The Nature of this Conflict (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 23:48 (5230 days ago) @ George Jelliss

There seem to me to have been some weird responses in the last three posts!
> 
> xeno maintains that spiritual people have a different "threshhold ... for evidence ... than someone who is more materialistic." ... "Because everyone is a metaphysician, we all have our own personal criterion for what is credible and what isn't." It is necessary to distinguish between personal beliefs or fancies and human knowledge, of value to us all, that can be established by rigorous methods. 
> 
> The fellow who believes God saved his father from a car crash, is I'm afraid all too common. I've had an occasional brush with death, such as coming off my motorbike some years ago, but I put down my escape to chance factors. Someone who escapes a disaster in which others were killed and thinks it was his personal God looking after him is just showing a despicable inability to see the situation other than from a childishly egotistical viewpoint.
>-Wow. I mean--WOW. I don't think you realize what you did with this post, George.-All of us bring a philosophy to the table, a metaphysic if you will, that frames how we interpret everything we see around us. What you did with your post was say unapologetically, that your philosophy is superior and that YOU get to decide what it is that he (and all other people) should and shouldn't think. You don't get to do that. Dawkins doesn't get to do that. Pope Benedict doesn't get to do that.-How what you said here can be construed as something completely different from what evangelical Christians or Muslims do stretches my credulity to its limits. -Materialism is a philosophy; end of story. And materialism isn't the teleological end of all philosophies, because philosophy is by nature a humanistic endeavor. -I don't see Dawkins or other atheists heading into third-world countries informing the populace that all gods are false. Why is that? Does Dawkins only wish to proselytize to Christians in the West?

--
\"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.\"