Thanks for the clarification. It's important to consider each person in parts. I value you very much.
If it's really as you say, that each person's truth is whatever works for them, then the afterlife will be for each person whatever they believed it would be in life. So I would not exist at that time, while the Vikings are in Valhalla, and the Christians are in heaven with no gay people, and the Satanists are having orgies on speed, and you are wherever you expect to be.
Just as there are things that you're sick of, there are things that I'm sick of as well, as I partially explained in "Is That God In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me," and "Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz." But I mostly reserve my harshness for authority figures, and only part of it for the followers that support them and then only if they give me a hard time. And even to the nice ones I just don't tell them what I really think. It's long past overdue that people stopped respecting credulity as a sacred cow. I make no demands that everyone has to respect me for my choice of a stance on this. I just look for those that do respect it, and get my affirmation from them. I expect them to do the same: find those who respect credulity and get their affirmation from them, not demand it from me.
I've had this discussion so many times, and argued it so thoroughly and so well, only to have to go through it again and again, that I can't pretend to still be unsure on the topic of the supernatural, or on belief through a firm inner conviction, or on belief in the authority of tradition and heritage. In fact it gets downright tiresome. I am not going to start over from scratch every time some new peddler comes along, and ignore the lessons I've learned. There are certain advantages to having suffered from stupidity, ineptness and complicity in fraud, which is that I fixed my baloney detector. I've put a lot of work into it and I like the results. So pardon me if it seems dogmatic, but can you blame me for not being excited and clapping my hands to hear that what I went through was for nothing? Basically we need to just focus on what we have in common and ignore areas of difference, because I don't need to hear from a friend the same statements that I have to put up with from my worst adversaries. This is Matt Arnold, love him or leave him, but don't expect anything to change.
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Re: You've a right to your opinion
Date: 2004-08-23 09:31 pm (UTC)If it's really as you say, that each person's truth is whatever works for them, then the afterlife will be for each person whatever they believed it would be in life. So I would not exist at that time, while the Vikings are in Valhalla, and the Christians are in heaven with no gay people, and the Satanists are having orgies on speed, and you are wherever you expect to be.
Just as there are things that you're sick of, there are things that I'm sick of as well, as I partially explained in "Is That God In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me," and "Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz." But I mostly reserve my harshness for authority figures, and only part of it for the followers that support them and then only if they give me a hard time. And even to the nice ones I just don't tell them what I really think. It's long past overdue that people stopped respecting credulity as a sacred cow. I make no demands that everyone has to respect me for my choice of a stance on this. I just look for those that do respect it, and get my affirmation from them. I expect them to do the same: find those who respect credulity and get their affirmation from them, not demand it from me.
I've had this discussion so many times, and argued it so thoroughly and so well, only to have to go through it again and again, that I can't pretend to still be unsure on the topic of the supernatural, or on belief through a firm inner conviction, or on belief in the authority of tradition and heritage. In fact it gets downright tiresome. I am not going to start over from scratch every time some new peddler comes along, and ignore the lessons I've learned. There are certain advantages to having suffered from stupidity, ineptness and complicity in fraud, which is that I fixed my baloney detector. I've put a lot of work into it and I like the results. So pardon me if it seems dogmatic, but can you blame me for not being excited and clapping my hands to hear that what I went through was for nothing? Basically we need to just focus on what we have in common and ignore areas of difference, because I don't need to hear from a friend the same statements that I have to put up with from my worst adversaries. This is Matt Arnold, love him or leave him, but don't expect anything to change.