are honest is lying to themselves.

And if you want to Claim that deceit is always wrong, you are gonna have to offer some reasoned argument to to back that up. Assertions are not arguments.
They convince no one.

Wrong Phil, they convince themselves. You mention often people get through the day and lie to cause feeling good about themselves.

Lets take a day where someone does this. Wake up, You are running late for work, make a call to let them know the alarm never went off, even though it did, so you will be late getting in. You look in the mirror and say to yourself you look great, even though the bags under your eyes tell you, you should not have stayed up watching the late night movie. Does not cause you to feel better.

You are pulled over by the police because you are in a rush to get to work, you tell the officer you did not know it was a school zone. Does not cause you to feel better, because you are booked anyway because you break the law, and you endangered kids lives by your stupidity of staying up late in the first place.

You arrive at work where you need to perpetuate the original lie, your mental resources are needing to be split between focusing on work and the need to cover your original fibs. Feeling better?

It goes on till the end of the day, making excuses, telling fibs, whatever. Are you feeling tired from the night before or from having to cover from the night before?

It does not make you feel better, you may have convinced yourself. If someone does these things often, others around them soon work out they are not to be trusted. It does not make you feel better when you are told to stop bullshitting, or you lose your job.

Yes, I have agreed with you that most of us tell fibs at times, it does not cause us to feel better about ourselves though, as you have stated. Most of us have the ability to learn from fibs, just like we hopefully learn from our mistakes. Sometimes it may take us making the same mistake twice or thrice. It never makes us feel better of ourselves or others to feel better toward us.

If we don't learn, it becomes a problem when those around us begin to lose faith in a person that becomes a habitual liar, one that uses lies to back up their actions, even though they at first do not believe them themselves.

Lies do not make us feel better, they just complicate and confuse matters. The only person in the end that loses, is the fabricator. Am pretty sure they do not feel better. At this point when people realise when faced with the truth, they come to a point where they endanger their own life and those of others around them. This can happen on a family scale or national, or world.

You are not consistent with your argument.

 

[185248]

Much of the world is caught up with reading books, watching movies and the like in solving mystery. To be the first to discover the truth. It's a human thing to lie, yes. But it's also a greater human endeavour to strive for the truth to be told, and for lies to be exposed.

That's what makes us feel better about ourselves.

 

[Brandon1]

That's nonsense.

Science is the opposite of belief in chaos.

It suggests that the universe operates according to rules and principles which operate across all of spacetime, and at every scale from the inifitisimal waves which constitute quanta of energy and particles of matter, to the vast elegant swirls of galaxies, and clusters of galaxies.

Rules which can be uncovered and understood using observed evidence, logic, and scientific, publicly verifiable methods. Which are demostrably and consistently productive. Not fiction.

It is a fatuous LIE to say that science believes in chaos.

Hope this helps

Science has no choice to believe in chaos. It was there when the big bang began, and before that it was there in an endless ocean of unknown darkness that science theorizes as the big cooling. I'm of the mind that the universe constantly recycles itself. If you know of quantum particles then you know about what I'm talking about. Every universe doesn't start out the same in its beginning, it's nothing but chaos for billions of years until formation. Does it follow rules? Sure, but there can be plenty of.chaos within rules.

 

[Phil Ayesho]

You are not consistent with your argument.

Actually, I am, you are not consistent with your comprehension of my argument.

I am stating that we lie to ourselves. We lie to others about ourselves, and we lie to others in what we perceive of their lies. And my examples in the prior post were meant only to present the tangled snarl of ludicrous idiocy that results when we imagine that there is any absolute truth in any identity we might claim.

I am stating that, just as this thread started with an examination of how investing belief in the Lie of religion leads to hateful actions against other human beings, that lies become particularly toxic when we lose sight of the fact that they are lies.

If a poster 'honestly' believes in the myths of Native American identity and history, and believes that they have some ownership of those myths and that identity, then that can lead them to condemn another person for merely pointing out that those myths are, in fact, myths. I get stamped with a denigrating label meant to endorse alienation of me by an entire group. ( who all buy into the same myths, with to without any real claim to them )

That is NOT the consequence of LYING per se, but of mistaking a lie for truth.
Or- to put it another way- of lying to ourselves about a lie we told ourselves. ( or were told to believe while too young to reason )


However, every instance i can point to of lying being a positive thing is demonstrably a case where we know full well we are lying, and we are lying to spare the feelings of another, or to honor a confidence for another.

Sure- we can also knowingly lie for our own benefit and to escape culpability... but at least we then honestly KNOW we are lying in our own self interest.

The greatest danger is always from people mistaking a Narrative or a lie for the truth. The greatest damage is always from people who 'honestly' believe they are being truthful. The holocaust happened solely because too many people in Europe honestly believed in the lie of Jewish culpability and ignobility.


A conscious liar can be identified... and they back down when confronted with proof of their own deception.
But an Unconscious liar will fight for a "truth" that is false, and will reject any proof of their mistaken belief. They will defend to the death, or the death of others their belief in a mere story.


And the real point is that MEANING is an abstract.

God does not NEED to be "real" for us to derive meaning from the concept of God.
Identity does not NEED to be "true" to derive meaning from a cultural history or context.

And, in fact, I contend that meaning becomes MORE profound when we understand that it is a CREATED thing. That We, ourselves, invent meaning for our own purposes. It does not come from without.

I don't NEED to be Native American to be changed by Native American stories of cultural meaning.

There doesn't have to BE any actual celestial redemption in pretend heaven for me to appreciate the concept of redemption and understand that it reflects a HUMAN need for redress of our own errors and transgressions, solely against other human beings.

If I can understand narrative AS narrative, and that it was created BY people to serve human social and personal needs, then I can have greater compassion for the human condition... and see beyond the blinkered identity of ONE group and recognize that ALL groups create stories for reasons that we can All understand.

And, if truth really is worth seeking, then the only way we can be honest about our identity, is to understand that it is a lie. Just a story we tell ourselves because we find it useful.

And when I know at my core that my identity is a lie. Why do I need to defend it at all? Why would I be upset over anyone else's alternate understanding of that lie?

What is cultural appropriation? If not just someone else liking the same lie as me?

Is being a woman just a Dress we put on?
Is being Black a hairstyle and music preference in which one must qualify to partake?
Is being Native American a feathered bonnet that some can wear and others can not?

Consider the modern moral scolds who shake their fingers at others for transgressing into imaginary territories and claiming Lies to which they have no right.
What is all the OUTRAGE about?

Claimed Ownership of an identity that is just a collection of stories we mistake for reality.

And shaking your finger at someone for SAYING something in the currently unfashionable manner, is no different than the scolds of a prior generation who shook their fingers at interracial couples, or at Jews being allowed into the country club.

Its just investment of a Story with BELIEF in its being 'true'... and what is believed to be true simply changes as the story is re-written because the lies of yore were exposed to be lies.


Today, were routinely condemn sterotype as an essential wrong. Which is just a stereotype of sterotyping.
We ALL stereotype, all the time. LANGUAGE itself is nothing BUT stereotyping noises we can make as representing ideas and objects.
We are lying to ourselves about lying to ourselves about lying.

If we can't even HAVE a conversation without generalizing, can't even understand reality without categorizing it, then where the fuck do we get off making absolute statements about the inherent goodness or badness of lying?


To me, the only real transgressions are those that affect others in a negative way. And it doesn't matter if those transgressions are from lying or telling the truth.

And as far as out internal being, That part that no other can ever fully know, our greatest crime is to not even be aware of when we are lying to ourselves. Because all of our transgression against others are rooted in our believing things to be true, that are just fictions.

And if we could all understand the difference, if we could all Perceive narrative as just narrative... then we would not invest it with such absolute dogma. We would see all understandings as conditional. And the meaning in all stories as being equally valuable.

No man would blow up a bus full of people over the fact that they liked a different story more than he did.