Truth.

reply to post by operation mindcrime


Operation Mindcrime,

Since most of my past post answered most of your questions
in your replies, I'll focus on some of the issues you brought up.

Oh boy, i am glad those are your words and not mine. Let's take the death penalty for instance. The country were i live concluded that putting a man to death will not solve the issue. Other countries have concluded that putting a man to death does indeed solve the problem. Where is the truth regarding this matter? We should have enough "conclusions" by now to know whether or not it is correct to do so.

We should but you have to understand that the system is governed by money and the accumulation of control and power. This is why we have many issues in society with bogus arguments on both sides, this is why we don't have absolute resolutions to everything. Keeping a man in jail costs money, it is in the best interest of certain individuals to keep the system this way in order to get a cut. I never said big businessmen and politicians don't commit crime, they just do it under the radar. Why you think we don't have the death penalty in Canada? Killing someone off on the other hand is a good tactic to discredit him as an individual, what best way to silence dissent but by eliminating it all together? Let's not put it in a political sense then. Morally, is it okay to kill someone? What gives one individual the right to judge another's actions? Does a rich man in a Jury truely understand what being poor is like? Does the Judge? I'm not one for rehabilitation because the source is not the criminal but the society that he lives in. It is the society that makes people sick, twisted and prone to criminal activities. But then, you wouldn't have politicians admitting to such a thing, they would loose their positions, and hence power and money, if government, economics and education were to change in the right direction.
The question we should be asking ourselves is not, whether we can rehabilitate a criminal into society, since it is society which is sick and needs rehabilitation. Instead we should ask, is it possible to rehabilitate our own society? Crime will continue being committed as long as people are forced into dependence on the system. People want independence. My mode of government would constitute of small city states spanned out in the entire world. Their populations would not exceed more than a thousand individuals. Each would have their own laws and regulations as deemed by the inhabiting population. This way there would be no federal government nor states/provinces/territories, only city states. The only time we'd need to have a federal body is if we were invaded by aliens and I don't see that happening anytime soon. People left their farms for technology during the industrial revolution. They need to go back to their land, now that they have technology. I'm not advocating total desertion of large cities, I just believe we should have a choice and not be all grouped up in a rat race. Some people dislike being broke all the time and turn to crime. I could write an entire essay on both the new governing system and what leads people to crime in the modern day and age and I could prove that crime stems from societal structure and upbringing. Many people develop mental disorders in order to cope with the current state of affairs. There is a big disorder right now, not just economical, but also interpersonal. I could go on, but then I'd run out of room to write here...

What i am saying is, truth is subject to change thus making it relative.

Facts are unchangeable and unyielding.
If you reread my writings I did explain in detail what you have mentioned. Did I not maintain that we should find the absolute conclusion to everything? Maybe I forgot to mention that we also should do our best to try and disprove the said conclusion. Remember, a fact cannot be disproved, this is what we search. Therefore we speak of facts and not theories/false conclusions.
What you call "personal Truth" is merely an untested theorem, a handout most people take to heart as the unalienable truth. We as intellectuals should look for hard facts. Just look at Big Business. Marketing, this is a strategy based on facts, for if it weren't people wouldn't be buying into the corporate tactics of consumption. We have credit cards for a reason, you know, money to spend that we do not have?
There are certain things in life that currently we are unable to get facts about, this is due to our lack of understanding of the universe, and as I have mentioned previously, with the advancement in technology, we can be sure that one day we will have the right answers to our questions. Physics, Chemistry, religion, just 3 examples of things we cannot be 100% sure of for now, this isn't to say that we won't one day. We already have facts about most things in the world, everything spanning from the human mind can be classified into facts because human creations come from us. We can therefore understand them.
Social structures, economics, psychology, mathematics, certain things are absolutes. Such as 2 +2=4, it will never equal 3.

Let's leave the simple things for what they are because i am not gonna debate with you on wether a piece of paper would burn or not when exposed to an open flame....I'd say relativity is pretty unavoidable when dealing with the more complicated matters. Some ideas can not possibly have a conclusion and thus no truth. At least not a general truth.

No, let's do the simplest things first, for it helps understanding the complicated ones.
A piece of paper will not burn if it is wet, but then we'd be complicating our lives and not answering the original question wouldn't we? This is the problem with the relativistic way of thinking, the individuals that use this method over complicate even the simplest of things. Exclude nonsense and get to the essence of the subject, do not mix in other aspects that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. In my question, would a piece of paper not burn if you put flame to it, i did not mention water present therefore the relativistic conclusion that it will not because it is wet is totally invalid. Is this not the same in complicated matters? When people add extra unrelated information into the subject at hand?
cont belo

[edit on 3-1-2010 by Radekus]

reply to post by operation mindcrime

Sometimes people question the "facts" that are presented to them and they don't go into denial but more hold to their version of the truth. Thank God they did or we'd still be living on a flat disk positioned in the center of the universe with all the others planets and stars revolving around us...

They were stubborn and content with denying the truth. Do you honestly believe that well educated rich men of the time, wearing a pope hat or not, actually believed the fallacy that was the flat earth theory? We have, since ancient times, known of astronomy. The earth was well documented even before Columbus, some maps even have Antarctica drawn up as it looks when not covered by ice. The reality of the matter is, Catholic Christianity was a religious method of controlling people's minds, a method of sustaining power over large populations. They didn't want the truth coming out because they did not wish to appear in the wrong because then people would start questioning the religion. If the Vatican was wrong, then could it not be wrong in other areas too? Isn't god always right? How can the Vatican be wrong? This means the Vatican is not the authority of god. Boom, problem, Vatican looses followers. In any case, they finally admitted to it, not because they decided that they are wrong, but because it would excuse "explorations" and imperialism in the Americas. The people that control this planet are not stupid, they make plans hundreds of years into the future.

I will not comment on the next few points because I believe that I have fully explained my side as best as I could. The answers to those questions have indeed been previously written.

What was again....democracy is merely the best temporary solution.

No it is not, Democracy is a system of control just like the others, it is only different in the way that the people have illusion of freedom. when the theory is that "the majority of the population decide on what their government is going to be" then you have an overwhelming 51% of the population against you, in theory. More realistically about 30% of the population votes, so you have 16% deciding on the fate of the country, even then, that's still theory, you only used math... Consider now personal agendas. A government is not there to pass laws, it is there to maintain the ones that already exist. A government that keeps passing new laws is only attempting to consolidate power. When you have seemingly opposing political parties playing the passing of laws game, you end up having more laws going around then cockroaches in a one star hotel. One will vote 2 in to effect, the next one will eliminate one of those laws and add another 2, then the game repeats. So you end up having one new seemingly controversial law passed every term. Now multiply that 1 by more than you can count on your fingers.
What I am saying is, you are voting for the same political party, it's names are just different. We have politicians jumping between political parties like dancing ballerinas. Obviously they go where the money is and it's not an ideological issue but a greedy one. Democracy... we should be voting on our laws, not on representatives that vote on our laws.

Just because one does not know that one’s beliefs are true does not mean that one should not forcefully will them to be true. Indeed, if there is no transcendental truth, we are given the freedom to create truth as we want it to be....


Therefore, we humans need to act as if we are certain of what we are doing even though we cannot be certain.

Just because one doesn't know that one’s beliefs are true does not mean that one should forcefully will them onto others as facts. But again, such a person would be willfully ignorant and not seeking the truth. Besides, beliefs and truths are not the same thing, did I not explain the difference already?

if there is no transcendental truth, we are given the freedom to create truth as we want it to be....

If one does that without a basis and with the lack of a scientific method, then one is an individual with an IQ of 50 with 80% of one's brain missing.

Therefore, we humans need to act as if we are certain of what we are doing even though we cannot be certain.

That's just a fancy play on words.
If we know something to be uncontested, a fact, then how can we behave in the way above? Only someone ignorant would behave this way. Someone who knows what he is doing does not need to "act", one behaves accordingly to the given situation based on one's experience. Only a fool is uncertain and needs to act certain, it's a defense mechanism. A true intellectual knows that he might be wrong, and he encourages to disprove him.
Disprove me!

Now that doesn't mean a whole lot in your reality because indefinity is not a fact right? puz:

Dear Operation Mindcrime,

Indefinitely is a state of time.


Yours truly,

Radekus

P.S. I await your reply with impatience.
Also, I'm surprised that we're not the most
read thread in all of ATS at the moment.

[edit on 3-1-2010 by Radekus]

reply to post by Radekus


We couldnt have that my good sir!! Oh no, we are only pointing out how our system works, and thus the very underlying thread of all threads!

Humans! hehe

its nice to read your posts, very well written always

And just for our good friend mindcrime..

May be, you think im saying your lying "to me" when i have and will, state you are lying to your self.

I am the one being "honest" with my self.. that is why i made the thread to show others that life is not how it all that it seems as my good friend above me points out a lot better than me.

He was right, maybe truth was a wrong word to use in its context as many use "truth" as there "own" personal system of "fact"! when yet I base this thread ON fact..

yet it is true what i have said! as not one point i rasied can be PROVEN via any method known to man to be NOT the case.

reply to post by 13579


I guess that we are all only trying to better ourselves.
I see both of you as fellow intellectuals and I enjoy conversing with you.

The reason why I go into absolutes is because I'm sick and tired of being presented with two seemingly logical yet opposing conclusions about a given subject. I wish to clarify everything as much as possible, and as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. What I mean is, you can't have two opposing answers to one question, that's just impossible.

reply to post by Radekus


Very correct and my good friend is were the function of a question comes into play..

little example:

Me: there is no life after death..

Very small statement based on fact, "why" is it based on a fact because 1

People confuse "life" with engery and matter being in the same state" when it took them a "lifetime" to make You who You are?

and death? if it is true there is "life" after death then it would be pointless to have the "desctipion"

why not "in fact" call it second life? or third life? as life to some is a mear "lesson" ? what is it do they think they are learning "to take" to another place?

in its basic's the lesson "was life" was it not? "to be alive" ???

so what is more "important" being alive? "or" what comes "after" death?

LIFE

sounds very silly yet people are so clueless they do not get that LIFE is the important word in

LIFE after death

first word sticks out like a atom bomb lol



let me show you

LIFE "after >>> Death >>> LIFE

as the 1st word states very clear that "life" ie what we are NOW comes after being dead?

lol

[edit on 3-1-2010 by 13579]

so techincally "being dead" never happens LOL!!



[edit on 3-1-2010 by 13579]

reply to post by 13579


The concept of life and death I do not wish to argue about,
I'll leave this one for Operation Mindcrime. What happens after death cannot be known, if there indeed IS anything beyond it.
I remain in uncertainty regarding this issue. I merely hope that my personal heaven awaits me when I die.

[edit on 3-1-2010 by Radekus]

reply to post by Radekus


hehe well as the statement shows..

what comes after life is in fact LIFE!!

i like words because its like MATH.. very logical descriptions of words can help as

we are logical beings .. read it again

LIFE AFTER DEATH

How do you know what your cat believes?
Can you read it's mind?

Seriously, jokes aside, there's nothing I don't agree with that you wrote, but the fact is, we do not know if our consciousness continues after the body dies. My brother tells me he saw two ghosts at different moments of his life. They were ghosts of people he knew, they only wished to say goodbye. He even shook one's hand, unfortunately the guy didn't feel like telling my bro how the other side is like, he vanished. But take into consideration, this is my brother's words, as much as I love him and wish to believe him, I did not experience it, and he has not provided me with any evidence to support his claims. So what am I to do, blindly believe him with nothing but his word backing him up? You see the little dilemma I have about the afterlife now I guess?

reply to post by Radekus


indeed we do my friend and this i will not argue on in aspects of it.. yet i will state that life "aint life" as we know it on the other side..

When i was a kid.. i was about 10 or something of that age, me and my best friend went to our local "cemetry" it had the biggest hill ever!!! apart from a stree were the "local" club "place thing for kids was" and i just got my brand new turtle skateboard "yes i know dont laugh lol".. so we go down this hill "path way leading in" .. we get to the bottom and i look up "into" a tree!! now what i seen was GREEN looked like smoke and someone outlinded "drew this thing" with a marker pen!... now Me and my mate BOTH seen this thing in this tree.. IT looked into my soul "because all i could focus on was its eyes" and it "gave a jesuture" with one finger "come here" ... me and my friend ran like hell untill we got home LOL...

He said it was WHITE

reply to post by Radekus

How do you know what your cat believes?

hehe thats because my cat does not belive anything

its a cat!

Originally posted by 13579
reply to post by Radekus

 

hehe thats because my cat does not belive anything

its a cat!

That's circular logic there my friend, worse than relativism...
lol

reply to post by Radekus


like the human race..

interesting aint it?

to use a word to describe how my cat would think would mean im implying i know my cat does indeed think like me? and then i assume it does not, meaning i fasly applied my own belife to the cat.



Just like thinking god is a being.. when it is not yet you belive it to be the case when life its self says thats not the case.. based on all evidence known to mankind.

and by you i did in fact mean "haumans" as a whole not you personaly

Originally posted by Radekus
reply to post by operation mindcrime

 

Radekus,

Sorry for the delayed response but when my wife says that i spend too much time behind the computer it is not really all that smart to question the relativistic nature of her "truth"...

I am gonna bypass your latest replies (for now) in order to get back to the basics and not get lost in quotes. (if you don't mind? I will address them later on)

We started out with you contradicted me on the fact that truth is relative. Your stand on this issue (i think) is best summarized by the following quote:

"What is absolutely true is always correct, everywhere, all the time, under any condition. An entity's ability to discern these things are irrelevant to that state of truth." - Steven Robiner

Please correct me if i am wrong!!

What is necessary for this discussion to continue is to assert what kind of truth we are addressing here. I am guessing we are talking about absolute truth, as a state and as an action, right?

I remember you said....

Like in all Scientific Method, we all have theories to test out,
let's call those opinions for they are not based on fact. Then we progress to test such theories out in the real world and see if we are right or wrong. Eventually we are led to a conclusion. If we gather enough conclusions with different theories on the same matter we end with a correlation in the end effect, as in, many similar conclusions. We can then deduce that, unless proved otherwise, that the said conclusion accumulation is the truth, or a fact if you prefer better terminology. Now, from my observation, many people argue Theories as opposed to Conclusions, this is mainly because they are too lazy to work out the testing but at the same time still wish to be right.

People often look to science to find out whether something is an absolute truth, but science tends to avoid absolutism. However, as we advance in science, we often find ourselves disproving things that have already been proven. A great deal of proof on a subject makes it more likely, but does not make it absolute truth.

What i said earlier....

What i am saying is, truth is subject to change thus making it relative.

And you replied...

Facts are unchangeable and unyielding.

If you reread my writings I did explain in detail what you have mentioned. Did I not maintain that we should find the absolute conclusion to everything? Maybe I forgot to mention that we also should do our best to try and disprove the said conclusion. Remember, a fact cannot be disproved, this is what we search. Therefore we speak of facts and not theories/false conclusions.

Fact is fact, i agree. But what is fact if it can be dis-proven or changed. What i am saying is, how does one know with absolute certainty that the facts he has are indeed the facts?? Or rather how does one assert that the facts from which he is working are indeed facts?

I'll leave at this for now but i must say you have given me an interesting week!!!

Peace and respect

(No need to reply directly. I will first address your previous replies and i will try and come up with an example for you to ponder)

reply to post by operation mindcrime


hey welcome back mind crime

What i am saying is, how does one know with absolute certainty that the facts he has are indeed the facts?? Or rather how does one assert that the facts from which he is working are indeed facts?

Well from the posts or "points" I made all that we are aware of are indeed facts as they make up our very reality.. Now i do agree some facts do in "fact" change when looked at "earth is flat" ect.. But that was not a fact based on science it was on based on "opinion" and "presumed" to be fact.. Secience is never about making things facts its about finding the truth as the only method we can ALL "or most" agree on then state it as fact "ie the sun is hot you get to close you burn" FACT :p yet in time we could make probes that could enter the sun!! so the fact you burn would change.. but so would the paramaters of the question!

SO depending on what you are in fact stateing as facts helps also.

fact is relitive to reality

Originally posted by 13579
reply to post by operation mindcrime

 

hey welcome back mind crime

Thank you 13579!! I am sorry that the my focus in this thread shifted from you to Radekus but that is because i find his conversational skills more easily understandable. This has nothing to do with you and everything with my interpretational skills.

Secience is never about making things facts its about finding the truth as the only method we can ALL "or most" agree on then state it as fact

Fact depends on agreement? That would, IMHO, make it exactly the opposite of fact.

"the sun is hot you get to close you burn" FACT :p yet in time we could make probes that could enter the sun!! so the fact you burn would change.. but so would the paramaters of the question!

"the sun is hot, you get to close you burn" is a statement and not a question. What parameters changed in this statement? We must first look at the statement. It is build up from several facts:

There is a sun.
There is such a thing as hot.
There is a scale which indicates what is close and what is far away.
There is such a thing as getting burned.
The sun is hot. etc. etc.

These assertions all have to be verifiable and true in order to make the statement true. The first problem i run into is that distance in this example is relative and "getting to close" is not an absolute. Same goes for the term "hot"....etc etc.

SO depending on what you are in fact stateing as facts helps also.

Well let's get back to basics and start with you opening statement of this thread: "You LIE and you ignore it.. "

Is this fact or opinion??

fact is relative to reality

.... Could you elaborate a bit on this statement because i think i am not understanding it correctly.

"Fact is relative to reality"...

Fact: that which is the case reported by a true proposition, that which makes a true sentence true

relative: Not absolute or independent.

reality: the state of things as they actually exist

.....I've done quite some mental gymnastics on the statement but i can't make it work so please get back to me on that.

Peace and respect.

If we faced the truth we would be delivered.

But we do not face the truth.

Humans are all about lies.

reply to post by learningtofly


Is this statement an opinion or a fact?



Peace

[edit on 6/1/2010 by operation mindcrime]

reply to post by learningtofly


It is a fact.

Humans lie lie lie.

That is what they do. That is life - a huge lie.

Please tell me not - I don't think you can.

reply to post by learningtofly


and some admit it and some do not )

and you i guess do! welcome to the truth train!!