Steve 2
I presume you mean:
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur?
- The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.
Help with understanding
by Doltologist 52 Replies latest jw experiences
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Island Man
Belief in God is more emotional than logical, Because of being unemotional due to Aspergers, you can see the logic of the non-existence of God clearly without emotions getting in the way. Most other people who believe are blinded by emotion, IMHO. -
Doltologist
Cantleave
They say that a picture says a thousand words. In your picture, there were at least 10,000.
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DarioKehl
DoItologist:
first of all, hello and welcome. Second, is your name spelled doLtologist with a lowercase "L" or doItologist with an uppercase "I?" I want to pronounce it correctly in my head when I read it.
Side note: I just wanted to say that I've met, worked with and befriended many people with Aspberger's and I find them all fascinating and enjoyable; some of my favorite, deepest conversations have been with them. It's very refreshing to dialogue with others who have that unique approach to everything. I've wondered sometimes if I don't have it a little myself (I'm quite tired of all the comparisons to Sheldon, but I can't say I disagree with them).
I met one guy recently at a secular humanist group I belong to and I had no idea. We chatted, bantered, engaged in petty small talk...
when I was gathering my things to leave, he approached me, shook my hand and said, "I have to tell you something. I have Asperger's. Every laugh, chuckle, facial expression and gesture I've shared with you was an act I've been practicing. How did I do?"
He followed with a warning not to be offended or disturbed if his reactions or timing don't fit the situation in future conversations. 10,000 respect points for him. Seriously. That was an awesome way of him to explain it to me.
If you don't mind me asking, what other challenges do you face besides "black & white" thinking and do these challenges ever bother you?
final thought: if you're gifted with this unique approach at processing information, the inevitable conclusion will be atheism. You will take that journey on your own and it's an amazing ride. I'll save a seat for you at the Roundtable of Skeptics. :)
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Doltologist
DarioKehl
My name is upper case D and all the rest of the letters are lower case.
I used to bother and try to use facial expressions but I was told that they looked 'false'. One can't win in this world. So, I gave up using facial expressions and life went back to being simple for me. I found it tedious trying to feign interest in something that bored me witless.
I can't look at people and listen to them at the same time. I can do one or the other but not both. That means I can listen to you OR I can read your body language but I can't do both. So, I don't know that you are joking sometimes and therefore take everything literally.
I can't look at people and talk to them at the same time. I can do one or the other but not both. That means I can talk to you OR I can look at you but I can't do both. So, if I talk, I have to look somewhere else other than at you. Otherwise, If I look at you, I start reading your body language which means that I have to stop talking. So, if I say something that offends, I have no way of knowing.
People like me usually have few friends but, the ones we have, can most definitely be relied on, as can we.
I call a spade a spade. If you act like a twat, I'll call you a twat. If you don't want me to call you one, don't act like one.
I don't like people making illogical and emotional decisions. I just find it so bleedin' irritating and there's no excuse for it.
Above all else, there is freedom.
I have the right to offend - just as you do.
If you get offended by things that I do and say, that's your call. You have the right to get offended but don't blame me. You also have the right not to get offended and you can exercise that right just as easily. The choice is yours - not mine.
After freedom comes fairness. People need to act in a fair and consistent manner. If they don't, I will retaliate. I ALWAYS retaliate. ALWAYS.
I find relationships interesting. People seem to get terribly upset when a relationship ends though quite why I don't really understand. If someone wants to be with me, that's fine. If someone doesn't want to be with me, that's fine too. They have that right. I have no wish to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me. I don't see the point. I can be with people or not be with people. Both situations have their positive and negative points. My take is that if you don't like me and who I am, stay away. I couldn't care less one way or the other.
I find people strange - very strange. People come to me for solutions to problems. I provide them with an optimal solution. Then they tell me about the caveat. So, I give them a sub-optimal solution but they complain because the solution isn't optimal.
I don't like rules for the sake of having rules and I dislike people following rules without understanding why they are following them. People aren't automatons yet and there's no excuse for acting like one.
I am a people watcher. I've learned that people don't know what to do when someone like me comes along and won't play by their rules. We are just expected to play by their rules. When we don't, they have no idea what to do. They just kind of stop and look sort of puzzled. I find it hilarious. What's more is, few people will actually challenge me so, in effect, I can break most of the rules that I want to without any effect. We have rules in place that people follow but few rules in place for when those rules aren't. There was a time, for example, when I could go into a travel agent and tell them what kind of a holiday I wanted. They would then provide me with a list of suitable holidays. I would then discount some because they weren't suitable and pick one of the remaining ones. Try that nowadays. All you'll get is some 17 year old who asks which holiday you'd like to book. My answer is, if I knew which bleedin' holiday I wanted to book, I'd have done it on line and saved myself 10%. What I need help with is what's out there in the way of suitable holidays and what is it that the brochure isn't telling me? They have a set of rules that they use to book a holiday once one has been selected but no rules whatsoever for helping people to select a holiday. There's a lot of services going this way now. People used to come to me for advice before buying a PC. I used to ask them a few questions which told me what memory they'd need, how much disc space they'd need and how fast the processor needed to be. I'd then point them to the right model. If you go into a PC shop these days, you'll now get some 17 year old kid telling you that this PC comes in a choice of 3 colours. However, if you ask him what the processor speed is, this glazed look will come across his face. I was looking at a PC in a shop not long ago and this 17 year old kid asked me if I needed some help. I asked him what the mip rating was of the PC, cruel twat that I am. Off he went to find the manager. Neither returned. Presumably, neither had a clue.
Being an atheist isn't a choice I made, it's a conclusion that I came to which was as natural as breathing. I was never baptised. My parents decided to leave it up to me when I was old enough. I've never believed in god. I see no point. If someone can prove that a god exists, then I will believe. I'm not stupid. god is an emotional response to the human condition, I think. I'm not emotional. I don't need god. Why would I believe in something that man made up to satisfy his emotional needs? If people want to satisfy their emotional needs, get a puppy or a kitten or a teddy bear. They are probably a lot less bothersome and a whole lot more reliable - especially in the case of the teddy bear.
I don't see any of these issues as challenges. I see them as being part of me and who I am.
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adjusted knowledge
Given how obvious it is to me that jesus/god don't exist, how come so many people think they do?
Fear of death is a motivating factor in the belief of a God. Since neither the existence nor nonexistence of God can be proven, it leaves the way for many to believe. One could make an argument for a historical Jesus. I've only know of Flavius Josephus that made mention of Jesus around that time period (outside the writings of Jesus disciples). Josephus' reference was a vague reference too.
However, keep in mind that Socrates never wrote anything and all our knowledge comes from his students Plato and Xenophon. Similarly Jesus supposedly never wrote anything and all his teachings came from his students. Who was the real Socrates or real Jesus? Who knows, they've both been dead for thousands of year.
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Xanthippe
Regarding primary sources for an historical Jesus, Tacitus says Nero blamed the Christians for burning Rome and 'Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus'
The Annals, Book XV, chapter 44.
There's little else there in that 'chapter' which is actually a paragraph apart from Tacitus saying this 'mischievous superstition' (Christianity) spread to Rome. Also It was written in 62-65 AD so not even a primary source for Jesus. You can get a copy from Amazon and read it yourself.
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Doltologist
Adjusted knowledge:
One could make an argument for a historical Jesus. I've only know of Flavius Josephus that made mention of Jesus around that time period (outside the writings of Jesus disciples). Josephus' reference was a vague reference too.
There's actually 3 'early' references to jesus outside of the bible. Two by Josephus and 1 by Tacitus. The Josephus references were written in AD 93/94. One, even christian scholars agree, was tampered with by early christians though to what extent isn't know although the core document was still thought to be intact.
The Tacitus reference was written in AD116.
The issue here is that they were not first-hand accounts. One was written 60 years after jesus' supposed death and the other a fully 83 years. So, what were the bases of these documents?
Some scholars have even questioned the authenticity of these documents.
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Half banana
@ Cappytan, I have to disagree with your basis for believing in Jesus as a person. I don’t believed he ever lived because there is no concrete evidence for his existence but there is evidence for political propaganda in the Roman state to promote a fictional god-man saviour hero with a Jewish name. That he existed is the propagandistic assumption which has powered the Roman Church for nearly seventeen hundred years. A superb book to read which helps get a handle on the events of the first century is A Short History of Christianity by JM Robertson...old... but astonishingly good. (Lots of others have written books of the same title).
Secondly Wikipedia is popular consensus information and not necessarily scholarly, i.e. peer reviewed. Wikipedia is not considered a scholarly source at universities.
@Adjusted, although no handwriting of his remains, we have first hand, primary sources in the case of Socrates life, the elements which make history historical. We have no such record of Jesus. All we have is second hand stories about him written years after the purported events. Even more telling is that we have almost exactly the same stories about the life of the NT god-man attributed to other god-men two thousand years before Jesus was supposed to have existed... Crucially in the argument against a real Jesus is that the “Jesus” story did by no means originate with him. The gospels for example tell their own variants on the older set of myths about the saviour of mankind, close in accord but not quite the same. Myths have to have the right ingredients to replicate but the ‘accent’ often changes.
Josephus’ mention of Jesus had long ago been dismissed by textual scholars in the past as a forged insert into his text... but Christians now, in their desperate need to find Jesus as a real person, have resurrected the matter again in an attempt to make Jesus real.
There are very strong arguments against Josephus having known or heard of a wonder working god-man called Jesus. Josephus wrote for educated Romans, had Jesus existed his readership would have wanted to know about him. If there was such a man as the Biblical Jesus; then Josephus would have recorded reams of information not just a passing mention which would have only whetted the reader’s curiosity. Alas there is no secular documentation of Jesus; I would maintain that he is a fiction in just the same way that his town of Nazareth did not exist in Josephus’ day. Jesus was supposed to have lived in Galilee about half an hour’s walk from where Josephus lived. He was too astute a historian to miss out salient facts. The mention of Jesus simply ‘in passing’, is out of character for Josephus’ writings and for him to record he was “the Messiah” is neither the language of a serious historian nor that of a Jew. The handwritten text which does say this is surely a later Christian forgery.
@Doltologist, thank you for telling us about your condition, I do not have it myself but sympathise. One of the joys of being human is our differences.