The Simple Experiment

[Thinks With Thoughts]

I believe you need to quit calling people trolls when you change your name every week or so. Hm? Maybe?

Actually, I've been using this profile since May, so it's not been every week. Also, changing my name isn't trolling, because it's my right to change my username, unless I use more than one account on the same forum at the same time, which I'm not.

Trolling is writing for the purpose of getting an emotional rise out of people, which is what you are doing. However, in your case you're stepping beyond being a troll, and are actually impersonating another user. You are a troll imposter.

 

[Vault313]

I came to exactly the same conclusion (with the, disturbing, implication in the posts prior, that this troll is trying to sully the real bluebird's reputation) here.

I cannot for the life of me fathom why people do this type of thing. They must literally be made of an entirely different substance than me, since it would never even begin to enter my mind to do such a thing. Human behavior infinitely fascinates me, when I am able to suspend my fear of what humans are truly capable of. It makes me feel like I'm not one of these said humans. Not that I am some paragon of morality and goodness, but the things that some humans do is so beyond my ken that it leaves me baffled.

Along those lines, Laird, your theory of "war" you put forth is intriguing. You find this concept over and over again throughout human mythology. The "good" vs. "evil" concept.

That combined with my above words re: bluebird, makes me wonder if I, and others like me, truly are made of "something different" from the likes of those who lie, cheat, troll (for lack of a better word) or even murder.

How is it that you have those who such actions would never enter their purview alongside those who don't even blink an eye before doing so?

Again, not that I am some paragon of righteousness, but as an extremely sensitive person (and I know I'm far from alone in this) this world is a downright nightmare. But at the same time, I can find beauty in nearly anyone and anything (nearly). Even Hitler had to have at least one decent quality.

Which leads me to wonder: is my sensitivity and naïveté a sign of my being an extremely new soul (if we have them) or a sign of higher evolution? None of the above? I'm not sure...

I tend toward the belief that there is a "God" of some sort, though I tend toward the view of Idealism, and that it is ultimately good. I also believe that the vast majority, if not perhaps all of us are of this same goodness, when you strip away the fear and subsequent animalistic survivalist appeals toward power and materialistic persuits. But that could just be my naive nature protruding again.

But regardless of how much horror I'm exposed to, this belief is unchanging. Perhaps it's because I need to believe this to cope. I'm not really sure.

And Bluebird, whoever you are, I feel sorry for you. What a sad space you must occupy that your joy is derived from ridiculing others.

 

[Thinks With Thoughts]

Assuming for the sake of the argument that there exists a god with a character - why presume that that character would be entirely good, entirely bad, or entirely anything for that matter? Given what we know about the universe, doesn't it seem more likely that it would be a mixture?

But you forget about fear, which is what I have about God. Fear is seldom rational, and it's powerful to shake off. I have extreme difficulty letting go of the fear that the religious fundamentalists are right, and that there's a God who demands us to live only this one particular way, and if we don't do that, we'll spend eternity in a lake of fire. So that colors my thoughts. Is it rational? No. But it exists nonetheless.

Rationally speaking, it's difficult to tell what character a god would have based on examining the universe because we don't know if there're multiple forces behind the universe. Like Laird mentioned, perhaps God created the universe as a whole but let Satan create Earth, or something like that? How would we know the difference? That's why I've been trying to go to the source, but I realize that's not the best idea. People have said they've received visions in dreams, so that's the route I'm going now.

 

[Laird]

Now, that game seems much more realistic. What you say about a good and corrupt force makes a lot of sense. This dog-eat-dog world does have signs of being good and corrupt. I find it a little scary that both sides are trying to conserve energy, because that removes the all-powerful part from whoever created our souls, isn't that so?

To be honest, I don't have the ultimate answers (at least not consciously), and, as I said, I'm not sure who/what created this reality, and, by implication, our souls. I would like to think that it was a good, all-powerful being, but, again, our souls too show signs of corruption and not just beauty: the very fact that we are capable of making evil choices is, in my view, a sign of corrupt design in itself. A perfectly good being would create only perfectly good creatures, and being perfectly good means never choosing evil, which means being incapable of choosing evil: plainly, this does not apply to us.

So, yes, I would agree that it appears that whoever/whatever created our souls is either not wholly good or not all-powerful, or both. But, as I said, I'm still working all this stuff through. Maybe there's something I haven't thought of, and maybe there's stuff you can point out that I'm missing.

 

[Thinks With Thoughts]

I cannot for the life of me fathom why people do this type of thing. They must literally be made of an entirely different substance than me, since it would never even begin to enter my mind to do such a thing. Human behavior infinitely fascinates me, when I am able to suspend my fear of what humans are truly capable of. It makes me feel like I'm not one of these said humans. Not that I am some paragon of morality and goodness, but the things that some humans do is so beyond my ken that it leaves me baffled.

Along those lines, Laird, your theory of "war" you put forth is intriguing. You find this concept over and over again throughout human mythology. The "good" vs. "evil" concept.

That combined with my above words re: bluebird, makes me wonder if I, and others like me, truly are made of "something different" from the likes of those who lie, cheat, troll (for lack of a better word) or even murder.

How is it that you have those who such actions would never enter their purview alongside those who don't even blink an eye before doing so?

Again, not that I am some paragon of righteousness, but as an extremely sensitive person (and I know I'm far from alone in this) this world is a downright nightmare. But at the same time, I can find beauty in nearly anyone and anything (nearly). Even Hitler had to have at least one decent quality.

Which leads me to wonder: is my sensitivity and naïveté a sign of my being an extremely new soul (if we have them) or a sign of higher evolution? None of the above? I'm not sure...

I tend toward the belief that there is a "God" of some sort, though I tend toward the view of Idealism, and that it is ultimately good. I also believe that the vast majority, if not perhaps all of us are of this same goodness, when you strip away the fear and subsequent animalistic survivalist appeals toward power and materialistic persuits. But that could just be my naive nature protruding again.

But regardless of how much horror I'm exposed to, this belief is unchanging. Perhaps it's because I need to believe this to cope. I'm not really sure.

And Bluebird, whoever you are, I feel sorry for you. What a sad space you must occupy that your joy is derived from ridiculing others.

I think we're all capable of trolling and committing bad acts, as well as good acts. It depends on what you're exposed to. I think if you've never been exposed to war before, you wouldn't know how to do it. But you get exposed to it, suddenly you're capable of it. This is why leading by example is so important.

In other words, here we see "bluebird" trolling us. Now you say you may be of a different material, but I think we're all of the same material, it's just "bluebird," having been exposed to trolling before, chose to embrace it and emulate it, rather than fight it. It's a lesson that we're all capable of trolling, even me and you, but it's also an opportunity for us to choose a different path than "bluebird."

So there's no need to be shocked at what people like "bluebird" do, just see it as a lesson in what you as a human are capable of, and learn to take a different path. That being said, we've already learned that lesson multiple times long ago, so we have no need for "bluebird."

 

[Thinks With Thoughts]

To be honest, I don't have the ultimate answers (at least not consciously), and, as I said, I'm not sure who/what created this reality, and, by implication, our souls. I would like to think that it was a good, all-powerful being, but, again, our souls too show signs of corruption and not just beauty: the very fact that we are capable of making evil choices is, in my view, a sign of corrupt design in itself. A perfectly good being would create only perfectly good creatures, and being perfectly good means never choosing evil, which means being incapable of choosing evil: plainly, this does not apply to us.

So, yes, I would agree that it appears that whoever/whatever created our souls is either not wholly good or not all-powerful, or both. But, as I said, I'm still working all this stuff through. Maybe there's something I haven't thought of, and maybe there's stuff you can point out that I'm missing.

I think so far we're on the same page. If I come up with something insightful, it's usually by accident.

 

[Laird]

Hi @Vault313.

Because I'm advocating what must seem to most people to be a fairly black-and-white view of a world which seems to actually be very nuanced, I'm wary of, but not at all unsympathetic towards, validating the sort of thoughts that you put forward: that there exist people on this world who are of an entirely different moral character to the rest of us. I am open to that possibility, but I am also open to the possibility that, in part, moral character is formed through experience, particularly abusive experience. That said, I don't think that this can fully explain the depravity we see in some people: as I wrote in an earlier post, I think that evil is incompatible with wholly objective rationality, and I think that at a minimum we all have some sort of acccess to this sort of rationality.

My personal view, for what it's worth, is that - and I say this based on experience - metaphysical/spiritual evil exists, and that it both can, and that it actively and deliberately does attempt (in some cases succesfully) to, influence us "mere mortals". In some cases, it goes beyond mere "influence" into literal "pacts", but I say this based solely on the evidence of others, and not by my own personal testimony.

As for bluebird, do I think that s/he has literally made a pact with the devil? No, not really. I think that s/he is quite conceivably being influenced by undesirable forces, but that the large part of it comes from his/her own ego, which it doesn't take (and hasn't taken) much to inflame.

As for the concept of a war between good and evil, whilst I am very unstudied in this, it was a fundamental aspect of some religions which both predated and were contemporaneous with early Christianity, including Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. I feel, despite the contrary belief of C.S. Lewis (although it was nice that he thought it a "manly creed"), that these were/are truer metaphysical systems than is Christianity, even though I feel that at the same time they explain some aspects of Christian faith - and better than mainstream Christianity does!

As for this world being "a downright nightmare": exactly, this is what has motivated my metaphysical views. Really, who can believe that a God who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent exists given the actual evil that exists in this world? And as for "at the same time [being able to] find beauty in nearly anyone and anything (nearly)", this is what (at least in part) leads me to believe that, despite it all, God is good. It's just that being good isn't enough, you also need to have the total power to enforce goodness.

Re your idea that "the vast majority, if not perhaps all of us are of this same goodness, when you strip away the fear and subsequent animalistic survivalist appeals toward power and materialistic persuits", this is my fundamental belief too. I'm working, and these posts are part of that, on some way of reconciling it with the fact that we (some of us) are equally capable of the most appalling horror.

 

[bluebird]

Actually, I've been using this profile since May, so it's not been every week. Also, changing my name isn't trolling, because it's my right to change my username, unless I use more than one account on the same forum at the same time, which I'm not.

Why change it? To fool everyone into thinking Types With Fingers has left, btw, were you TWF ! TWF@ TWF II T_W_F, of course you were and that IS trolling.Or were you banned as everyone has said?

 

[bluebird]

I think we're all capable of trolling... This is why leading by example is so important.

lol

 

[bluebird]

I cannot for the life of me fathom why people do this type of thing. They must literally be made of an entirely different substance than me, since it would never even begin to enter my mind to do such a thing.

How's perfection? Trying?

And Bluebird, whoever you are, I feel sorry for you.

Total lie. I don't give a shit about you and you don't give a shit about me. Keep it real.

 

[Thinks With Thoughts]

Why change it? To fool everyone into thinking Types With Fingers has left, btw, were you TWF ! TWF@ TWF II T_W_F, of course you were and that IS trolling.Or were you banned as everyone has said?

Nope, it's not trolling.

 

[Vault313]

In other words, here we see "bluebird" trolling us. Now you say you may be of a different material, but I think we're all of the same material, it's just "bluebird," having been exposed to trolling before, chose to embrace it and emulate it, rather than fight it. It's a lesson that we're all capable of trolling, even me and you, but it's also an opportunity for us to choose a different path than "bluebird."

Yes, I understand all that, but my question is why is this so?

Why would I choose differently from, say, Jeffery Dahmer? It's the materialist bent to attribute it to a complex, yet reducible, combination of brain chemistry, upbringing (an all encompassing term that includes all experience from birth to death, and all influences from birth to death), environmental exposures, etc. But there are a few problems with this; first, try as they may, they have not as of present found a single thing anatomically to explain the "why" of evil. Jeffrey Dahmer's brain is for all intents and purposes identical to mine. They've found no neurotransmitters lacking or in excess. No abnormally large or inferior brain structures. Second, it doesn't account for the fact that you can take two people of similar backgrounds, and one becomes Jeffrey Dahmer, the other a human rights activist. Again, try as they may, when it comes to "evil", science comes up empty. We don't truly know what makes one person "good" and another "evil".

Moreover, while there is such a thing as the cycle of abuse, there is no accounting for the many who choose to break the cycle themselves. Going so far as to giving up ever having children to ensure the buck stops with them. That's a lot to ask of Darwinism, isn't it? Someone voluntarily giving up their reproductive rights to ensure the safety of progeny that will never exist?

So not all who are exposed to war, criminality, abuse or even immorality will become the same. Saying it's as simple as what one is exposed to is vastly oversimplifying the issue.

 

[Arouet]

But you forget about fear, which is what I have about God. Fear is seldom rational, and it's powerful to shake off.

I want to be cautious here, because I don't want to contribute to your fear. For what its worth, I think it entirely understandable to fear a deity, once you believe in one. I wish I had an easy solution for resolving that fear. Just telling you not to worry about it because we can't change it anyway isn't going to help.

I guess I would say that no matter what the truth of the matter, we feel good when we help others, feel bad when we hurt others, and that we need to work together to survive, thrive, and be happy. We can only do our best to do what we think is right, and if that's not good enough for some deity out there (or it's flunkies) then so be it.

In terms of the deity that punishes us for not following the rules (ie: what if the fundamentalists are right), I can only put forward my flip of Pascal's Wager: given the vast number of different views on what such a deity would require, the chances of any one view being correct is exceptionally small, especially lacking corroborating evidence (even weak evidence).

(If none of that is helpful please just ignore. I am mindful that discussions like this can tend to make fears like this worse, and frankly, if you find these discussions making them so you might want to avoid them. I'm certainly not qualified to give you advice on this, and likely neither are many on this forum.)

 

[Vault313]

How's perfection? Trying?



Total lie. I don't give a shit about you and you don't give a shit about me. Keep it real.

Wow, maybe in your world, but not mine. Perhaps it's hard for you to fathom giving a shit about a random stranger, but it's my reality.

I'm not perfect. Never said or even implied that I was. I struggle just as much as the next person and acknowledge there are others who struggles would send me to my knees. But I do my absolute best to empathize with others, and attempt to understand their point of view. But for some, where the only impetus is to hurt others who have nothing to do with them, I'm afraid I just cannot empathize with that.


Btw, this isn't the uglier side of SuperSexy, is it? He/she can be kind of a dick sometimes, but you take it up to a whole new level.

 

[Jeebus]

Brothers, why war upon one another? Many of the Apostles received the 'gifts of Spirit' take them unto you.

 

[Thinks With Thoughts]

Yes, I understand all that, but my question is why is this so?

Why would I choose differently from, say, Jeffery Dahmer? It's the materialist bent to attribute it to a complex, yet reducible, combination of brain chemistry, upbringing (an all encompassing term that includes all experience from birth to death, and all influences from birth to death), environmental exposures, etc. But there are a few problems with this; first, try as they may, they have not as of present found a single thing anatomically to explain the "why" of evil. Jeffrey Dahmer's brain is for all intents and purposes identical to mine. They've found no neurotransmitters lacking or in excess. No abnormally large or inferior brain structures. Second, it doesn't account for the fact that you can take two people of similar backgrounds, and one becomes Jeffrey Dahmer, the other a human rights activist. Again, try as they may, when it comes to "evil", science comes up empty. We don't truly know what makes one person "good" and another "evil".

Moreover, while there is such a thing as the cycle of abuse, there is no accounting for the many who choose to break the cycle themselves. Going so far as to giving up ever having children to ensure the buck stops with them. That's a lot to ask of Darwinism, isn't it? Someone voluntarily giving up their reproductive rights to ensure the safety of progeny that will never exist?

So not all who are exposed to war, criminality, abuse or even immorality will become the same. Saying it's as simple as what one is exposed to is vastly oversimplifying the issue.

Well, I'm an oversimple man, haha.

But I do notice good and evil vary from culture to culture. The Aztecs saw no problem with cutting out the hearts of living people, for example.

 

[Vault313]

Hi @Vault313.

Because I'm advocating what must seem to most people to be a fairly black-and-white view of a world which seems to actually be very nuanced, I'm wary of, but not at all unsympathetic towards, validating the sort of thoughts that you put forward: that there exist people on this world who are of an entirely different moral character to the rest of us. I am open to that possibility, but I am also open to the possibility that, in part, moral character is formed through experience, particularly abusive experience. That said, I don't think that this can fully explain the depravity we see in some people: as I wrote in an earlier post, I think that evil is incompatible with wholly objective rationality, and I think that at a minimum we all have some sort of acccess to this sort of rationality.

My personal view, for what it's worth, is that - and I say this based on experience - metaphysical/spiritual evil exists, and that it both can, and that it actively and deliberately does attempt (in some cases succesfully) to, influence us "mere mortals". In some cases, it goes beyond mere "influence" into literal "pacts", but I say this based solely on the evidence of others, and not by my own personal testimony.

As for bluebird, do I think that s/he has literally made a pact with the devil? No, not really. I think that s/he is quite conceivably being influenced by undesirable forces, but that the large part of it comes from his/her own ego, which it doesn't take (and hasn't taken) much to inflame.

As for the concept of a war between good and evil, whilst I am very unstudied in this, it was a fundamental aspect of some religions which both predated and were contemporaneous with early Christianity, including Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. I feel, despite the contrary belief of C.S. Lewis (although it was nice that he thought it a "manly creed"), that these were/are truer metaphysical systems than is Christianity, even though I feel that at the same time they explain some aspects of Christian faith - and better than mainstream Christianity does!

As for this world being "a downright nightmare": exactly, this is what has motivated my metaphysical views. Really, who can believe that a God who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent exists given the actual evil that exists in this world? And as for "at the same time [being able to] find beauty in nearly anyone and anything (nearly)", this is what (at least in part) leads me to believe that, despite it all, God is good. It's just that being good isn't enough, you also need to have the total power to enforce goodness.

Re your idea that "the vast majority, if not perhaps all of us are of this same goodness, when you strip away the fear and subsequent animalistic survivalist appeals toward power and materialistic persuits", this is my fundamental belief too. I'm working, and these posts are part of that, on some way of reconciling it with the fact that we (some of us) are equally capable of the most appalling horror.

As usual Laird, you've given me a lot to think about. I'm going to mull this over for a bit...

 

[Vault313]

But I do notice good and evil vary from culture to culture. The Aztecs saw no problem with cutting out the hearts of living people, for example.

True enough, which is why the concept of good vs. evil is such a slippery subject. It's hard to get a strong foothold on what absolutely constitutes good and what absolutely constitutes evil.

 

[Jeebus]

True enough, which is why the concept of good vs. evil is such a slippery subject. It's hard to get a strong foothold on what absolutely constitutes good and what absolutely constitutes evil.

Nay, sir, look to Him. Genesis 3:22

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"

 

[Thinks With Thoughts]

I want to be cautious here, because I don't want to contribute to your fear. For what its worth, I think it entirely understandable to fear a deity, once you believe in one. I wish I had an easy solution for resolving that fear. Just telling you not to worry about it because we can't change it anyway isn't going to help.

I guess I would say that no matter what the truth of the matter, we feel good when we help others, feel bad when we hurt others, and that we need to work together to survive, thrive, and be happy. We can only do our best to do what we think is right, and if that's not good enough for some deity out there (or it's flunkies) then so be it.

In terms of the deity that punishes us for not following the rules (ie: what if the fundamentalists are right), I can only put forward my flip of Pascal's Wager: given the vast number of different views on what such a deity would require, the chances of any one view being correct is exceptionally small, especially lacking corroborating evidence (even weak evidence).

(If none of that is helpful please just ignore. I am mindful that discussions like this can tend to make fears like this worse, and frankly, if you find these discussions making them so you might want to avoid them. I'm certainly not qualified to give you advice on this, and likely neither are many on this forum.)

No worries. I agree with you, we feel good when sharing and creating, not as good when taking and destroying. I say not as good because some people delight in taking and destroying, but most people don't. We definitely do things better as a team, whether or not the act is creative or destructive.

Here's a question for thought: is the universe a reflection of that which created it, or a deformity? Can we accurately determine the character of God from looking at the universe?