The Glade 4.0

It has nothing to do with faith, or arrogance. What is, is. What we do not understand exists outside of our understanding, but it still is. Gravity worked long before mankind ever rose up on two legs. The world was never flat.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

What is gravity? Why is it such an absolute, definitive part of your perception of reality?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Talya would make a world champion fly fisher, I do believe.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

And how are you sure the world exists? How do you know your eyes are actually seeing reality? How do you really know your brain isn't floating in a jar being fed the reality you think you know?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Is the giant a windmill, or is the windmill a giant?

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Only if she believes in herself.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Clap, clap for Talyabell.

Mus, put your hands together, repeatedly to make noise, okay. Stop reaching for your zipper the test tube.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Taly, you and I both know that you don't buy into the idea that reality is subjective. The Easter bunny isn't real, and that's not something we take on faith.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

"Reality" isn't subjective. We just have no sure way to know what "reality" is.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Monte, it has repeatedly been explained to you that you can only take science to a certain point.

Once you reach that point, a leap of faith must be taken in order to continue to profess that it is the ultimate truth.

Your inability to understand this represents a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance on your part and detracts from taking you as a serious conversationalist.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I want everyone here that believes that reality is in any way subjective to read the following instructions, and then follow them.

1) Close your eyes.
2) Tell yourself that your skin is made of marble. Really believe it.
3) grab a spork
4) hit yourself in the nuts with it. If you don't have nuts, your vag will do.
5) let us know if your skin is made of rock.

Khross, Taly, and others would like to convince us that we are entirely incapable of perceiving reality accurately. This is laughable. We are perfectly capable of observing the world around us. We have, over the course of human history, greatly improved our understanding of the world around us via the faculties that have evolved to do just that job.

Weather or not the light spectrum we see the world in is the most complete, or even complete, is irrelevant. A rock falling towards your head *is* going to harm you, no matter how hard you think it wont, or how you perceive it or don't perceive it. Reality is *not* subjective. It exists if we see it accurately or not. It exists outside of our understanding. It has existed for far longer than we have been able to form the words to express our observations.

Science is not a thing, it is a process, and as a process it's application is pretty much limitless. It is a tool by which we understand the objective reality of the world around us.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Rebuttal:
[youtube]Llqup1Uir6k[/youtube]

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How do you know, for an absolute fact, that the reality you perceive exists at all? How do you know that you are not a brain in a jar, your reality simply a direct upload by some other being or thing?

How do you know you are not a tertiary personality trapped inside the imagination of a mentally disturbed person?

How do you know you are not the only thing in existence, all of "reality" just a dream-like state that you, the God-being, are experiencing?

How do you know that the machines haven't locked you in a stasis pod and hooked you up to the Matrix to keep your mind active while they use you for energy?

How do you know we're not some type of experiment, a lab experiment being fed your reality at a whim?

How do you really know anything?

I would agree with you if you'd said that the reality we perceive is all we logically have to work with, it's the only sensible course of action to proceed with our lives as if all these other possibilities weren't there, because there is no evidence of them. Evidence, by its nature, is part of what we perceive. If we can't trust our perceptions, we cannot ever know anything at all, and that would be defeatist. So we live our lives with faith that our perceptions represent some measure of reality. At least, I think we do. Maybe none of you exist, but there's no real point pursuing that line of thought...but I can never know for sure, not absolutely. And does it really matter?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I was all "Ok yeah that's pretty ... OMFG HE JUST CRACKED THAT DUDE RIGHT IN THE FORK!"

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Holy shitsnacks!

I assume that what I observe is real.

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

So do I. In fact, I would assume most sane people do...but that's all they really are...assumptions.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

They aren't saying that. It's true, we can't prove reality in a lab, but no one gets mugged and thinks "well, I can't prove this is really happening." You can impress idiots at parties with this talk, but it's kind of silly. I'll continue observing reality through my eyes and making judgements and action based on that and so will Taly and Khross. Unless they're just playing devils advocate or channeling that guy who wrote Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What is, is. It's just that simple. Our ability to accurately observe that (Assuming that's even an issue) is entirely irrelevant. We live in reality, it goes on with or without us, and we are just another insignificant part of that overall reality.

It doesn't take faith to say there is no Easter Bunny. It doesn't take faith to know that Santa Claus does not exist.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Merely repeating a tautology multiple times doesn't make what you're saying any more true. Which isn't to say that it's necessarily false -- just that you haven't provided any real thought or analysis. You say that "what is, is", but how do you know that? What does it even mean to know something in the first place? Is this knowledge you claim about objective reality a priori? If so, where does a priori knowledge come from? How do we verify it?

I'm really not trying to be rude, here, but you don't sound like you've ever really questioned the nature of knowledge, experience, or observation before. You wouldn't be the only one, unfortunately. Our education system has been woefully neglectful in the teaching of epistemology, and the dialogue of our generation has suffered badly for it.

In any case, since you show such unwaivering faith in the scientific process, consider this:

If the theory of relativity is even approximately right, then there are vast regions of the universe which lie outside of our "future light cone", and us theirs. In laymen's terms, nothing we do will ever be able to affect them or vice versa. In what sense can they be said to objectively exist, then? To paraphrase Pirsig (hi, Wwen ;p), I cannot think of any test for existence which they satisfy, nor any test for non-existence which they fail.

Things get even murkier if we delve into many-worlds interpretations of quantum theory. If a version of every possiblyle universe exists, and particle behavior is, at a fundamental level unpredictable except by statistics, then this raises a deeply troubling question -- how do we know that the particle statistics that we observe (in essence, the only "laws" of our universe) are the "real" ones? That is, since all probabilities exist in some portion of the multiverse, then deeply skewed universes must exist and, in fact, in infinite number. The problem, then, is that we have no way of knowing whether the universe we inhabit is one of them. The statistics we observe may not match at all the "true" statistics of the multiverse at large.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Again, I go back to the "stab yourself in the junk" example. Your examples about things outside of our light cone are also irrelevant. We exist, in this place, now, and this place we exist is real. It is not invented or made up. It's not a product of our imagination. This ball of rock spinning around a star exists. We exist on it. We go about real daily lives doing real things.

The fact that you are typing on a computer gives the lie to any subjective version of reality. The multiverse is entirely irrelevant. We exist here, and now.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

To answer this for myself, yes, I really believe that what I believe is really real; that the existance of God is real and that He works in the world to accomplish His will. That He has revealed Himself to us via the general revelation of the universe and the special revelation of His Word.

As an aside, I highly recommend "The Truth Project" videos to all Christians if you want to understand God more clearly and want to have a deeper, closer relationship with your Father. I learned a lot about myself; what sort of jerk I can be sometimes. Arrogant, buying into the crud that so many people buy into, and I intend to change. The process is already started.

It seems to me that the series would be of limited value to non-Christians, but if you are seeking it may have some benefit.

Besides, what evidence do I have to the contrary?

Also, I think this is relevant.

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

Stabbing yourself in the junk doesn't prove you're not a brain in the jar. If you die in the Matrix...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Stabbing oneself in the junk is just a poor and unsubstantial distractor to what is being posited to Monty. No one is going to do it, because we expect, based on past experience, to feel pain. Even if we do feel that pain, it still doesn't substantiate that our perception of the action we took, the feeling we supposedly felt, or the idea of pain are substantial, real or objective, at least no in the sense that Talya and Stathol are proposing.

Basically, Monty, you are still arguing within the confines of some construct you believe exists on faith, and not even answering challenges to that construct, itself.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Monte, what caused the Big Bang? Where did the primordial cosmic stuff that went kaboom come from?

Unless you were physically present and watching the whole thing happen... You cannot be 100% sure. This is where the leap of faith comes from. You can never be 100% positive.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut