Karl

The problem is that you are agreeing with my grammar whilst simultaneously disagreeing with a position that I don't hold. When the fuck did I get the coat of many colours ? I'm not the one saying "I feel it to be true". It's the same type of argument on the non-existent duality in which I'm asked to explain my reason for supporting it ! It's awfully frustrating when you appear to be only interested in points scoring. So, if you think everything is belief, then your in my lane. If you think everything is faith then you are in a lane I can't see.

Here is an interesting article by one of the faithful-which is no doubt why it's in the Huffington apost. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rea-nolan-martin/faith-and-belief_b_4166117.html Sent from my iPad

You aren't a dumb idiot are you Brian ? I mean you can actually change perspective surely ? I have said that 'everything is belief' but that is not what the faithful believe, regardless of what I say. This is the same as the argument regarding duality. It ain't my argument, go ask the faithful I don't fucking know as I'm not one of them. Here's the original OP as a reminder what we are discussing: Part of Krishnamurti's point, imo part of the essence of his teaching, was that "spirituality" just makes people MORE egocentric, MORE self-centered and self-absorbed. When I look at my own path, at myself, I see this. It's like MY path, MY life, MY experience, MY enlightenment, have been of supreme importance to me. Is that good?? Maybe it is, the truth is I really don't know. We have to care for and tend to our lives and paths, we should CARE about succeeding. But what about "freedom from self" and "dying to self"? Is the kind of self-concern people have good? Please share your thoughts if you have any.

Point out and explain the fallacy please. To try and get back to the understanding of faith vs reason we have a perfect example by Thomas Aquinas who said "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Here is the crux of my argument and I challenge you to dispute it. It's as clear as can be. The faithful aren't believers. This doesn't mean I believe it, but the faithful must, they cannot explain it because it defies reason, it defies the mind. This pertains to the OP. Let's get that one buttoned down before we go off an an expedition into specific science branches and subjectivism.

Pleasure is a specific sensation. Happiness is a specific emotion. A selfless act is a meaningless act. To say someone jumped on a grenade to save his buddies gives selfish meaning to the act. Anyone who thinks it is a selfish act is denying humanity and demeaning the love that the soldier showed his buddies. It saddens me to hear you calling it a selfless act, it trashes spirit and reason.

I shall leave this topic for the present moment. I've shown that faith and belief are not the same things. Unless we can agree then we aren't going anywhere.

It's easier to believe in a God, I would say it's impossible to have faith in God, but then the faithful won't need to reject that assertion. It isn't sufficient to 'believe strongly' in God. One needs only to have faith. If one does not have faith then one must strive to have it according to the faithful-the mind cannot be involved. That is why a Guru will say to the student that they must keep on practising until they lose their minds completely. Atheism is a funny word. It's an anti-anti concept. A belief in God is an error of reason, it is ignorance, or evasion. Therefore atheism is a redundant word, it's like saying someone 'believes' in anti-magic. Faith/belief are uniquely different, they are not interchangeable in respect of how we currently use them. One day, in time, the word faith will vanish along with the dark age mysticism that gave it to us.

You are skewing belief, faith, feelings, emotions and knowledge. Faith is an abdication of the mind. Is this not clear to you ? There is no place for knowledge in faith. Faith is not belief. You cannot 'believe strongly enough' and call it faith in the accepted sense of the term. Why do you think so many people here talk about quieting the mind ? They believe that it is the mind which interferes with their intrinsic knowledge/inner knowing/revelation etc. I do not harangue anyone who has faith, I will argue with anyone that intellectualises faith because they are arguing faith is intellectual knowledge. How can I argue with the faithful ? There is no way to argue with them, if they have faith it is they that set the tone, there can be no argument. They have faith, why do they argue ? You and I may believe different things about the universe. We can test these beliefs against our direct sense perception of the universe and that is all we can do, that is the extent of our faculties, this is why they are axiomatic. If these beliefs accurately match those direct perceptions then we have proof, we can say we know reality. Faith, is antithetical to science. That's what all the big bust ups with Galileo were about. Faith is antithetical to reason. It is antithetical to thinking. 'Be still and know'. Do you understand that there are only two things here ? There is faith or reason. There is no 'being reasonable' about faith (although Aquinas had a good bash at it). If you have faith, then don't argue, only those without faith argue.

A faith is something that doesn't wish to be proven, it is deliberate evasion. That is to say 'I cannot prove it, but I feel it's true'. If as Steve implies 'that may be true for you but not for me' then he says there are two proofs, but then is unable to formulate a proof. I know exactly where this is going, for you A is not always A.

I said 'everything'. However it isn't a faith.

Again ? I was imprecise in my definition of the word 'belief' only because that was the word used by Steve and I re-used it in that sense. Suffice to say everything is a belief, or what we believe to be true. Truth is as proof is. In other words we must relate the conceptual directly to the perceptual view of existence. Is what we think exactly what we see 'out there'. If it correlates then we have a reality which matches and thus we have proof. If we have something for which we cannot offer a proof - such as God, then we have faith, this is the way I used belief.

As you say 'it's a feeling' then we are not talking reason. The same goes for mutual dependence, it has no meaning unless applied specifically not as a generalisation. We are entities with natures that react and interact, the nature of man is man qua man. I challenge, refute or rebut views and that should be seen as a good thing, not as an attack. I don't really know what you mean by 'more powerful' it isn't a description I understand. It's like saying the laws of motion are more powerful than the idea of God pushing things around. Something is right, something is wrong, both cannot be correct. That's what we are here to discover.

I would if the child or sibling were of value to me. That's the point. It isn't altruism, but value to my life that decides the course of my actions.

That's just subjectivism Steve. We all consciously experience the same existent universe, we all live by its laws. We can evade of course and we can be in error through some ignorance, but there is a price to be paid for that evasion. I put it to you that altruism is selflessness, that there is no 'I' nor 'my' and you have no answer to that other than 'practice'. You are saying you know 'intrinsically' and that 'it maybe true for me, but not for you'. I have the same answer here which I always use. If I am debating an open question as here and you are refuting then I'm going to continue to push for an answer. If, on the other hand, what you are saying is that you have a belief, an intuition, a revelation then no answer can possibly be forth coming. It's like saying 'just believe' or 'have faith' and then I quit bothering you. However, everytime you try and bring logic and concepts into the discussion to try and create a proof that, by admission of faith, you cannot possibly give, then of course I'm going to respond. There is no requirement to rationalise whatever practice, faith, belief you have to me, I will just accept that is good for you and move on. Objectivism isn't a 'belief' there is no intrinsic faith or revelation, it's nuts and bolts and so if you challenge me I'm going to respond.

Be careful I don't turn out to be the Boojum to your Snark :-)

Snarky but funny. I read yours and gave you a 'like'.

I make no excuses for being passionate Apech. I love a bit of colour and emotion in discussions as long as it doesn't detract from the facts. Can't beat a bit of Kickass. :-)

Altruism is selflessness, completely non egoic. so, they are in complete opposition. We cannot begin to make others 'needs' as the prime virtue or we are suggesting suicide. Consider that breathing might in some way deprive someone else of oxygen, that ones own life may deprive another of their life. It's an impossible situation. We do not work for profit of self in some weird spiritualist capitalist sense. Our primary value, or at least my primary value as everybody seems to disagree, is my life. I have chosen to live and now I must nourish that life by obtaining the values to sustain it. I have a pain/pleasure nervous system and a suffering/happiness emotional system. I have to obtain values that produce happiness and so this becomes the moral purpose of my life. Despite the strong disagreements there seems no disagreement on the point of happiness. Of course we each choose differing values and differing ways of achieving those values. Everybody is going about life doing exactly the same thing unless they are so fed up they have chosen oblivion of the mind in one sense or another-usually hedonistic pleasure seeking which is really suicide of the mind. Instead of seeking values a man seeks pleasure first through activities which are usually not supportive of his happiness or life. All these men looking for values to gain, or ways to keep them, are drawn to other men in the search for these values and will trade with them value for value. These values are not necessarily material in and of themselves although all values are ultimately based on existents.

And [i ask rhetorically] is this why tax receipts are at such a low ebb and social security and healthcare is consuming virtually all of it creating an ever increasing debt ? Could it be that goosing the economy with cheap money has benefitted the very wealthiest in a miss guided Neo Keynsian attempt to create 'trickle down economics through consumption stimulation of the very wealthiest ? Could it be that the middle classes have been called on to pay for the workforce attrition that has resulted from Government policies seemingly designed to destroy high paying jobs and turn the USA into a ghetto under financialisation ? Could it be that the Government, it's central bank and its puppet press have been lying about the recovery ? Shock horror.

You may of course speculate, but the turn out for Trump is more than about personalities. Many have voted that had never voted before and hat was one reason the pollsters (when they weren't out right twisting the stats) got wrong. The same thing occured in Brexit and in Labours demise. Unfortunately lefty liberals just cannot accept outright rejection of their ideology. They blame it on stupid electorate and xenophobia because liberal elites believe their own echo chambers. Bye bye lefty liberals, the people woke up and kicked your arses hard.

It was Obama's policies that people were judging. Remember he was elected only at the beginning of his term, having been judged as successful after only one term. It took the second term to realise just what a complete disaster he was. Obama is a laughing stock around the world. Those who aren't laughing at him are burning US flags in Europe. Greece is rioting. His attempts to bully the British people into staying within the EU were probably the most persuasive aspect of the referendum to garner a leave vote. He is well rehearsed speaker, or at least he was, but apart from being a left wing liberal pin up, most he is an incompetent, dictatorial clown. Of recent times he seems incapable of stringing a sentence together, perhaps he is going as senile as his old mate Soros.

Remember that the USA is not a democracy, it is a republic. The 'blocking' of presidential policies is a natural part of republic government operation. This was the way the government was set up, the answer is not to act like a dictator and issue executive orders. The fact that he seems 'a nice guy' or a 'good orator' fails to explain his inability to persuade the senate that his ideas are worthwhile, or his need to bludgeon his ideology onto the republic. I would say he was neither persuasive nor a good guy. The election results could hardly make it clearer. Putting it into perspective, the nation voted for a orange faced buffoon with no experience in politics rather than Obamas successor.

I'm not here to teach you economics. If you want to know the kind of detail you are asking for, then I require payment. I will teach you if you want, but I'm not about to do so on a forum. I've shown you why the stats are skewed. You are saying to me that you don't believe me, so fine, that's your look out and you must make your own decisions in light of what you believe to be true. I'm saying that if the scenery appears to be going past the car window slowly and you have just been overtaken by an old guy on a bike, then you aren't likely doing 100mph no matter what the speedometer reads. If you want to believe something else then you are free to do so, but I can't spend the time to take you through something that took me over 4 years of study in a couple of posts. It would be pointless to show you several hundred reports by the FED and it's committee, nor to point you to the stock market over valued public share issues against debt leverage ratios and profitability unless you can put it all together. Start with asking why the FED has not increased interest rates by anything greater than 0.25 % in 8 years, if it's 'data dependent' and the most important headline number is the NFP number. Ask why the FED sits on an enormous balance sheet that it shows no desire to shrink. Ask why it is paying the banks interest in a zero bound environment. These figures are correct, I'm not making them up, they are reported widely in the FOMC minutes. Why haven't the rates increased ??

Obamacare has turned out to be a disaster as has his domestic/foreign policy. However, he will go down in history as one of, if not the worst president in history for something quite different - he created executive orders to get around the constitution, he acted like a dictator and he has left the door open for evil to assume control. This is the worst and most dangerous Obama legacy.

Most of that is redundant explanation. You already admitted that you don't sacrifice your happiness in the first paragraph, so why go trying to justify altruism after you have admitted that you are both selfish and egoistic ? All that hogwash about organisms and being no individuals is destroyed by one words in your opening sentence 'my'. You cannot be rid of the sense of it, so why pretend that you can, or that you have ?