Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 18:18 (5567 days ago) @ dhw

Matt cannot answer the questions I asked at the end of my post of Tuesday 25 August at 07.55. Nor of course can I, though I think this discussion still has a long way to run. 
> 
> You write "There are some questions that do not have a binary answer. I really wish I could provide even a belief, but with how little we actually know in this area, I would feel I would be putting a lie to my lips by offering even a belief. [...] I feel you and I become more kin every day."
> 
> We are indeed in exactly the same position in this respect (as I think we are in many other areas too, including elephant territory). However, there is a subtle difference between us. You don't understand why David's view of evolution and symbiosis "somehow makes a designer more palatable". David has already answered for himself, and I have posted part of my answer on the "Nature's IQ" thread. I take each of these "Nature's IQ" and "Evolution" posts only as a section and not as the whole of the argument. The basis of it all, as we have repeated ad nauseam, is the complexity of life, and so I can understand perfectly well why someone would find the evidence for design overwhelming enough "to justify the belief in a creator". Where one goes from there is another matter, and David has his own (perhaps somewhat unconventional) views on such a being. However, I can also understand perfectly well that the very concept of a designer raises insoluble problems (see "Arguments Against Design", 29 July at 13.13). I remain open-minded/on the fence/pressing the pause button/hopelessly indecisive, and therefore absolutely not prepared to dismiss people's personal experiences as possible evidence, whereas I think you are more inclined towards the materialist view because of what you call your "scientific conservatism". - Resigned to that conservatism might be a better way to say it. - There's two prongs to why I don't consider individual experience in *this* question. - When it comes to other people's individual experiences, such as your discussion about the juju, I do not like to work with them because it is sacred territory. A person's experiences are inviolable. Your experiences are not open to study by me, because there is no way to recreate the event except in words. One of my best friends became Christian when he encountered what he is convinced were demons and he was able to scatter them by calling the name of Jesus for help. I cannot feasibly debate or attack an issue like that without necessarily attacking my friend. This goes for you and David as well; I don't view it as wearing "kid gloves" but the "humanity" of such events always writes an indelible ink on our soul and it is impossible to remove the self from them. - The second issue is that I would need to have been present to offer my own analysis of the event in question... the act of recounting an event from memory is itself always worth casting doubt on. My wife for example, always remembers things differently from me, and police officers have noted that witness testimonies to car crashes rarely if ever corroborate. I myself have been on the receiving end of this exact phenomenon, having given testimony completely different from 2 other witnesses and one of the drivers. - This means that the level of subjectivity is simply too high for my analytical taste. When you couple subjectivity to events of a personal nature... it is my experience that no real movement ever happens in such discussions, and more often then not the result is ad hominem and anger.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"