Searcher08 wrote:barracuda wrote:The philisophical tradition of ridiculing ideas goes back to Diogenes and beyond. It is a completely valid method of getting beyond the ridiculous to the sublime.
...and utterly pants at helping create new ideas and constructive approaches.
I'm not certain of this. Satire or humor or ridiculizing is often the result of juxtaposing an idea with it's opposite, or by summoning the incongruous. Such contrasts are a perfectly servicable method of creation and new-idea-generation.
Personally, I find a free-associative, automatic and intuitive process to be an excellent way of creating novel ideas and imagery. But I wouldn't accept everything generated by such a process as representative of the best direction to continue. I'd look at the results and make selections. Your position that rationality and reduction isn't the be-all, end-all will find no argument from me. I thought I made it clear on the other thread that I felt faith was an inextricable part of being human, and that I considered myself essentially a mystic. But conversely, visions can be pell-mell, faith can be immutable, irrationality can be confusing and vague, no matter how beautiful in aspect. They must be tempered in some solution to have direction, to be fruitfully applied to one's life.
Unanswered questions
Equal as decided by whom?
Decided as harmful by whom?
Propaganda as decided by whom?
Lies - in what system? These are really important questions that require dialogue - otherwise what changes?
...
WHO DECIDES which ideas are suseptible to ridicule?
The process of examining them makes that clear eventually, don't you think? Do you abandon your ideas or ideals because someone finds them ridiculous? No, you use those ideas to effect, you exercise your ideals in the world and find out where they take you.
It is exceeding rare and virtually unthinkable that I would advocate the utter dismissal of an idea without giving it a fair shot or consideration. Many ideas have fought their way back to me after being sidelined. Most ideas I might be disposed to discard in this way, though, receive from me a dose of laughter to take them to an absurd place and push them even further to see if I can make something click, or something grow.
On the third page of this thread, I put forth my opinion: that Intelligent Design was propaganda. Twelve or so pages later, virtually everyone here including Canadian_Watcher agrees. IMHO, I was well within the bounds of fair play to ridicule that idea.
You probably wouldn't encounter me editing an Evolutionary Biology journal, because my perspective on evolution and hominid culturization is idiosyncratic to say the least. I listened intently to vanlose kid's video of Alvin Plantinga, and though I think he's mistaken, there were things I took away from it I find value in, and questions about it I'm still thinking about.
As I said before, my mind is the only one I take responsibility for. It's not as if I have some other option.
Look at the jist of your post above: you are essentially telling me that my perspective is flawed, that it is wrong, and how and why you think so. How is that different from what I am saying is a useful method of discourse? Shouldn't you, to set an example, be accepting of my perspective and finding in it the value? Or do you, in reality, dismiss the parts you find of little value the same as I do?
Herein lies one of my issues with the conversation as it is currently framed - on one side is set a caricature of rationalism as the cold and analytical model of what is wrong with the world as it stands, and on the other side... what? I'm not certain, but I know it isn't cold and analytical. It's probably warm, inclusive and life-giving.
We should leave the dualism of this framing of opposites behind.
It happens because we've approached these threads from rather different standpoints. I perceived aspects of the Theophobia thread as an attack on a large group of the posters here as being prejudiced against people of faith, a perspective I found to be terribly divisive, and so I "fought against" that interpretation of my fellows in what I honestly felt was a posture of inclusiveness. I would still contend that this board is composed primarily of individuals of extreme empathy and regard for their fellows, and of an unusually high percentage of flat-out mystics and freethinkers. But one thing I value here highly is discovering that I've been seeing things mistakenly, and being shown that to be the case. It should happen to everyone - right? - in the spirit of humility, and humor, and passion. That's right: take my paradigms and crush them before my eyes and make a soup of their dust that becomes something new to taste.
I love soup.
"Will those who know what cannot be done please stop interfering with those of us doing it."
I see no one interfering with your ability to do anything here. This is, again, a highly divisive proposition to put forward, and is essentially an attempt to ridicule as useless those for whom their own ideas carry them as ably as yours, as if we might be playfully prodding your elbow as you seriously attempt to type.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
Thanks for the link, bph
