Wheels within wheels.

[Eric the Green]

(03-15-2017, 12:24 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Even if I were to agree that "spirit" was the acting force, it would still act upon matter to be detected.  An undetectable force acting on an other undetectable force is undetectable.

It doesn't matter what we call what is detected, matter or spirit.

Undetectable does not mean non-existent.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Back atcha!

So you agree that the vast majority of your posts are meaningless drivel.  Excellent we're getting somewhere.

Bach atcha!

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Marx founded and started Marxism in 1848. If you claim it started in the 1890s in a 2T, you're just wrong. The 2T was when revisionism happened.

Marx was not himself a Marxist, so it would be pretty hard for him to have found it then.  Marx had almost no followers except for Engels (who was basically his sugar daddy) until the founding of the first international.  Marx's ideas did not gain traction until the second international which happened in the GPS 2T.  To deny this is to deny recorded history.  Indeed the term Marxism didn't even get coined until late in the 1st international.

I know that facts are usually inconveniences for you Eric but those are the facts.

I do agree that socialism got a big boost in the 2T (under the Neptune-Pluto conjunction). But it's silly to claim that Marx did not found Marxism. It was the manifesto that got him noticed and respect among his followers, from 1848 onward.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You conveniently forget your idea. Your idea is that if someone rejects materialism, (s)he rejects every part of Marxism. Not true. You have rejected the best parts of it and still embrace the worst.

Marxism is a materialist philosophy and no amount of word play is going to change that fact.  A rejection of materialism as a whole necessitates a rejection of Marxism--every part of it.  A rejection of Marxism does not necessitate a rejection of materialism.  There are plenty of non-Marxist materialist philosophers.

And plenty of non-materialist Marxist philosophers. Including Marx himself in his younger years. No, the essential contention of Marxism is that the working class should gain political power. That is what you now oppose by embracing its opposite, classical liberalism, which says the bourgeoisie should maintain power. That usually means the upper bourgeoisie, and today refers to corporatism.

google/wikipedia: In Marxist philosophy the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital, to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society.

Quote:

Lenin Wrote:The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Throughout the modern history of Europe, and especially at the end of the eighteenth century in France, where a resolute struggle was conducted against every kind of medieval rubbish, against serfdom in institutions and ideas, materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth. The enemies of democracy have, therefore, always exerted all their efforts to “refute”, under mine and defame materialism, and have advocated various forms of philosophical idealism, which always, in one way or another, amounts to the defence or support of religion.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/w...ar/x01.htm

Lenin is not the only Marxist. His contention is quite wrong; philosophical idealism does not amount to the defense of religion. Many spiritual but not religious people are philosophical idealists. I cited several popular authors and leaders who have large followings. Marxism is only one kind of materialism; a quite disreputable type of it. Most materialists are not Marxists. There is no such equivalence.

Do you honestly want to maintain that all materialists are Marxists? Go ahead, make my day. Is Richard Dawkins, for example, the most famous materialist of our time, a Marxist?

In this summary of chapters from his best-selling book, there was no mention of Marx
https://books.google.com/books?id=yq1xDp...&q&f=false

Quote:I must therefore conclude that you did indeed fail your Americanism vs. Communism course in high school.  And I'm being generous here, magnanimous even.

There was no such stupid course at my school. But I studied Marx in my philosophy class in college.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:The Nation of Islam is Islam; period.

So then you're telling me that all Muslims believe that white people were created by a "scientist" on the Island of Patmos called "Yakub", that these same Muslims all believe that white people are the embodiment of Satan, and that Islam itself is only open to black peoples and that the final prophet is Elijah Muhammad.

I'm no Imam, but I already know from a cursory glance of Sunni and Shia materials that have been translated into English that all of these components are in direct contradiction to mainline Islam.  And the last one precludes the NOI from being Islamic entirely because Muhammad (the Arabian one) is supposed to be the last prophet of Allah.

In short Osama Bin Ladin would call Louis Farrakhan an infidel.  And on the basis of mainline Islam (let alone the strict puratanical Wahabbite version Bin Ladin believed in) Bin Ladin would be correct.

But that is not the point.  The Nation of Islam for all its faults does indeed have a theology, with a deity and all the other trappings of a religion.  It is Islamic in name only.  Which is why and how Malcolm X could convert to Islam.  It runs far deeper than "I don't like this preacher I'm going to the mosque across the street".

It doesn't matter if Muslims would consider the Nation of Islam infidels. It still claims to be Muslim. It's deity is Allah. But even though it's different in some respects, I see nothing in the NOI to suggest that its founding represents any sort of "awakening." Racist bullshit is not the product of awakenings. The KKK has rituals too. It was founded at the end of a 4T.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No need to disprove a mere insult

Wrong.  The sentence:  "I suppose 'real spirituality' is any 'spirituality that Eric likes'".  Is a statement.  The sentence:  "Eric is a moron."  Is an insult.  Unfortunately it insults morons, I imagine you should strive to learn enough to one day be classified as a moron.

You obviously don't know what an insult is; no wonder you make so many of them.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:The fact remains that genuine spirituality during Awakenings is not traditional or fundamentalist Christian, although it can also be Christian as well as other religions. Your statements devaluing non-Christian spirituality are mere prejudice against non-Christians.

I never claimed that "genuine spirituality" didn't have to take traditional or even fundamentalist Christian forms.  That is a straw man argument you insist on tackling.  I said that in Majority Christian Countries (such as the US) non-Christian phenomena are of lesser social importance.  It is like arguing that the salinity of the Atlantic Ocean has been changed because I pissed into it.

I have shown the popularity of non-traditional spirituality already.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Why wait? I already proved it. Just try to breathe without any connection to the environment, or eat, or drink, or even be conscious.

I'll wait.

Air is matter, not this "mystical" spirit nonsense you keep bringing up.  Furthermore the atmosphere would exist whether you or I did.  Holding my breath is not a valid test for "We are all connected".

But I do have one.  You can send me a telepathic message.  I might not be able to measure it but I would experience it.  Observation is typically the first step to devising a hypothesis which can lead to an experiment.

I'll wait.

You can't receive it. You are not open to the phenomena. You wouldn't know it if you got it. But I just sent one. So, what did I say to you?

No, physical science proves we are all connected to the environment. That is what you deny. Have you stopped breathing yet? Let me know how that works out for you. If we are connected, we cannot be separate. That's a contradiction.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Same god damned thing, and the worst scam being perpetrated on Americans today. You piddling over details means less than nothing. No, classical liberalism is not merely concerned with federal power. It wants less state power too. It is merely the doctrine that less government is better. Libertarianism pure and simple.

Still wrong and still not an argument.  /molyneux

I'm not going to comment further because you're as clueless about libertarianism and classical liberalism as you are Marxism.  Seriously dude I know I pay social security taxes buy a fucking clue already.

If classical liberalism opposes strong or big government, that does not mean it favors big state government. It doesn't.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You are god too.

Really and what sort of evidence do you have for that?  And I mean real evidence not some solipsistic clap trap about "we are all one" and other New Age woo woo.  If I'm god and you are god, prove it empirically.  Anything else is beneath consideration. 

That is just your philosophical assumption; there's no proof for it.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Paul preached wisdom,

That is debatable.  Have you read the New Testament?

I've read a lot of wisdom from St. Paul. I'd say 1st Corinthians 13 is pretty good; wouldn't you?

Quote:

EtI Wrote:not just "about an idea about a Jewish guy."

Yeah, he pretty much did preach exactly about a Jewish Guy who was supposedly the son of YHWH.  That's sort of the basis of Christianity, that Jesus Christ is the Jewish God's son.  Again have you read the New Testament?

He didn't spend that much time on that. He wrote more about wise conduct and helping his congregation to practice the Christian ethics.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:If another person has an inkling of it, communications about it can be meaningful.

Let us take experiences outside of the woo-woo realm and discuss sushi for a moment.  I don't know if you have had or like sushi but that's not relevant, it is conceivable that you've eaten some at some point--in fact most people on this board probably have.  We could discuss the texture of the rice, the combinations of fish and seaweed, the cut of the fish and so forth.  But the point is we would require a frame of reference to start with.

It would be impossible for me to have a conversation about sushi with a Bushman for example.  They simply have no frame of reference.

The rest of your passage is a bunch of shit as usual.  It is clear to everyone that I've not had a Mystical Experience as you'd define it, and well I'm about as likely to have one as a Bushman is to go to a New York sushi bar.  Because I'm closed minded?  No.  Because for the most part these experiences seem to be centered on the insane, and feeble minded.  I'm neither so....

Your assertion that mystics are insane is not proven. But I think it's possible for someone like you to read what I say and follow it, and take a look, and discover mystical truth. You are just not willing; you're not alone, most people do require more than my words to have the experience. But it's possible for someone like Deepak Chopra to guide people into the experience. After all, all you have to do is take a look.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Mystics are the sanest people.

I wouldn't be so sure of that.  You're a mystic and you probably need to be in a mental ward.  I'd venture to guess the only reason you're not is you're only a threat to other people's wallets and not their person.

Myself when I hear people say "God talks to me" I automatically think "You need to be on thorazine".

That's just your opinion. It has no basis in reality, and you can't prove it.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:But the fact that Pelosi and McConnell and McCain and Feinstein et al are doing just fine as leaders proves my point. Boomers will be leaders too well into the 1T.

Pelosi still leading the Dims in the House is evidence of their party's weakness.  They are doubling down on the very things that have lost them major bench coverage in the House and the states.

McConnell is still relatively healthy and leads primarily through delegating tasks.  He's never been exactly hands on.  McCain is actually reviled by everyone in the GOP now except for the NeoCons which if the Dims have a hope of surviving they're going to take on board due to party-shift.

Feinstein is a joke.

It should be noted that neither McCain nor Feinstein are in senate leadership except perhaps as committee chairs/ranking members and well they had to pick someone and the Senate goes on seniority.

It should be noted that usually after the 4T ends Congress has a massive purge, and those who get purged are almost always Prophets and their Nomad Hangers on.  See the 1866 mid-terms and 1946 mid-terms.

Assuming the end date for the 4T is 2028 then the mid-term following it will be 2030 but it may be as late as 2032.

Sorry but even the youngest Boomers are going to be far too old to be in the drivers seat.  Y'all won't live forever.  Thank whatever gods may exist for that too.

I disproved your assertion about lifespans by showing that Silent leaders are still in office during this 4T. It is quite an easy conclusion that some Boomer leaders will be in office during the 1T. Your opinion about these leaders has no bearing on that point at all. Are you saying these current Silent leaders are NOT in office? Prove it, sunny boy.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:trump and all the other oligarchs are the Establishment, and you support it fanatically. You support oligarchy now.

We really need a ROFLMAO emoji.

I know you only consume fake news Eric, but still, even you should know that Trump's biggest enemies in DC are not the Dims.  Trump's biggest threat are the establishment GOP--Lyin' Ryan and the like. I believe Rags said something along the lines of Gingrich "Newts don't care to have their swamps drained."  As such he clearly is not part of the establishment.  He may or may not be an oligarch, but I'm fine with that.

Yes, we clearly need that emoji.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You support Uncle Tom, since Drump is the least pro-gay, pro-Latino, pro-woman president ever. You are a traitor.

Actually yes, considering I've read Uncle Tom's Cabin yes I would say Uncle Tom was the hero in that book.  Really the other stuff. 

1.  Daddy doesn't want to import people who want to throw me and my bf off roofs.  That's a big plus in his column.  the Dims want to import them by the ship loads.  Bad Dims, Bad!

Your baloney requires nothing more than to reassert what I said. You are a traitor to your earlier cause. Trump is a bigot and an oligarch who supports oligarchy, and therefore by supporting him and his neo-liberalism on steroids, you are the worst sort of supporter of capitalist pigs.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:super Baloney. There's no Zer over 12.

Eric people have trouble putting birth years on Millies too.  I know Howe seems to think the oldest were born some time around 2005, he could be right.  But I find that those born in 1999, 2000, and 2001 are heavily conservative already.  Even if they are very late wave Millies they are a whisper of things to come.  Or have you conveniently forgotten all about generational cusps being a thing.

I'm sure we can just rely on what you "find." Where's that emoji?

Quote:Let me put it simply.  If space is infinite, and we can measure the distance between earth and alpha centaurii then the infinite can be at least partially measured.  My point stands.

Your point is quite obviously false.

You need to draw lines to measure anything. Find a line anywhere in infinite space. Or even on Earth, that was not drawn by humans for measurement. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Psychic ability can be partially measured too, btw. There are tests. I did well on one. You would fail badly.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Yet you always fail.

Depends on what your definition of fail is.  If I expose you for the ignoramus you are then I have succeeded.  So far I've always succeed.

You have always failed.

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-15-2017, 01:28 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: <massive snippage>
Yet you always fail.

I am not an Ignoramus. I am a hippopotamus. From top to bottomus.

OK, I'm the walrus then.




----


Ragweed, Esq.









Heheheheheheehehehehehehehe.   Aw yeah!   Do Ragweed, man, and expand the mind, be at 1 with the universe.

[Eric the Green]

Well yeah, Mr. Walrus, but I prefer the better music for this oneness, Tomorrow Never Knows.





Yours, Mr. Hippo

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-15-2017, 05:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well yeah, Mr. Walrus, but I prefer the better music for this oneness, Tomorrow Never Knows.

<snip vid>

Yours, Mr. Hippo

OK, Eric, Eric, Eric, Here's the deal, Rags likes the 2T AND the 3T.   So I like discordant jams.  I admit that, for sure.
Helter Skelter rocks , just as Motley Crue 3T stuff as well.  To make myself clear, Rags loves the 2T and 3T in equal measure. That's why I put The Beatles AND Motley Crue. Rags is all for "creative destruction" from both turnings.

Death to NeoCONS, death to the oligarchy, death to the MIC, death to SJW's, death to the empire.   I , Rags = Nordic 4th turning.   See, get my handle now, Eric. Ragnarök = Nordic 4th turning in the eddas. May the "establishment burn down in flames". Clear the deadwood, with the fires of Ragnarök. I'm sure Kinser79/Galen/Guy/ understand where I'm going. May the US oligarchy/ empire/ die in the my flames. I claim their ashes, man. By "any means necessary", may they all burn in my flames. I have no use for empire, oligarchies, and the MIC. 

Eric, always remember and never forget, "burn, baby burn" isn't just a 2T expression of disdain, it's also the ripening of the 2T fruits in the 4T.

[Kinser79]

Rags I got your handle the first time I saw it. I've read a little about the Norse Gods.

If you've not figured it out Eric is part of the Establishment himself. He wants to prop it up, not tear it down.

And Eric, I'll deal with your post tomorrow. I'm drunk and I don't need to kill my buzz reading your post.

[Eric the Green]

(03-15-2017, 09:15 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Rags I got your handle the first time I saw it. I've read a little about the Norse Gods.

If you've not figured it out Eric is part of the Establishment himself. He wants to prop it up, not tear it down.

And Eric, I'll deal with your post tomorrow. I'm drunk and I don't need to kill my buzz reading your post.

No one should doubt that you are now The Establishment personified, kinser. Both politically and spiritually. I say, dubunk the dominant paradigm!

[Kinser79]

EtI Wrote:It doesn't matter what we call what is detected, matter or spirit.

If it is detected then it probably is matter unless you have devised some method for detecting spirit.  In which case why the hell haven't you shared it and scientifically proven your "theories".  Wouldn't that put materialism to bed once and for all?

EtI Wrote:Undetectable does not mean non-existent.

If something cannot be detected either through the senses or through instruments enhancing the senses how can it be said to exist without merely making unsubstantiated claims?

Myself Wrote:So you agree that the vast majority of your posts are meaningless drivel.  Excellent we're getting somewhere.

EtI Wrote:Bach atcha!

Not so fast their Mr. "I got an IQ of 150".  You do realize that by saying that you're saying my previous post about your posts being meaningless drivel is 100% correct.  I could stop here but I know you're a glutton for punishment. 

EtI Wrote:But it's silly to claim that Marx did not found Marxism.

Marx was no Marxist as he said himself.  The quote is attributed to him by Engels, I would suggest that it has the same validity as if one of my own close personal friends attributed a quote to me

Engels Wrote:What is known as ‘Marxism’ in France is, indeed, an altogether peculiar product — so much so that Marx once said to Lafargue: ‘Ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste.’ [If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist]

If Marx was not a Marxist how could he have founded Marxism?  He did not, it developed out of his writings, because other people believed them and expanded upon them.

EtI Wrote:It was the manifesto that got him noticed and respect among his followers, from 1848 onward.

The Manifesto was of little importance until the 1880s-1890s when the Second International was forming up.  Marx and Engels wrote it at the behest of a small far left party's central committee.  It essentially languished until the 2nd International made it important.  If you read the document you can tell that it is very much a document of the 1840s and deals primarily with issues of that time period.  Honestly the Manifesto isn't all that important to Marxists today--other than nearly everyone who is a Marxist has read it at some point.

EtI Wrote:And plenty of non-materialist Marxist philosophers

Wrong!!!!!!  There are plenty of non-materialist philosophers, and there are plenty of Marxist philosophers but there is no such creature as the non-materialist Marxist philosopher because Marxism itself is founded on the basis of materialism.  To claim to be a Marxist and to reject materialism is like claiming to be Christian and rejecting the idea that Jesus lived in the first century C.E., was crucified at some point by the Romans, and was in fact the son of YHWH.

EtI Wrote:Including Marx himself in his younger years.

Marx was a Hegelian idealist in his youth. He didn't stay that way for long though.  Also Marx was no more a Marxist than Jesus was a Christian. As I've demonstrated above. 

EtI Wrote:No, the essential contention of Marxism is that the working class should gain political power.

Wrong.  The essential contention of Marxism is that the proletariat should gain control over the means of production.  Under Marxist doctrine political power flows out from economic power.  Therefore gaining political power would be meaningless without also gaining control over the means of production. 

This is why the DeLeonites (a school of American Socialism loosely associated with Marxism) are wrong--trades unionism, even that of one giant union can never gain control over the means of production; at best it can disrupt the capitalist system for a while but the bourgeoise eventually adapts to the contagion, isolates it, then destroys it.

EtI Wrote:That is what you now oppose by embracing its opposite, classical liberalism, which says the bourgeoisie should maintain power.

Again wrong, this time fortunately for you because your original precept was also wrong to start with--GIGO is an iron law.

Classical liberals maintain that property is a personal and individual liberty.  That it can be obtained by anyone regardless their class, and historically speaking in America they usually can.  As such it is possible for the proletariat to have a stake in the system.  This is why Marxism was completely short-circuited in the US.

In Western Europe, social democracy created governmental programs to give an economic stake to the proletariat.  In short their bourgeoisie adapted.

EtI Wrote:Lenin is not the only Marxist.

No but he is the only Marxist to have lead a successful socialist revolution without having Lenin to guide them.  Ergo due to his success that makes him the most important.

EtI Wrote:His contention is quite wrong; philosophical idealism does not amount to the defense of religion.

In general perhaps not.  On the issue of Marxism, he is correct.  Marxism is materialist.  It was materialist in its inception, it is materialist in its processes and it is materialist in its outlook.

EtI Wrote:Marxism is only one kind of materialism

I see Kinser's Second Law at work again.

Either Marxism is materialist or it is not materialist.  Are you now agreeing with me that Marxism is materialist?

EtI Wrote:Most materialists are not Marxists.

True true and also not an argument.  One can just as easily say "All tomatoes are members of the nightshade family of plants (Solanaceae), but not all members of the nightshade family of plants are tomatoes."  Suffice it to say while not all materialists are Marxists, all Marxists are materialists. 

EtI Wrote:Do you honestly want to maintain that all materialists are Marxists?

Never maintained such a stupid position.  But do go on battling strawmen.  When you're finished I have some wind mills that need to be tilted at.

EtI Wrote:Is Richard Dawkins, for example, the most famous materialist of our time, a Marxist?

To my knowledge he is not.  And yet he is still a materialist.  Just like not all members of the nightshade family of plants are tomatoes. What's your point, do you even have a point?

EtI Wrote:There was no such stupid course at my school. But I studied Marx in my philosophy class in college.

Then you must have learned nothing in that class and therefore wasted your (or someone's) money.  Marx said himself his philosophical works were materialist in nature, it was said about him, indeed the whole of Marxist literature is replete with exhortations against philosophical idealism. 

EtI Wrote:It doesn't matter if Muslims would consider the Nation of Islam infidels.

I would think it does if you plan on saying the Nation of Islam is in fact Islam and not a religion of its own. After all who would know Islam better a Muslim or a non-Muslim?  Given the choice I'm going to go with the Muslim.

EtI Wrote:It still claims to be Muslim

Not an argument.

And I can claim to be Samuel Jackson, that doesn't make it true.

EtI Wrote:The KKK has rituals too.

The Klan doesn't claim to be a religion or a sect of a religion.  It can be--and I'm being extremely generous here--a fraternal order the members of which are white Christian men.

Also the Klan has far less influence these days then the Nation of Islam.  David Duke can get what 20 maybe 30 people to come see him?  Louis Farrakhan fills stadiums.

EtI Wrote:You obviously don't know what an insult is; no wonder you make so many of them.

Thank you yet again demonstrating that your command of the English language is sporadic at best.  I'm honestly amazed that you graduated from a university.  Is Berkley's standards so low that if you drive past it they throw a diploma into your car?

EtI Wrote:I have shown the popularity of non-traditional spirituality already.

No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics.

EtI Wrote:You are not open to the phenomena

I'm perfectly open to phenomena.  I'm even willing to be far more loose with the definition of that word than Brian Rush was too.  Either you can communicate with me telepathicly or you cannot.  Demonstrate that we are "spiritually" connected.

EtI Wrote:No, physical science proves we are all connected to the environment.

Physical science only proves that living organisms are dependent upon the environment to which they have evolved to live in. 

Outer space is an environment but should one venture out into without the benefit of a self-contained pressurized vehicle or suit one will die in seconds is not milliseconds.  Conversely there are bacteria that have evolved to live in the hot springs and mud pots of of Yellowstone National Park but put them into water of a temperature we'd find comfortable and of an acidity we'd like and they will die.

EtI Wrote:If we are connected, we cannot be separate. That's a contradiction.

If we are connected then sending me a telepathic message should require less energy than posting on the forum.  You need merely think the message instead of having to type it out one a key board.  No muscle contractions required so that should save you a few joules of energy.

EtI Wrote:If classical liberalism opposes strong or big government, that does not mean it favors big state government. It doesn't.

I'm not the spokeman for Classical Liberalism.  However, the Classical Liberals I know, and the ones that do the most talking think the government needs to be large enough to ensure my neighbor neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. 

In the context of the US that means apart from things that are clearly the province of the Federal Government (IE Enumerated Powers) those things that people may wish for government to do are the province of the States or the Local Governments.  These United States are and always have been a federation of states rather than a unitary republic.

EtI Wrote:That is just your philosophical assumption; there's no proof for it.

So what you're saying is you have nothing but solipsistic woo-woo nonsense to back up your "spiritual" statements.  As I suspected.

EtI Wrote:I've read a lot of wisdom from St. Paul. I'd say 1st Corinthians 13 is pretty good; wouldn't you?

I've read it.  I'm particularly partial to Verse 11 of that chapter.  Indeed that is why I'm not an idealist.

1Cor 13:11 ASB Wrote:When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.

But that is not the thrust of Paul's work, he is speaking into his letter to those already converted since it is a letter to an existing church.  The thrust was converting people who were not already Christians into Christians.  My point still stands.

EtI Wrote:He didn't spend that much time on that. He wrote more about wise conduct and helping his congregation to practice the Christian ethics.

Actually I think you'll find that you have to create a congregation before you can teach about wise conduct and Christian ethics.  Or have you forgotten the entire Book of Acts?  It's called Acts because it is a brief early history of the Jesus Movement--quite literally the acts that the apostles carried out.

EtI Wrote:Your assertion that mystics are insane is not proven.

I've yet to meet a mystic who wasn't insane or feeble minded.  Like with Marxists not all idealists are mystics.  But it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that those who go on about their experiences with divine beings are quite likely insane.  And rightly so.  We know far more about psychopathic disorders now than we did in the 19th century, let alone the 1st.

EtI Wrote:But I think it's possible for someone like you to read what I say and follow it, and take a look, and discover mystical truth.

I don't think it is possible for a mystic to read your scribbles and discover mystical truth (assuming mysticism can ever produce truth except by accident).

EtI Wrote:You are just not willing; you're not alone, most people do require more than my words to have the experience.

You're right on this, but only because I gave you the answer beforehand.  I would need an experience, I'm still waiting on that telepathic message Eric.

As for Deepak Chopra, yeah I don't need a charlatan to take my money thanks.  Remember I know the religion con well my sperm donor has been at it for decades and has made himself a nice living.  Funny thing about YHWH, he supposedly can create the world in 7 days and yet can't handle money. 

EtI Wrote:That's just your opinion. It has no basis in reality, and you can't prove it.

Yes it is.  But given your reaction I must have struck a nerve.  Did I trigger you snowflake?

EtI Wrote:I disproved your assertion about lifespans by showing that Silent leaders are still in office during this 4T

The presence of more people living to advanced age does not indicate that the Maximum Lifespan has increased.  Merely that AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY has, which was never a point of contention.  Thus you proved nothing other than my point that you didn't understand the difference between Maximum Lifespan and Average Life Expectancy.

EtI Wrote:It is quite an easy conclusion that some Boomer leaders will be in office during the 1T.

There were some GIs in the Senate until recently.  They were neither powerful nor important.  The fact that one or two boomers may be in the Senate or on the SCOTUS during the 1T is not particularly relevant.  In the Senate their voices are drowned out and the SCOTUS is reactive rather than proactive.

In short because one or two people hold office in the 1T and they just happen to be Boomers doesn't mean much.  During the 1T I expect X to hold the Presidency, the House definitely (they already do) and the Senate.  Depending on how many seats open up in the next 8 years they may even be the majority on the SCOTUS bench too.

EtI Wrote:Your opinion about these leaders has no bearing on that point at all.

Actually those are not just my opinions but rather the power dynamics in the Senate.  I know Dianne Feinstein might seem important to you being a Commiefornian, but she's one voice out of a hundred to everyone else.  She might be a ranking member on a committee somewhere but otherwise her powers as a senator are limited.

John McCain may seem important cause the Fake News Media (CNN, MSNBC and the like) love to talk to him, but even in Arizona he is a joke.  Personally I think they keep re-electing him because he usually runs in off years and turn out is low.

McConnell is very important but he delegates his tasks to underlings.  That isn't an opinion, that's just his style.  Durban can make noise being minority leader but that's about it.  Should the other Dims defect his power is broken.  At most he can obstruct.  Again not an opinion.

EtI Wrote:Are you saying these current Silent leaders are NOT in office?

Of course not.  I'm not going to provide straw for your strawmen either.

EtI Wrote:Your baloney requires nothing more than to reassert what I said. You are a traitor to your earlier cause.

What communism?  Yeah I'd go with I'm a traitor to that.  Doesn't mean anything though. 

Marxism-Leninism doesn't work (see USSR) and the conditions for it simply don't exist for it to even be tried in America.  So unlike you, rather than tilting at windmills all day thinking I'm slaying dragons I decided to try something completely different.  At most you can say I stopped being insane as per Einstein's definition.  And that's never a bad thing.

Einstein Wrote:Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

EtI Wrote:Trump is a bigot and an oligarch who supports oligarchy, and therefore by supporting him and his neo-liberalism on steroids, you are the worst sort of supporter of capitalist pigs.

Trump is not a bigot.  You keep using that word but I'm not sure you know what it means.  Here lets define it.

Bigot:   a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially :  one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

Definition provided by Webster's dictionary.

Lets see Trump has obviously hired blacks, latinos, women, gays, and so on and so forth so his treatment of those groups is not bigoted, and he seems willing to listen to the opinions of others.  Ergo I must conclude, as per the definition, Trump is not a bigot.  I can only go by his actions as I cannot see into the man's heart anymore than you can.

That being said, you Eric, on the other hand are both obstinately and intolerantly devoted to your own opinions and you certainly treat at least one person of another racial group with hatred and intolerance....so I have to conclude you're projecting your own bigotry onto Trump.

Trump has since the 1990s spoken against the unfair trade deals made by the likes of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.  Since neoliberals want more of these deals and not less I kinda have to conclude he isn't a neoliberal much less a neoliberal on steroids.

As for being a supporter of "capitalist pigs", yeah so what.

EtI Wrote:I'm sure we can just rely on what you "find."

Not just me...Gavin McInnis is finding it too.  Milo is finding it, loads of people are finding it.  We can quibble about birth years but the point is the people after Core Millies are sick and tired of both Boomers and their SJW nonsense.  And I imagine that many Millies are getting that way--life's been rubbing the contradictions of the left's ideology in their faces for a while now.

Just because you don't go outside doesn't mean other people don't.

EtI Wrote:You need to draw lines to measure anything.

Not really.  Lines may help but they are not necessary.  For example if I take a piece of wood that is a foot long I can measure my arm with it without drawing a single line.

Even so, lines, in Euclidean geometry anyway (I'm not familiar with non-Euclidean geometry and well you have trouble with arithmetic so I know you aren't), are themselves infinite.  So what you've just said is you need this infinite thing to measure other infinite things. 

EtI Wrote:Psychic ability can be partially measured too, btw. There are tests. I did well on one. You would fail badly.

Yes, I've heard of them.  They usually involve cards with shapes and whatnot on them.  There are 5 or 6 shapes so statistically speaking one should guess right by mere chance 20% of the time.  But that is more a test at good guessing than psychic ability.

I'm really good at cold reading which is most of what passes for psychic ability.

EtI Wrote:You have always failed.

Nope still winning.  I'm waiting on you to get tired of losing, or me getting bored with the Eric the Ignoramus Show.

[Kinser79]

(03-15-2017, 10:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(03-15-2017, 09:15 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Rags I got your handle the first time I saw it.  I've read a little about the Norse Gods.

If you've not figured it out Eric is part of the Establishment himself.  He wants to prop it up, not tear it down.  

And Eric, I'll deal with your post tomorrow.  I'm drunk and I don't need to kill my buzz reading your post.

No one should doubt that you are now The Establishment personified, kinser. Both politically and spiritually. I say, dubunk the dominant paradigm!

Well I have to wait on you to do the debunking I'll die of old age before it happens.

[Eric the Green]

(03-16-2017, 11:34 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

EtI Wrote:It doesn't matter what we call what is detected, matter or spirit.

If it is detected then it probably is matter unless you have devised some method for detecting spirit.  In which case why the hell haven't you shared it and scientifically proven your "theories".  Wouldn't that put materialism to bed once and for all?

See the other thread in the other forum section.

Matter and Spirit are just terms. A spiritualist says that whatever is detected or not detected, is consciousness or spirit. We know this through our own experience and through reason. So we call it spirit, and you call it matter. It doesn't matter. We spiritualists know that spirit exists, because we experience it. Apparently, you don't even know or admit that you are conscious. That's all it takes to verify that spirit exists. Are you conscious, or not? Fess up.

There's no basis for your claim that what exists is "matter." What is "matter"? On what basis do you make such an undetectible claim? Science doesn't claim it anymore. It's all just probability waves.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Undetectable does not mean non-existent.

If something cannot be detected either through the senses or through instruments enhancing the senses how can it be said to exist without merely making unsubstantiated claims?

"Unsubstantiated" from your statement, just means unmeasured. Even science has to acknowledge that dark energy and matter exist and that they don't know what it is. It is not measured, just inferred; even according to Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Most of reality cannot be measured; in fact, in reality nothing can be measured; meaasurement is just our projection upon a reality that is all of a piece.

Your argument runs like this: matter is what exists.
What exists is what can be detected.
What can be detected, exists.
Completely circular and arbitrary position.

My argument runs like this: Spirit is what exists.
What exists is what can be experienced in consciousness.
What is experienced in consciousness, is what exists.
Also circular.

It's your choice: do you rely on instruments and your senses to tell you what is real, or your awareness and experience?

I choose awareness, because the senses and its instruments are just objects within my awareness, and they do not provide awareness. However, awareness if necessary for any use of the senses or its instruments.

Quote:The Manifesto was of little importance until the 1880s-1890s when the Second International was forming up.  Marx and Engels wrote it at the behest of a small far left party's central committee.  It essentially languished until the 2nd International made it important.  If you read the document you can tell that it is very much a document of the 1840s and deals primarily with issues of that time period.  Honestly the Manifesto isn't all that important to Marxists today--other than nearly everyone who is a Marxist has read it at some point.

That's not what I read.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:And plenty of non-materialist Marxist philosophers

Wrong!!!!!!  There are plenty of non-materialist philosophers, and there are plenty of Marxist philosophers but there is no such creature as the non-materialist Marxist philosopher because Marxism itself is founded on the basis of materialism.  To claim to be a Marxist and to reject materialism is like claiming to be Christian and rejecting the idea that Jesus lived in the first century C.E., was crucified at some point by the Romans, and was in fact the son of YHWH.

EtI Wrote:Including Marx himself in his younger years.

Marx was a Hegelian idealist in his youth. He didn't stay that way for long though.  Also Marx was no more a Marxist than Jesus was a Christian. As I've demonstrated above. 

Marx was a non-materialist Marxist in his youth, and I know Marxists who are not materialists, and I have studied others.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No, the essential contention of Marxism is that the working class should gain political power.

Wrong.  The essential contention of Marxism is that the proletariat should gain control over the means of production.  Under Marxist doctrine political power flows out from economic power.  Therefore gaining political power would be meaningless without also gaining control over the means of production. 

This is why the DeLeonites (a school of American Socialism loosely associated with Marxism) are wrong--trades unionism, even that of one giant union can never gain control over the means of production; at best it can disrupt the capitalist system for a while but the bourgeoise eventually adapts to the contagion, isolates it, then destroys it.

Yes that is more or less true, although Marxists also seek and obtain political power directly. None of that is materialism, however.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:That is what you now oppose by embracing its opposite, classical liberalism, which says the bourgeoisie should maintain power.

Classical liberals maintain that property is a personal and individual liberty.  That it can be obtained by anyone regardless their class, and historically speaking in America they usually can.  As such it is possible for the proletariat to have a stake in the system.  This is why Marxism was completely short-circuited in the US.

In Western Europe, social democracy created governmental programs to give an economic stake to the proletariat.  In short their bourgeoisie adapted.

So by whatever rationalization you make, you have thrown over the Marxism you believed in a few years ago, and now embrace the opposite: classical liberalism.

As a classical liberal, you value individual freedom. You need to consider that there is no freedom in materialism. All events are caused by previous events, mechanically. You can't honestly be a classical liberal and be a materialist.

Quote:Either Marxism is materialist or it is not materialist.  Are you now agreeing with me that Marxism is materialist?

There are materialist Marxists and idealist Marxists. I would agree most are materialists, but not all. And now you claim they can adapt and be bourgeois classical liberals. Marx apparently means nothing to you anymore.

His meaning for history is that he championed the working class. Although conditions have changed, it's still the case that capitalist bosses oppress and abuse the people, and that politics and unions are needed to counter-act this. And some today advocate employee ownership, which is worker ownership of the means of production. And periodically, Marxist revolutionary movements still happen.

In any case, historically, Marx is still important as a prophet of the realization that capitalist bosses can not be allowed to abuse the people in the name of their own "freedom." By embracing classical liberalism, YOU now think that the common working people should be abused by the capitalist pigs, and you call this "individual freedom." They are still just as much pigs as they ever were, and you now close your eyes and support them fanatically by supporting their leaders and agents. Shame, shame on you.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:There was no such stupid course at my school. But I studied Marx in my philosophy class in college.

Then you must have learned nothing in that class and therefore wasted your (or someone's) money.  Marx said himself his philosophical works were materialist in nature, it was said about him, indeed the whole of Marxist literature is replete with exhortations against philosophical idealism. 

I know Marx was a materialist in his later life, and many Marxists still are. That's why I put him where I did on my philosophy wheel. But you also claimed that adaptations have been made to Marxism. Some have dropped his materialism too, and gone back to his younger philosophy.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:I have shown the popularity of non-traditional spirituality already.

No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics.

18% of Americans are spiritual but not religious.

All told, about two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) describe themselves as religious (either in addition to be being spiritual or not). Nearly one-in-five say they are spiritual but not religious (18%), and about one-in-six say they are neither religious nor spiritual (15%).
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones...-religion/

Deepak Chopra is a leading exponent. "He has sold over 10 million books in 30 languages"

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/deepak-chopra

Within a few years of writing his first book, Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher brought up in Germany, formerly worked in Britain and currently living in Canada, has become one of the best known spiritual teachers in the Western world offering retreats, public talks as well as appearing on various television programmes. Millions have read one or more of his four books:

THE POWER OF NOW. A GUIDE TO SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT.
THE PRACTISE OF THE POWER OF NOW
A NEW EARTH. CREATE A BETTER LIFE
STILLNESS SPEAKS
Published in 35 languages, these four books have gone on to sell some 12 million copies or more between them.
https://www.christophertitmussblog.org/e...ightenment

Americans may be getting less religious, but feelings of spirituality are on the rise
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/201...rituality/

The Celestine Prophecy: As of May 2005, the book had sold over 20 million copies worldwide,[3] with translations into 34 languages. The book was generally well received by readers and spent 165 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.[5] (Note: many weeks @ #1)

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No, physical science proves we are all connected to the environment.

Physical science only proves that living organisms are dependent upon the environment to which they have evolved to live in. 

Outer space is an environment but should one venture out into without the benefit of a self-contained pressurized vehicle or suit one will die in seconds is not milliseconds.  Conversely there are bacteria that have evolved to live in the hot springs and mud pots of of Yellowstone National Park but put them into water of a temperature we'd find comfortable and of an acidity we'd like and they will die.

No, it's an interdependent relationship. That's what ecology is. As I stated, human beings and living things are not separate beings; science proves it. You deny science.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:If we are connected, we cannot be separate. That's a contradiction.

If we are connected then sending me a telepathic message should require less energy than posting on the forum.  You need merely think the message instead of having to type it out one a key board.  No muscle contractions required so that should save you a few joules of energy.

The way to understand that you are connected to all, is merely to experience it. Take a look at yourself. Telepathy only proves communication.

I sent you a message already.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:If classical liberalism opposes strong or big government, that does not mean it favors big state government. It doesn't.

I'm not the spokesman for Classical Liberalism.  However, the Classical Liberals I know, and the ones that do the most talking think the government needs to be large enough to ensure my neighbor neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. 

In the context of the US that means apart from things that are clearly the province of the Federal Government (IE Enumerated Powers) those things that people may wish for government to do are the province of the States or the Local Governments.  These United States are and always have been a federation of states rather than a unitary republic.

Baloney. The need is clear for government at all levels to keep the greedy bosses from "picking our pockets." That is what the EPA does, protect us from the bosses; which Drump and classical liberals in congress are abolishing. Shame on you for opposing the need to control the bosses, require them to pay living wages, treat their workers fairly, offer safe products, keep from ruining the economy through speculation, and keep them from polluting our world. By being a classical liberal, you wish the bosses to have "freedom" to do these things to us. That is what Drump and the classical liberals in congress are doing to us. You worked for this, you voted for this.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:That is just your philosophical assumption; there's no proof for it.

So what you're saying is you have nothing but solipsistic woo-woo nonsense to back up your "spiritual" statements.  As I suspected.

No, that's what I said about YOU. There's no basis for any philosophical assumption; it's just your theory.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:I've read a lot of wisdom from St. Paul. I'd say 1st Corinthians 13 is pretty good; wouldn't you?

I've read it.  I'm particularly partial to Verse 11 of that chapter.  Indeed that is why I'm not an idealist.

1Cor 13:11 ASB Wrote:When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.

But that is not the thrust of Paul's work, he is speaking into his letter to those already converted since it is a letter to an existing church.  The thrust was converting people who were not already Christians into Christians.  My point still stands.

Your point was that Paul was not imparting wisdom. You disproved yourself. There's lots of wisdom in his letters.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:He didn't spend that much time on that. He wrote more about wise conduct and helping his congregation to practice the Christian ethics.

Actually I think you'll find that you have to create a congregation before you can teach about wise conduct and Christian ethics.  Or have you forgotten the entire Book of Acts?  It's called Acts because it is a brief early history of the Jesus Movement--quite literally the acts that the apostles carried out.

But you were talking about what Paul wrote in The Bible. He wrote words of wisdom and advice. That's mainly what he wrote.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Your assertion that mystics are insane is not proven.

I've yet to meet a mystic who wasn't insane or feeble minded.  Like with Marxists not all idealists are mystics.  But it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that those who go on about their experiences with divine beings are quite likely insane.  And rightly so.  We know far more about psychopathic disorders now than we did in the 19th century, let alone the 1st.

"No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics."

Quote:

EtI Wrote:But I think it's possible for someone like you to read what I say and follow it, and take a look, and discover mystical truth.

I don't think it is possible for a mystic to read your scribbles and discover mystical truth (assuming mysticism can ever produce truth except by accident).

It is possible for any sincere seeker or interested person to read my scribbles and discover the truth. One who is already a mystic doesn't need to read my scribbles to discover the truth. YOU DO

Quote:You're right on this,

You should say that more often

Quote:The presence of more people living to advanced age does not indicate that the Maximum Lifespan has increased.  Merely that AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY has, which was never a point of contention.  Thus you proved nothing other than my point that you didn't understand the difference between Maximum Lifespan and Average Life Expectancy.

It proves the likelihood that Boomers will still be in leadership positions during the 1T, which was the only point.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:It is quite an easy conclusion that some Boomer leaders will be in office during the 1T.

There were some GIs in the Senate until recently.  They were neither powerful nor important.  The fact that one or two boomers may be in the Senate or on the SCOTUS during the 1T is not particularly relevant.  In the Senate their voices are drowned out and the SCOTUS is reactive rather than proactive.

In short because one or two people hold office in the 1T and they just happen to be Boomers doesn't mean much.  During the 1T I expect X to hold the Presidency, the House definitely (they already do) and the Senate.  Depending on how many seats open up in the next 8 years they may even be the majority on the SCOTUS bench too.

That's quite an influence. And there's more than one or two Silent Senators today.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Your opinion about these leaders has no bearing on that point at all.

Actually those are not just my opinions but rather the power dynamics in the Senate.  I know Dianne Feinstein might seem important to you being a Commiefornian, but she's one voice out of a hundred to everyone else.  She might be a ranking member on a committee somewhere but otherwise her powers as a senator are limited.

John McCain may seem important cause the Fake News Media (CNN, MSNBC and the like) love to talk to him, but even in Arizona he is a joke.  Personally I think they keep re-electing him because he usually runs in off years and turn out is low.

McConnell is very important but he delegates his tasks to underlings.  That isn't an opinion, that's just his style.  Durban can make noise being minority leader but that's about it.  Should the other Dims defect his power is broken.  At most he can obstruct.  Again not an opinion.

They are Silents, and in positions of leadership. If you say only the president is powerful, you are not only wrong, but since Silents were never elected president, it doesn't matter.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Your baloney requires nothing more than to reassert what I said. You are a traitor to your earlier cause.

What communism?  Yeah I'd go with I'm a traitor to that.  Doesn't mean anything though. 

Marxism-Leninism doesn't work (see USSR) and the conditions for it simply don't exist for it to even be tried in America.  So unlike you, rather than tilting at windmills all day thinking I'm slaying dragons I decided to try something completely different.  At most you can say I stopped being insane as per Einstein's definition.  And that's never a bad thing.

Einstein Wrote:Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Which is why you need to question your other beliefs too.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Trump is a bigot and an oligarch who supports oligarchy, and therefore by supporting him and his neo-liberalism on steroids, you are the worst sort of supporter of capitalist pigs.

Trump is not a bigot.  You keep using that word but I'm not sure you know what it means.  Here lets define it.

Bigot:   a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially :  one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

Definition provided by Webster's dictionary.

Lets see Trump has obviously hired blacks, latinos, women, gays, and so on and so forth so his treatment of those groups is not bigoted, and he seems willing to listen to the opinions of others.  Ergo I must conclude, as per the definition, Trump is not a bigot.  I can only go by his actions as I cannot see into the man's heart anymore than you can.

That being said, you Eric, on the other hand are both obstinately and intolerantly devoted to your own opinions and you certainly treat at least one person of another racial group with hatred and intolerance....so I have to conclude you're projecting your own bigotry onto Trump.

Trump has since the 1990s spoken against the unfair trade deals made by the likes of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.  Since neoliberals want more of these deals and not less I kinda have to conclude he isn't a neoliberal much less a neoliberal on steroids.

As for being a supporter of "capitalist pigs", yeah so what.

Yeah, so that's a big deal. You are a traitor to your cause. You support the people who harm our country and humanity. Yeah, it's a big deal. Pollution and climate change are big deals, imposed poverty and inequality are big deals, destruction of democracy are big deals; institutional racism is a big deal. Unnecessary wars are big deals. As a supporter of capitalist pigs, you support all these big deals continuing and causing real harm to real people. Shame on you.

Trump is a bigot and has proven it over and over. His views on eugenics, for example. He called Mexicans rapists in his declaration speech of his candidacy. He is xenophobic about Muslims. That's enough proof for anyone. Trump is a bigot and a racist. And you support him. That makes you a bigot too.

And you are extremely intolerant of idealists and mystics. You call them insane and say they make up most of the insane asylum inmates. If that's not intolerant, sorry, but I don't know what is.

Although I recognize the place of materialism in the circle of philosophy, or the universe of ideas, you do not accept spiritualism in this universe. Yours is the narrow-minded approach.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:I'm sure we can just rely on what you "find."

Not just me...Gavin McInnis is finding it too.  Milo is finding it, loads of people are finding it.  We can quibble about birth years but the point is the people after Core Millies are sick and tired of both Boomers and their SJW nonsense.  And I imagine that many Millies are getting that way--life's been rubbing the contradictions of the left's ideology in their faces for a while now.

Just because you don't go outside doesn't mean other people don't.

What's happening now is that all sane people of all ages are waking up and expressing their outrage against Trump and the GOP. The left's "ideology" is nothing but common sense willingness to solve problems, using the government if necessary. That's all it is, and that's all it ever was. The Right wing is just the group that defends keeping the problems and not doing anything about them. That's YOU. That's the fucking status quo.

You are a big, fat, huge pillar of The Establishment.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You need to draw lines to measure anything.

Not really.  Lines may help but they are not necessary.  For example if I take a piece of wood that is a foot long I can measure my arm with it without drawing a single line.

Even so, lines, in Euclidean geometry anyway (I'm not familiar with non-Euclidean geometry and well you have trouble with arithmetic so I know you aren't), are themselves infinite.  So what you've just said is you need this infinite thing to measure other infinite things. 

That's right; there really are no lines. You can't find one. They are conceptual. You can't call something a foot long without that concept.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Psychic ability can be partially measured too, btw. There are tests. I did well on one. You would fail badly.

Yes, I've heard of them.  They usually involve cards with shapes and whatnot on them.  There are 5 or 6 shapes so statistically speaking one should guess right by mere chance 20% of the time.  But that is more a test at good guessing than psychic ability.

I'm really good at cold reading which is most of what passes for psychic ability.

No, you don't know the test. That was not the test I took.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You have always failed.

Nope still winning.  I'm waiting on you to get tired of losing, or me getting bored with the Eric the Ignoramus Show.

I win against you so much that I'm getting tired of winning.

[Kinser79]

EtI Wrote:See the other thread in the other forum section.

I don't care what asinine bullshit you posted in an other section of the forum.  If you have proof for what you call "spirit" why have you not shared it with the world yet.  Hell it should make the nightly news.  Get pricked up on Breitbart.  Maybe even make you a nickle.

I have to conclude all you have is forum posts.

EtI Wrote:A spiritualist says that whatever is detected or not detected, is consciousness or spirit.

I could say that whatever is detected is dog shit as well.  If something is detected, say a large object in the sky that provides reflected solar energy at night, I could call it dog shit but it isn't fecal material from a canis lupis familiarius, rather it is a big rock in space we call the moon.

EtI Wrote:We know this through our own experience and through reason.

No we know through experience and reason that matter is what matters.  All else is bullshit.

EtI Wrote:We spiritualists know that spirit exists, because we experience it.

Translation:  We "spiritualists" know that "spirit" exists because we say we know that.

Pure solipsism.

EtI Wrote:Apparently, you don't even know or admit that you are conscious. That's all it takes to verify that spirit exists. Are you conscious, or not? Fess up.

Being conscious, IE carrying out the electro-chemical and mechanical functions of the body and the mind, does not prove the existence of some external mystical force.


So while I am indeed concious, I cannot use that evidence as having a spirit, much less any of the other absurd claims you have made.

EtI Wrote:There's no basis for your claim that what exists is "matter." What is "matter"?

  Lets try a website used by children to see if you can understand what matter is.  After all you supposedly have an IQ of 150 you should be able to grasp the content in seconds (though I have my doubts that you can and that your IQ is really 150, if it is that makes it even worse for you--as that transforms your issues with reality from a matter of stupidity [which is to be pitied] to willful ignorance [which is to be reviled]).

http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_intro.html

EtI Wrote:On what basis do you make such an undetectible claim? Science doesn't claim it anymore. It's all just probability waves.

Physics directly concerns itself with matter and its modifications from a sceintific stand point.  I'm pretty sure the Universities have not shut down their Physics departments.

ITT:  Eric claims knowledge of Quantum Mechanics and then demonstrates he doesn't even have an elementary understanding of those mechanics.

EtI Wrote:"Unsubstantiated" from your statement, just means unmeasured.

Wrong. 

Unsubstantiated:  not supported or proven by evidence.

EtI Wrote:Even science has to acknowledge that dark energy and matter exist and that they don't know what it is. It is not measured, just inferred; even according to Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Most of reality cannot be measured

Science has to acknowledge dark energy and dark matter because they exist, true.  But we know that they exist because the collective mass of the visible universe is not sufficient to keep the whole thing together.  As such either the theory of relativity is nonsense (which the rest of physics indicates it is not) or there is an unseen force(s) at work.

However, science is not mysticism and rather than simply proclaiming these forces "spirit" or "god" or whatever the work now is to find out ways that we can study both dark matter and dark energy.

All of this being said neither one of us are physicists nor is Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  So the discovery of dark matter and dark energy are beyond both out pay grades.

EtI Wrote:It's your choice: do you rely on instruments and your senses to tell you what is real, or your awareness and experience?

Both.  If I see a cat in the road, experience tells me that there is a cat in the road.  In seeing the cat, I'm aware that the cat is there and thus don't run it over in my pimpmobile which would be bad for the pimpmobile (and not that great for the cat either).  If I see my gas gauge on my instrument panel tell me I have a quarter tank of gas I know I need to get gas soon.  I am made aware through my senses and intrements and my experience is a collection of known outcomes and projected out comes based on things that have come into my awareness in the past.

Nice try on presenting a non-choice as an either or choice.

EtI Wrote:That's not what I read.

What you've read and what is need not conform.  In fact my experience is that they rarely do.  There's a reason I say you have "sporadic  contact with reality".

EtI Wrote:Marx was a non-materialist Marxist in his youth, and I know Marxists who are not materialists,

Marx was not a Marxist.  Said so through his own words.  He could not be a Marxist for the same reason that Jesus Christ could not be a Christian.  You've made the claim that Karl Marx founded Marxism, in that case he could not be a Marxist.  Jesus Christ, supposedly founded Christianity, yet he was a Jew.

He was an idealist when he was a young man.  He eventually rejected idealism in favor of materialism.  His entire body of work is based upon materialism.

If you know Marxist who is not a materialist then you don't know a Marxist.

Here let Lenin explain why. Seriously this work is in my Former Party's ABC of Communism. We teach this shit to Children!

EtI Wrote:Yes that is more or less true, although Marxists also seek and obtain political power directly. None of that is materialism, however.

Then you must seriously twist the meaning of the word of materialism as it is clearly based on the dialectic that plays out between material conditions--IE modifications of matter.  Now then if "materialism" simply means 'any philosophical concept Eric doesn't like' then we're clearly not talking about the same thing when we discuss materialism.  See my previous posts where I defined materialism.

EtI Wrote:So by whatever rationalization you make, you have thrown over the Marxism you believed in a few years ago, and now embrace the opposite: classical liberalism.

Typically that is what people do when the philosophy by which they have operated ceases working.  Or in my case never really did. 

EtI Wrote:As a classical liberal, you value individual freedom. You need to consider that there is no freedom in materialism. All events are caused by previous events, mechanically. You can't honestly be a classical liberal and be a materialist.

Wrong about not being a materialist in order to be a classical liberal.  Classical Liberalism has the concept of personal liberty.  Provided I have personal liberty I have the freedom to attempt to change what may or may not happen in my life--that is to say I have agency.

That is not to say that there are not issues over which I have no agency.  I could choose to not believe in gravity, but regardless of what I believe if I jump off a building I'm still going to come to a sudden stop eventually, is but one example. 

EtI Wrote:There are materialist Marxists and idealist Marxists.

No.  There are Marxists who are materialists, and then there are non-Marxists.  Anyone who claims to be an idealist and a Marxist at the same time probably doesn't understand one of the schools, and maybe both.

EtI Wrote:I would agree most are materialists, but not all.

Then you still get an F in Kinser's Marxism Class. (I don't believe in grade inflation, I like my money and my grades sound.)

All Marxists are materialists because Marxism is a materialist philosophy.  Idealists can take up this or that hypothesis arising out of Marxism but are not themselves Marxists, as by being Idealists they reject the materialist basis upon which Marxism is built.

EtI Wrote:And now you claim they can adapt and be bourgeois classical liberals.

Yes they can.  I did.  Though I will quibble on the matter of being bourgeois.  I'm firmly petty-bourgeois and was even when I was a Marxist.

EtI Wrote:Although conditions have changed

When conditions change smart people change with them.

EtI Wrote:it's still the case that capitalist bosses oppress and abuse the people

Really?  How?  By offering them a job?  That I should be so oppressed as to have a job so I can have money to buy whatever I want!  That I should be so abused as to get money for doing stuff!

Dude, I seriously had trouble with that even when I was a Marxist.  The only way Marxists can really justify it is through the concept of theft of surplus value.  But a worker does not rent his labor power as Marx would put it, rather he directly sells it.  The capitalist buys his labor power, ergo he owns it through the act of buying it.

It would be like saying Ford Motor Company owns my car cause they made it, even though I gave them money so it could belong to me.

EtI Wrote:And some today advocate employee ownership, which is worker ownership of the means of production. And periodically, Marxist revolutionary movements still happen.

Employee ownership of businesses is not prohibited by classical liberalism.  In fact I would say that laws should be structured in such a way as that it should be made easier for people to pool their money and goods together to start businesses.

Define revolutionary movement.  The number of actual Marxist Revolutions (or more broadly speaking Marxist inspired revolutions) is very thin after 1960.

EtI Wrote:In any case, historically, Marx is still important as a prophet of the realization that capitalist bosses can not be allowed to abuse the people in the name of their own "freedom." By embracing classical liberalism, YOU now think that the common working people should be abused by the capitalist pigs, and you call this "individual freedom." They are still just as much pigs as they ever were, and you now close your eyes and support them fanatically by supporting their leaders and agents. Shame, shame on you.

Right on Marx--partially he is historically important.  Wrong on everything else.

As a classical liberal I think people should be allowed the opportunity to become capitalist bosses themselves if they so desire.  Or if they desire to start a business of their own, either individually or collectively.  Things they wouldn't be allowed to do under a communist system.  Indeed no matter how bad abuse and oppression and so forth have been under bourgeois regimes Marxist regimes are far worse.  And in those states founded on the principles of Classical Liberalism (such as the US or the UK) abuse of the population is non-existent.

Yes Eric, shame on me for valuing freedom more than free loaves of bread I have to stand in line for for three hours and half of which is made of adulterants.   It does make me wonder though, do those who value bread over freedom get neither.

I'm not going to address where you put Marx on your wheel thingy.  Mostly because I just don't give a shit.

EtI Wrote:<snip> tables and shit</snip>

18% of Americans might be "Spiritual" but there is no definition of what that even means.  It could mean "I believe in woo-woo.",  it could mean "I think that there are unexplained things and maybe <insert idealism here> explains these uneplained things.", or it could mean "I'm really a nominal <insert traditional religion here> but don't go to <insert meeting place here>".

So maybe 1 in 5 people.  I notice that most people don't talk about it and you posted no methodology.

I'm not going to address Depack Chopra and all that other mess..mostly because I don't give a shit and I don't need a guru to tell me bullshit to believe.  If I wanted to be told what to believe I'd call up my sperm donor...at least I know what he'll do with the money.

EtI Wrote:No, it's an interdependent relationship. That's what ecology is. As I stated, human beings and living things are not separate beings; science proves it. You deny science.

No that is not what ecology is.

Ecology:  1.  the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.
  2.  the political movement that seeks to protect the environment, especially from pollution.

Since definition 2 is unimportant here, let's look at definition 1 and see if we can break it down.

Ecology is the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.  What does this indicate?  It indicates  that each organism is a discrete and concrete entity, it also indicates that the physical surroundings (environment) are separate from these organism.

For example if we have a field, and there are rabbits in that field and they are eating grass, your view point would point toward the rabbits eating themselves--but they are not.  Grass is a discrete and concrete organism separate from the rabbit.  Science insists that the rabbit and the grass be separate.  If we introduce a wolf, and the wolf eats the rabbit we've just added one more layer of the same thing.

Science insists that all these organisms and their environment be separate from each other even if only to be able to actually study them.  But do carry on with your projections---I think through the years you've made it abundantly clear that you understand science about as well as the average kindergartner.

EtI Wrote:The way to understand that you are connected to all, is merely to experience it. Take a look at yourself. Telepathy only proves communication.

I sent you a message already.

I've never had such an experience, and even if I did I'd probably immediately seek psychological counciling. 

I've taken a look at myself and realized that 1.  I don't know and can't possibly know everything.  2.  Those who claim that they can are usually foolish.

I never received your message.  So I have three possible conclusions  1.  Eric didn't actually send a telepathic message--IE Eric is a liar.  2.  Eric did but Kinser can't receive it because of reasons.  3.  Telepathy does not exist.

Occam's Razor indicates that answer 3 is the best one because it assumes the fewest things.

Inb4 Eric says that this proves my mind isn't open to <insert whatever here>.

EtI Wrote:The need is clear for government at all levels to keep the greedy bosses from "picking our pockets."

   Explain to me how exactly someone proposing "I'll give you money if you do X" is picking my pocket.

EtI Wrote:That is what the EPA does, protect us from the bosses

No it doesn't.  The EPA mostly tells farmers that they can't shovel cow shit on their fields because of "water pollution" and tells me I can't build my house in certain places because "its a wet land".  From what boss is anyone protected from?  And that is before we get into the constitutionality issue which is above your head anyway.

EtI Wrote:which Drump and classical liberals in congress are abolishing.

Actually Daddy released his budget blueprint today.  They merely got a haircut.  Now myself I wouldn't mind abolishing them. 

EtI Wrote:Shame on you for opposing the need to control the bosses, require them to pay living wages, treat their workers fairly, offer safe products, keep from ruining the economy through speculation, and keep them from polluting our world

Yes shame on me for believing people shouldn't be forced to pay more for labor than it is worth.  Have you ever stopped to consider that there would be a living wage for everyone if cheap if the importation of cheap labor was stopped (IE enforcing immigration laws).  Yes, shame on me for having the faith in businesses to not offer products that kill their very customers (well except perhaps very slowly), and Shame on me for not wanting to nerf life to the point of making it unlivable.  Indeed shame on me for not wanting to tell people how to invest their money.

As for pollution--Eric, you're free to give up your car, your electricity, your internet and all the other trappings of modern polluting life at any time.

EtI Wrote:You worked for this, you voted for this.

I know you have a severe case of TDS so....yeah I did work for this, I did vote for it, and it IS going to happen. Don't like it?  Well you can work harder next time...but the tide of history is against you.  And you know it.  Which is probably why your TDS is so severe.

EtI Wrote:No, that's what I said about YOU. There's no basis for any philosophical assumption; it's just your theory.

So you agree that all you have to support spiritualism is woo-woo nonsense and solipsism.  Good to know we're on the same page.

EtI Wrote:Your point was that Paul was not imparting wisdom. You disproved yourself. There's lots of wisdom in his letters.

Wrong.  My point is that Paul had to convert people to Christianity before he could preach any wisdom to them.  In the most part he was an evangelist rather than a pastor.  It isn't my fault you don't know the difference.

EtI Wrote:But you were talking about what Paul wrote in The Bible. He wrote words of wisdom and advice. That's mainly what he wrote.

Wrong.  We were discussing what Paul did.  Writing about something and doing something are NOT the same thing.  Seriously my 5 year old nephew understands this!

EtI Wrote:No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics."

Wrong again, and even by your own sources!

Your statistics indicate that about 18% of people claim to be spiritual, and around 65% of people claim to be religious.  At no time is there a figure that these "spiritual" and religious people are in fact mystics.

Truth be told if that 65% of religious people are Christian, Jewish or Muslim then they should seek out and kill those mystics on the basis of them being witches according to their own religious texts.

EtI Wrote:It is possible for any sincere seeker or interested person to read my scribbles and discover the truth. One who is already a mystic doesn't need to read my scribbles to discover the truth. YOU DO

I've read your works.  I found them to contain no truth and much bullshit.  Honestly the bible is a better read and as mythology goes the bible is very mediocre, YHWH is somewhat of an asshole but he's a great fictitious character and wonderful villain.

EtI Wrote:You should say that more often

Eric, you know what you have in common with a blind hog?  Every once in a while you find an acorn.

No I'm not going to explain it--contemplate on it.

EtI Wrote:It proves the likelihood that Boomers will still be in leadership positions during the 1T, which was the only point.

If you mean you might have a Boomer or two in the Senate and on the SCOTUS bench sure.  They won't be running the show.  Which is the Point.  Like it or not X is already running the show now. 

EtI Wrote:That's quite an influence. And there's more than one or two Silent Senators today.

1.  It is only our due....we've waited long enough.

2.  No one cares.  They aren't the driving force in the Senate.

EtI Wrote:They are Silents, and in positions of leadership

Only McConnell and Durban.  McCain is not part of the GOP leadership in the Senate.  Never has been really or have you forgotten his "Maverick" campaign from 2008?  Kinda hard to be a Maverick when you have someone's brand of ownership all over you.

Feinstein is maybe a ranking member on a committee somewhere.  I know you don't know what that means, but it means she gets more time in committee meetings and that's about it.  Just because she seems important in California doesn't make her important.  After all I bet you've never even heard of Bill Nelson (D-FL).

He too is a Silent (1942--so just barely).  He's also likely to lose his seat in 2018 cause FL is going from purple to red.

EtI Wrote:Which is why you need to question your other beliefs too.

You should take your own advice.  I question my own beliefs all the time.  I doubt we can say the same of you.

I'm not going to answer your TDS here...there are other threads for that.

[Eric the Green]

(03-16-2017, 09:22 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

EtI Wrote:See the other thread in the other forum section.

I don't care what asinine bullshit you posted in an other section of the forum.  If you have proof for what you call "spirit" why have you not shared it with the world yet.  Hell it should make the nightly news.  Get pricked up on Breitbart.  Maybe even make you a nickle.

I have to conclude all you have is forum posts.

LOL. It's not "my" proof, silly boy. It's research scientists and researchers have done. Some of it is posted on that other thread in the appropriate place. Some of it was on the archived old forum. Find it there if you're interested.

Quote:Being conscious, IE carrying out the electro-chemical and mechanical functions of the body and the mind, does not prove the existence of some external mystical force.

So while I am indeed conscious, I cannot use that evidence as having a spirit, much less any of the other absurd claims you have made.

You ARE conscious, then? You admit that?

You are aware that scientists now call trying to attribute it to some biological, sense-detected object, the "hard problem," which means they now admit they can't solve it?

Silly, being conscious "does not prove the existence of some external mystical force." LOL Where did you get such a crazy notion? It proves the existence of an internal mystical force, that's YOU.

Whatever you claim is detected, you can call it dog shit if you want. You can call it spirit or matter. The point is, what you call it has nothing to do with what you detect. No detection can determine whether what you detect is matter or spirit. None!

That which is detected, is matter.
Matter is what can be detected.
completely circular. You lose!

Quote:

EtI Wrote:There's no basis for your claim that what exists is "matter." What is "matter"?

  Lets try a website used by children to see if you can understand what matter is.  After all you supposedly have an IQ of 150 you should be able to grasp the content in seconds (though I have my doubts that you can and that your IQ is really 150, if it is that makes it even worse for you--as that transforms your issues with reality from a matter of stupidity [which is to be pitied] to willful ignorance [which is to be reviled]).

http://www.chem4kids.com/files/matter_intro.html

I want your answer, not some kids' answer. What is "matter"?

Hint: it's nothing so you won't be able to say.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:On what basis do you make such an undetectible claim? Science doesn't claim it anymore. It's all just probability waves.

Physics directly concerns itself with matter and its modifications from a scientific stand point.  I'm pretty sure the Universities have not shut down their Physics departments.

ITT:  Eric claims knowledge of Quantum Mechanics and then demonstrates he doesn't even have an elementary understanding of those mechanics.

YOu have supplied no basis for your claim that what exists is matter.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Even science has to acknowledge that dark energy and matter exist and that they don't know what it is. It is not measured, just inferred; even according to Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Most of reality cannot be measured

Science has to acknowledge dark energy and dark matter because they exist, true.  But we know that they exist because the collective mass of the visible universe is not sufficient to keep the whole thing together.  As such either the theory of relativity is nonsense (which the rest of physics indicates it is not) or there is an unseen force(s) at work.

However, science is not mysticism and rather than simply proclaiming these forces "spirit" or "god" or whatever the work now is to find out ways that we can study both dark matter and dark energy.

All of this being said neither one of us are physicists nor is Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  So the discovery of dark matter and dark energy are beyond both our pay grades.

So, admit you don't know, rather than label people like me crazy or to be reviled.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:It's your choice: do you rely on instruments and your senses to tell you what is real, or your awareness and experience?

Both.  If I see a cat in the road, experience tells me that there is a cat in the road.  In seeing the cat, I'm aware that the cat is there and thus don't run it over in my pimpmobile which would be bad for the pimpmobile (and not that great for the cat either).  If I see my gas gauge on my instrument panel tell me I have a quarter tank of gas I know I need to get gas soon.  I am made aware through my senses and intrements and my experience is a collection of known outcomes and projected out comes based on things that have come into my awareness in the past.

Nice try on presenting a non-choice as an either or choice.

But you show no curiosity about your awareness. You merely attribute it to objects you can sense or detect with your awareness. That does not explain it.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Marx was a non-materialist Marxist in his youth, and I know Marxists who are not materialists,

Marx was not a Marxist.  Said so through his own words.  He could not be a Marxist for the same reason that Jesus Christ could not be a Christian.  You've made the claim that Karl Marx founded Marxism, in that case he could not be a Marxist.  Jesus Christ, supposedly founded Christianity, yet he was a Jew.

He was an idealist when he was a young man.  He eventually rejected idealism in favor of materialism.  His entire body of work is based upon materialism.

If you know Marxist who is not a materialist then you don't know a Marxist.

Here let Lenin explain why. Seriously this work is in my Former Party's ABC of Communism. We teach this shit to Children!

Propaganda is not valid. No thanks.

Marx founded Marxism, and he did not do it in a 2T. And he had a following before the 2T.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Yes that is more or less true, although Marxists also seek and obtain political power directly. None of that is materialism, however.

Then you must seriously twist the meaning of the word of materialism as it is clearly based on the dialectic that plays out between material conditions--IE modifications of matter.... See my previous posts where I defined materialism.

I didn't quarrel with your definition. That's fine.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Marxists seek political power. They do, and they did, especially in the last saeculum.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:So by whatever rationalization you make, you have thrown over the Marxism you believed in a few years ago, and now embrace the opposite: classical liberalism.

Typically that is what people do when the philosophy by which they have operated ceases working.  Or in my case never really did. 

Your current philosophy, all of it, has been proven not to work for a long time now. Trickle-down doesn't trickle. Classical liberalism is even more dated and falsified than Marxism. You have regressed.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:As a classical liberal, you value individual freedom. You need to consider that there is no freedom in materialism. All events are caused by previous events, mechanically. You can't honestly be a classical liberal and be a materialist.

Wrong about not being a materialist in order to be a classical liberal.  Classical Liberalism has the concept of personal liberty.  Provided I have personal liberty I have the freedom to attempt to change what may or may not happen in my life--that is to say I have agency.

That is not to say that there are not issues over which I have no agency.  I could choose to not believe in gravity, but regardless of what I believe if I jump off a building I'm still going to come to a sudden stop eventually, is but one example. 

There is no such thing as "agency" in materialism. Everything is claimed to be explained by the behavior of nerve cells and muscles, as you claimed above. No, there is no free will in materialism at all. Liberty is strictly denied. YOu can be a classical liberal and a materialist, but not without accepting complete contradiction and cognitive dissonance in your mind.

Quote:

Really?  How?  By offering them a job?  That I should be so oppressed as to have a job so I can have money to buy whatever I want!  That I should be so abused as to get money for doing stuff!

Dude, I seriously had trouble with that even when I was a Marxist.  The only way Marxists can really justify it is through the concept of theft of surplus value.  But a worker does not rent his labor power as Marx would put it, rather he directly sells it.  The capitalist buys his labor power, ergo he owns it through the act of buying it.

It would be like saying Ford Motor Company owns my car cause they made it, even though I gave them money so it could belong to me.

You are so misguided. I and others everywhere have discussed this ad nauseum. The notion of "job creaters" (Dubya pronunciation) is so false it has long wooden noses growing out of it. No need to recount what the "job creaters" do with all the breaks that you classical liberals give to these greedy bosses in the name of "liberty." I thought you were deceived before; now you have gone over the edge. Really. Ford is going to give you a job? NO, they are giving machines and foreign labor "jobs." Gimme a break. That is too much even for you.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:And some today advocate employee ownership, which is worker ownership of the means of production. And periodically, Marxist revolutionary movements still happen.

Employee ownership of businesses is not prohibited by classical liberalism.  In fact I would say that laws should be structured in such a way as that it should be made easier for people to pool their money and goods together to start businesses.

Define revolutionary movement.  The number of actual Marxist Revolutions (or more broadly speaking Marxist inspired revolutions) is very thin after 1960.

True, but they still happen, and such Marxists as are left still want, as they did before, to take over the means of production and put it in the control of the state, allegedly for the benefit of the working class.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:In any case, historically, Marx is still important as a prophet of the realization that capitalist bosses can not be allowed to abuse the people in the name of their own "freedom." By embracing classical liberalism, YOU now think that the common working people should be abused by the capitalist pigs, and you call this "individual freedom." They are still just as much pigs as they ever were, and you now close your eyes and support them fanatically by supporting their leaders and agents. Shame, shame on you.

Right on Marx--partially he is historically important.  Wrong on everything else.

As a classical liberal I think people should be allowed the opportunity to become capitalist bosses themselves if they so desire.  Or if they desire to start a business of their own, either individually or collectively.  Things they wouldn't be allowed to do under a communist system.  Indeed no matter how bad abuse and oppression and so forth have been under bourgeois regimes Marxist regimes are far worse.  And in those states founded on the principles of Classical Liberalism (such as the US or the UK) abuse of the population is non-existent.

Yes Eric, shame on me for valuing freedom more than free loaves of bread I have to stand in line for for three hours and half of which is made of adulterants.   It does make me wonder though, do those who value bread over freedom get neither.

I'm not going to address where you put Marx on your wheel thingy.  Mostly because I just don't give a shit.

It just meant I was agreeing with you that Marx was mostly a materialist, and where I put him on my wheelie showed that. OK?

YOu don't even agree with me when I agree with you. That's pathetic.

You are the one who values bread over freedom, because you are a materialist. That's what materialists do, in all senses of the word.

I am neither a classical liberal nor a Marxist; I have no interest in defending either one. Marxists are closer to the truth however in their insight that the capitalists bosses abuse the people, and that's certainly true and has long been true in the USA. As a classical liberal, you now DENY this fact.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:<snip> tables and shit</snip>

18% of Americans might be "Spiritual" but there is no definition of what that even means.  It could mean "I believe in woo-woo.",  it could mean "I think that there are unexplained things and maybe <insert idealism here> explains these uneplained things.", or it could mean "I'm really a nominal <insert traditional religion here> but don't go to <insert meeting place here>".

So maybe 1 in 5 people.  I notice that most people don't talk about it and you posted no methodology.

I'm not going to address Depack Chopra and all that other mess..mostly because I don't give a shit and I don't need a guru to tell me bullshit to believe.  If I wanted to be told what to believe I'd call up my sperm donor...at least I know what he'll do with the money.

It just means there are lots of Americans who prefer non-traditional spirituality. Whether YOU give a shit about them is less than irrelevant. Whether they are mystics or not is irrelevant. I'm just pointing out that many Americans are interested in non-traditional spirituality, and therefore that in 2Ts, when spiritual awakenings happen, non-traditional spirituality is part of it. 18% of Americans is a lot of folks.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No, it's an interdependent relationship. That's what ecology is. As I stated, human beings and living things are not separate beings; science proves it. You deny science.

No that is not what ecology is.

Ecology:  1.  the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.
  2.  the political movement that seeks to protect the environment, especially from pollution.

Since definition 2 is unimportant here, let's look at definition 1 and see if we can break it down.

Ecology is the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.  What does this indicate?  It indicates  that each organism is a discrete and concrete entity, it also indicates that the physical surroundings (environment) are separate from these organism.

For example if we have a field, and there are rabbits in that field and they are eating grass, your view point would point toward the rabbits eating themselves--but they are not.  Grass is a discrete and concrete organism separate from the rabbit.  Science insists that the rabbit and the grass be separate.  If we introduce a wolf, and the wolf eats the rabbit we've just added one more layer of the same thing.

Science insists that all these organisms and their environment be separate from each other even if only to be able to actually study them.  But do carry on with your projections---I think through the years you've made it abundantly clear that you understand science about as well as the average kindergartner.

Definition one agrees with me. That's all that matters. When you study anything, even spiritual things, you separate things to talk about and study them. That does not mean they are separate in actuality. That is obvious, and it's obvious that ecology is about how life is inter-related. Definition 1.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:The way to understand that you are connected to all, is merely to experience it. Take a look at yourself. Telepathy only proves communication.

I sent you a message already.

I've never had such an experience, and even if I did I'd probably immediately seek psychological counciling. 

I've taken a look at myself and realized that 1.  I don't know and can't possibly know everything.  2.  Those who claim that they can are usually foolish.

And yet you claim to know for certain that matter exists, and you are SO certain of this that you ALSO claim that anyone who disagrees with you about this is insane. Even despite the fact that science no longer claims that matter exists. Now, explain your cognitive dissonance. It really creaks loudly! "I don't know and can't possibly know everything." Really, now!!!

Quote:I never received your message.  So I have three possible conclusions  1.  Eric didn't actually send a telepathic message--IE Eric is a liar.  2.  Eric did but Kinser can't receive it because of reasons.  3.  Telepathy does not exist.

Occam's Razor indicates that answer 3 is the best one because it assumes the fewest things.

Inb4 Eric says that this proves my mind isn't open to <insert whatever here>.

Yes, it proves that you are not open to receive my message. "I don't know and can't possibly know everything." Oh yeah, really?

I just sent it again.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:That is what the EPA does, protect us from the bosses

No it doesn't.  The EPA mostly tells farmers that they can't shovel cow shit on their fields because of "water pollution" and tells me I can't build my house in certain places because "it's a wetland".  From what boss is anyone protected from?  And that is before we get into the constitutionality issue which is above your head anyway.

What a pile of manure, or however you spell it. The farmer/slash industrial plant/tech plant etc. puts poison into the environment and poisons the water, the air and the land. And you don't care, because as a classical liberal you defend the "freedom" of this boss to poison our water, land and air. You don't give a damn, because you are a goddamn classical liberal, and all you care about is the welfare of the damn bosses. And your own lack of concern that your money-driven behavior has on anyone else! The only "freedom" classical liberals and neo-liberals like you care about, is the freedom to hurt other people.

But since you are a materialist, you don't have to care, because others are just mechanisms anyway, and are not conscious sentient beings, because in materialism there are no such beings, and there can't be any such beings. Materialism absolutely precludes it. So, you feel you are given carte blanche by your philosophy to poison anyone that you want to poison. Because, since there's no one home, and no one is conscious, it doesn't "matter." And you cannot prove that I am wrong about ANY of this.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:which Drump and classical liberals in congress are abolishing.

Actually Daddy released his budget blueprint today.  They merely got a haircut.  Now myself I wouldn't mind abolishing them. 

IOW you don't mind if the greedy, creepy bosses like Daddy Drump poison us and ruin our climate for all time. Good job, kinser. Bow down to your Daddy. Believe what the Father above tells you. Submit to his authority.

It was not a haircut EPA got. It was a hatchet job, and its new leader wants to stop the EPA from operating, and he will. You don't give a tinker's damn about the environment we all depend on. Even less than a tinkle damn.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Shame on you for opposing the need to control the bosses, require them to pay living wages, treat their workers fairly, offer safe products, keep from ruining the economy through speculation, and keep them from polluting our world

Yes shame on me for believing people shouldn't be forced to pay more for labor than it is worth.  Have you ever stopped to consider that there would be a living wage for everyone if the importation of cheap labor was stopped (IE enforcing immigration laws).  Yes, shame on me for having the faith in businesses to not offer products that kill their very customers (well except perhaps very slowly), and Shame on me for not wanting to nerf life to the point of making it unlivable.  Indeed shame on me for not wanting to tell people how to invest their money.

As for pollution--Eric, you're free to give up your car, your electricity, your internet and all the other trappings of modern polluting life at any time.

What a load of typical classical liberal crap. And btw cheap labor abroad is something classical liberals generally approve of. Drump was on the right track in seeking to stop it (referring only to the lack of tariff laws, not to his immigration bullshit), but notice he has done diddly-shit about the only thing he got right-- the free trade issue. He also promised spending for infrastructure, but in his creepy, horrific so-called budget he cuts it. What a yuge, big fat LIAR; the biggest liar since Adolf Hitler, whose book he learned his lying ways from. And you fell for it! And you think I am the one who is willfully ignorant. No, YOU are one of the people George Carlin talked about. Willfully ignorant.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You worked for this, you voted for this.

I know you have a severe case of TDS so....yeah I did work for this, I did vote for it, and it IS going to happen. Don't like it?  Well you can work harder next time...but the tide of history is against you.  And you know it.  Which is probably why your TDS is so severe.

From google: Total dissolved solids - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_dissolved_solids
Total dissolved solids (TDS) is a measure of the combined content of all inorganic and organic substances contained in a liquid in molecular, ionized or .

I don't know what you are babbling on about.

No, I admit I don't like it; but I don't admit that the tide of history is against me yet.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No, that's what I said about YOU. There's no basis for any philosophical assumption; it's just your theory.

Wrong.  My point is that Paul had to convert people to Christianity before he could preach any wisdom to them.  In the most part he was an evangelist rather than a pastor.  It isn't my fault you don't know the difference.

Your point does not refute MY point. Paul wrote wisdom in the Bible.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics."

Wrong again, and even by your own sources!

Your statistics indicate that about 18% of people claim to be spiritual, and around 65% of people claim to be religious.  At no time is there a figure that these "spiritual" and religious people are in fact mystics.

Truth be told if that 65% of religious people are Christian, Jewish or Muslim then they should seek out and kill those mystics on the basis of them being witches according to their own religious texts.

"No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics."

Come on, pony up. Show me your stats that say most mental patients in psych wards are mystics. I'm waiting. Stop diverting attention. Produce or admit you're wrong.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:It is possible for any sincere seeker or interested person to read my scribbles and discover the truth. One who is already a mystic doesn't need to read my scribbles to discover the truth. YOU DO

I've read your works.  I found them to contain no truth and much bullshit.  Honestly the bible is a better read and as mythology goes the bible is very mediocre, YHWH is somewhat of an asshole but he's a great fictitious character and wonderful villain.

You haven't read my works. If you had, you'd know that YHWH is the name of God that means "I am that I am." You can call that "asshole," but that's just uninformed interpretation. Moses was told that "God" is the "I am" within every being. Eastern religion says "I am that." Pretty similar; really the same thing. Christianity at its root, is mysticism. So is every religion.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:It proves the likelihood that Boomers will still be in leadership positions during the 1T, which was the only point.

If you mean you might have a Boomer or two in the Senate and on the SCOTUS bench sure.  They won't be running the show.  Which is the Point.  Like it or not X is already running the show now. 

No generation "runs the show" at any time. I don't care who runs the show. It doesn't matter, despite what generation theory says.

If Silents now have more than two in the Senate now, it's reasonable to predict that Boomers will have more than two in the 1T.
Yet you still persist in using the phrase "one or two in the Senate." You don't listen, or you can't. I'm not sure which.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Which is why you need to question your other beliefs too.

You should take your own advice.  I question my own beliefs all the time.  I doubt we can say the same of you.

I did though. I switched 180 degrees, but from materialism to spiritualism. I switched in the right direction. You switched from Marxism to classical liberalism. Both are wrong, but you regressed a century.

[Kinser79]

EtI Wrote:It's research scientists and researchers have done

Okay where is this "science" and "research"?  It seems strange to me that one never hears about these awesome discoveries except from cranks like you.

EtI Wrote:Some of it is posted on that other thread in the appropriate place. Some of it was on the archived old forum.

 

The old forum is completely gone.  There is no archive.  I should have expected you'd not to know what a 404 error is.  Also I'm not going to dig around in your posts.  Honestly I have better things to do with my time--like anything else.  Either post actual scientific proof or don't I really don't care, cause what I've seen you to call science is actually at best pseudoscience and worse plain old quackery.

EtI Wrote:You ARE conscious, then? You admit that?

Considering I'm not comatose or dead....what do you think.

EtI Wrote:Silly, being conscious "does not prove the existence of some external mystical force." LOL Where did you get such a crazy notion? It proves the existence of an internal mystical force, that's YOU.

UH....not sorry to burst your bubble here but having a functioning brain is not a mystical force.

EtI Wrote:Whatever you claim is detected, you can call it dog shit if you want. You can call it spirit or matter.

We're pretty sure that the moon is made of rocks which makes it matter.  And yes it does matter if you call it spirit or matter.  Matter is important, the basis of all that we can truely know.  Spirit is at best some mystical force crack pots like you dream up to fleece the gullible.

EtI Wrote:No detection can determine whether what you detect is matter or spirit. None!

 

If something can be detected it is most likely matter or energy which is also a form of matter.  I've yet to see anyone detect spirit and the second someone does it will be on the nightly news.

EtI Wrote:I want your answer, not some kids' answer. What is "matter"?

Look at the website and you'll have it.  It should be dumbed down enough for you to comprehend, but for some reason I highly doubt it.

EtI Wrote:Hint: it's nothing so you won't be able to say.

 

You really need to stop Eric, all you're managing to do is amuse me at this point.

EtI Wrote:YOu have supplied no basis for your claim that what exists is matter.

I shouldn't have to.  But if you want evidence look at the chair you are sitting in, the computer you're typing at, the very air you are breathing.  All matter, all require no spirit woo-woo to exist.  All will exist long after you shift off this mortal coil.

EtI Wrote:So, admit you don't know, rather than label people like me crazy or to be reviled.

I don't know the mechanics or properties of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  Neither do you.  But you're still crazy or at least extremely delusional. 

EtI Wrote:But you show no curiosity about your awareness.

Why should I be curious about such a thing?  It is no great mystery to me why I'm aware of the things I see, hear, smell, taste and touch.  Just because you failed 1st grade science doesn't mean I did.

EtI Wrote:Propaganda is not valid. No thanks.

Not propaganda actually a major theoretical work of Marxism.  Of course it was written by Lenin, and of course I knew you wouldn't read it which is why I let the link speak for itself.

EtI Wrote:Marx founded Marxism, and he did not do it in a 2T. And he had a following before the 2T.

Still completely wrong.  I've been over this several times with you already.  Bring something new or don't bring anything.

EtI Wrote:I didn't quarrel with your definition. That's fine.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Marxists seek political power. They do, and they did, especially in the last saeculum.

Whether or not you quarreled over the definition of materialism is irrelevant.  The quarrel was over the process of Marxism--Dialectical Materialism.  Marxism was, is, and shall be a school of materialism.  The day it ceases being materialist in philosophical outlook it becomes dead solipsism which is all idealism can ever offer.

EtI Wrote:Your current philosophy, all of it, has been proven not to work for a long time now. Trickle-down doesn't trickle. Classical liberalism is even more dated and falsified than Marxism. You have regressed.

  Trickle down economics is a school of economics separate to classical liberalism which is political.  Classical Liberalism does not require Reaganomics.

EtI Wrote:There is no such thing as "agency" in materialism. Everything is claimed to be explained by the behavior of nerve cells and muscles, as you claimed above. No, there is no free will in materialism at all. Liberty is strictly denied. YOu can be a classical liberal and a materialist, but not without accepting complete contradiction and cognitive dissonance in your mind.

  That is Behaviorism which is a psychological school.  It is a branch of materialism to be sure--one I find to be short sighted.  Suffice it to say that if a man has the physical capacity to imagine he has agency he has the capacity for it.  Just like a gallon jug has the physical capacity to hold a gallon of a liquid.  Now whether man has agency or not is a matter of opinion.  Whether a gallon jug is filled with liquid, partially filled or empty is a matter of condition.

It is my view that each man has agency, within his physical limits, to act on the material world.  I suppose you will say this makes me an idealist.  That's fine, I really don't care what you say.  Since I already know that you are wrong.

EtI Wrote:You are so misguided. I and others everywhere have discussed this ad nauseum. The notion of "job creaters" (Dubya pronunciation) is so false it has long wooden noses growing out of it.

ROFLMAO!

I've never gotten a job from a poor man.  Simply put the poor lack the capital to hire anyone.

It is also obvious you didn't read my post.  I said that it is ludicrous that that surplus value (the basis of exploitation/oppression/etc) under Marxism and all other derivative lines of thought (one of which you obviously subscribe to--and no I don't care if you recognize that fact or not, you do) comes up with the whole "exploitation of the working class" thesis operates.  A man who takes a job sells his labor power for a given period--it is not rented it is sold.  As such after he is paid he is no more entitled to his labor power than Ford Motor Company is entitled to my car.

EtI Wrote:True, but they still happen, and such Marxists are as left still want, as they did before, to take over the means of production and put it in the control of the state, allegedly for the benefit of the working class.

And in every case where they are successful the results will be the same.  Everyone will be equal.  Equally poor, equally exploited, equally desperate, and equally depressed.

If the goal was merely employee ownership of the means of production it is far easier to get that under a classical liberal regime than it is after a communist revolution.  I would have thought a century of such revolutions would have proved that already.

EtI Wrote:You are the one who values bread over freedom, because you are a materialist. That's what materialists do, in all senses of the word

Pure projection on the basis that I maintain materialism. 

EtI Wrote:(on employer "exploitation") As a classical liberal, you now DENY this fact.

No I deny that it is a fact.  Employers are going to try to extract as much labor power out of their employees as they can, that is their interest.  Employees are going to try and extract as much compensation from their employers as they can, that is their interest.

What I deny is that this is exploitation.  Both parties know the game, and the rules of the game going in.  The presence of contradictory interests does not exploitation make.

EtI Wrote:It just means there are lots of Americans who prefer non-traditional spirituality.

Actually it doesn't.  Ever met these "spiritual but not religious" people?  I have.  I'm related directly to one, my sister.  She's neither religious nor spiritual (Like literally does not think about anything remotely spiritual, unless going to the weave shop is some how spiritual) but says she is because she thinks it is what she's supposed to say.  I could go on with other examples but the point remains with her alone, she is but one example.

EtI Wrote:Definition one agrees with me

No it doesn't.  It is the study of the interactions of separate identities and their physical surroundings.  If they are "all connected" if the nonsensical statement "we are all one" is true then it is impossible for there to be separate identities to exist much less study.

EtI Wrote:And yet you claim to know for certain that matter exists, and you are SO certain of this that you ALSO claim that anyone who disagrees with you about this is insane.

Everyone with eyes and has seen, everyone with ears and has heard, everyone who has a nose and has smelled, everyone who has a tongue and has tasted, everyone who has skin and has felt knows that matter is real.  They know it is real because they have seen it, heard it, smelled it, tasted it, and touched it.  Anyone who denies this reality must be insane by definition.

Insane:  in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.

(I'll omit the informal definition, as it isn't relevant.)

EtI Wrote:Even despite the fact that science no longer claims that matter exists.

ROFLMAO.

I'll be sure to inform MIT's physics department that they are no longer needed because what they study does not exist.

EtI Wrote:Yes, it proves that you are not open to receive my message.

Possible.  However for that to be the case I have to make the following assumptions:  1.  Telepathy is real.  2. Eric sent me a message.  3.  Kinser did not receive that message because (reasons).

Or an equally plausible explanation:  1.  Telepathy does not exist.

William of Ockham Wrote:Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Given the two competing hypothesis the one with the fewest assumptions is "Telepathy does not exist".

Now you can make up 20 or 30 different hypotheses as to why I did not receive said message but "Telepathy does not exist" is the correct answer unless one of those reasons is "Eric is lying about sending a telepathic message to Kinser".

EtI Wrote:I just sent it again.

Didn't get it for a second time.

So unless you are lying about sending telepathic messages to me, I think we know why I did not receive said telepathic message.

EtI Wrote:<snip> rant about EPA</snip>

I take it you've never had to deal with the EPA then.  Having worked in agriculture myself I can tell you point blank they do regulate such a thing.  And no cow shit isn't poison.  It isn't particularly pleasant either, but it isn't poison.

But over all I want the whole works shut down.  If Commiefornia wants a big expensive bureaucracy because people there can't help but shit in their mess kit let them pay for it.  Also have I mentioned that the EPA is unconstitutional?  Environmental protection (if that is what they even do--doesn't seem like it to me) is not an enumerated power.

EtI Wrote:It was not a haircut EPA got. It was a hatchet job

Nah.  He didn't hire me to write the budget.  Of course had he I'd have fired half of DC in his first year.  I suppose he's gotta save people to fire in years 3 and 4.  A real hatchet job would have just abolished it.  Along with a whole host of unnecessary money sinks.

EtI Wrote:You don't give a tinker's damn about the environment we all depend on. Even less than a tinkle damn.

And you don't give a tinker's damn about the economy we all depend on.  Was that supposed to shame me or something?  That juju doesn't work on me Eric.  

EtI Wrote:<snip>long rambling rant about how Eric fails to understand classical liberalism</snip>

1.  I'm opposed to the importation of any further labor.  That means NO IMMIGRANTS of any kind.  I want to put a "NO Vacancy" sign on the door to the US.  Really that simple.

2.  Those cheap labor abroad trade deals were started up by none other than Bill Clinton and would have accelerated under HRC as they did under Obama.  These "trade deals" have destroyed the US working classes, and the middle classes that depend on them.  I support jacking up tarriffs sky high and I don't care about a trade war with China or any other lesser Not America countries cause they need us more than we need them.

3.  The budget blueprint cuts the DOT budget by a mere 13%.  Probably cutting the fat and getting rid of duplicate programs that the states already run.  Trust me there's lots of waste going on in DC, plenty of things to cut.

4.  Trump is definitely not Hitler.  But that's probably your TDS showing.  Since it will come up later TDS stands for Trump Derangement Syndrome.

5.  I don't listen to the fake news media.  Seriously turn off the CNN already.  Or do you prefer MSDNC?  Don't think I didn't hear about Mr. Maddow's scoop yesterday.

BREAKING NEWS:  Donald Trump pays taxes.  Twice the rate of Sanders!

I got a good belly laugh out of that yesterday.

EtI Wrote:Your point does not refute MY point. Paul wrote wisdom in the Bible.

No your point was that he preached wisdom which he did not.  He preached salvation, the wisdom came later in his letters. 

EtI Wrote:"No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics."

Come on, pony up.

Don't need to....schizophrenia is a psychotic condition everyone knows that.  Mystical experiences being psychotic episodes is nothing new.  Next.

EtI Wrote:You haven't read my works. If you had, you'd know that YHWH is the name of God that means "I am that I am."

I knew that before I even knew you existed Eric.

EtI Wrote:You can call that "asshole," but that's just uninformed interpretation.

Apparently you've never read the Old Testament.  When he isn't bothering someone in the middle of the night he's wiping out whole populations.  How that is not the very definition of being an asshole I don't know what is.

EtI Wrote:Christianity at its root, is mysticism.

Actually there is a branch that thinks that.  They were proclaimed as heretics in the second century.  Christianity is best understood as an Hellenistic version of Judaism designed for gentiles.  Which you should already know since you apparently like Paul so much.

EtI Wrote:No generation "runs the show" at any time. I don't care who runs the show. It doesn't matter, despite what generation theory says.

In that case why are you even here?  Why even bother if apparently you don't even believe in the most basic of tenants of the theory.  And you have the temerity to tell me I don't understand it.  I don't know if I should laugh, cry or roll my eyes.

EtI Wrote:If Silents now have more than two in the Senate now, it's reasonable to predict that Boomers will have more than two in the 1T.

Yet you still persist in using the phrase "one or two in the Senate." You don't listen, or you can't. I'm not sure which.

Well for you, it is mostly don't.  I find that listening to you is a bad idea.  Essentially I've determined you exist for my sport.

Apart from McConnell those Silents are irrelevant.

EtI Wrote:I did though. I switched 180 degrees, but from materialism to spiritualism. I switched in the right direction. You switched from Marxism to classical liberalism. Both are wrong, but you regressed a century.

If I regressed a century you regressed far more than a mere century.  Assuming you're not being full of shit when you say you were a materialist, then you should have had a mid-20th century understanding of the world, and yet you changed that for philosophies and methods that were given up in the late middle ages!

Which one of us is going backward here?  Not me, I'm acting exactly as the regulator predicts I should....I'm going for the Classical Liberal tradition which runs deep in America.

[The Wonkette]

FWIW, a former poster on the old 4T forum (a Disco wave Boomer) got into Scientology for a bit and was very glad to get out of it.

[Eric the Green]

(03-17-2017, 04:12 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

EtI Wrote:It's research scientists and researchers have done

Okay where is this "science" and "research"?  It seems strange to me that one never hears about these awesome discoveries except from cranks like you.

The old archive is not gone as far as I know. I'm not going to find it either. But the new thread has some info here.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Silly, being conscious "does not prove the existence of some external mystical force." LOL Where did you get such a crazy notion? It proves the existence of an internal mystical force, that's YOU.

UH....not sorry to burst your bubble here but having a functioning brain is not a mystical force.

The brain is an object; not consciousness.

The so-called materialist explanations of consciousness do not explain it. You just assume that they do.

If you look inside a brain, there's no-one there. You are not there.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Whatever you claim is detected, you can call it dog shit if you want. You can call it spirit or matter.

We're pretty sure that the moon is made of rocks which makes it matter.  And yes it does matter if you call it spirit or matter.  Matter is important, the basis of all that we can truely know.  Spirit is at best some mystical force crack pots like you dream up to fleece the gullible.

Whatever you claim is detected, you can call it dog shit if you want. You can call it spirit or matter.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No detection can determine whether what you detect is matter or spirit. None!

 

If something can be detected it is most likely matter or energy which is also a form of matter.  I've yet to see anyone detect spirit and the second someone does it will be on the nightly news.

I doubt that.

No, matter is a form of energy. They are interchangeable.

And what is energy?

Quote:

EtI Wrote:YOu have supplied no basis for your claim that what exists is matter.

I shouldn't have to.  But if you want evidence look at the chair you are sitting in, the computer you're typing at, the very air you are breathing.  All matter, all require no spirit woo-woo to exist.  All will exist long after you shift off this mortal coil.

YOu have supplied no basis for your claim that what exists is matter.
So, admit you don't know, rather than label people like me crazy or to be reviled.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:But you show no curiosity about your awareness.

Why should I be curious about such a thing?  It is no great mystery to me why I'm aware of the things I see, hear, smell, taste and touch.  Just because you failed 1st grade science doesn't mean I did.

you show no curiosity about your awareness.

"An unexamined life is not worth living" -- Socrates.

Your life is not worth living, unless you show curiosity about your awareness. Which you have not, at all.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Marx founded Marxism, and he did not do it in a 2T. And he had a following before the 2T.

Still completely wrong.  I've been over this several times with you already.  Bring something new or don't bring anything.

Still completely right. What you brought up was wrong.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:I didn't quarrel with your definition. That's fine.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Marxists seek political power. They do, and they did, especially in the last saeculum.

Whether or not you quarreled over the definition of materialism is irrelevant.  The quarrel was over the process of Marxism--Dialectical Materialism.  Marxism was, is, and shall be a school of materialism.  The day it ceases being materialist in philosophical outlook it becomes dead solipsism which is all idealism can ever offer.

Idealists cannot be solipsists, because they know every human being and every being is connected to all beings, or they believe in the universal mind called God. No-one can say that's solipsism.

Well, YOU can, but,,, well..... you're kinser.

According to you and other naive materialist Marxists.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Your current philosophy, all of it, has been proven not to work for a long time now. Trickle-down doesn't trickle. Classical liberalism is even more dated and falsified than Marxism. You have regressed.

  Trickle down economics is a school of economics separate to classical liberalism which is political.  Classical Liberalism does not require Reaganomics.

Reaganomics is just the type of classical liberalism that Reagan and his crazy followers like you adopted, and which has ruled our country for 40 horrible years.

Classical liberalism is also economics. Just ask David Ricardo and Adam Smith. Oh, you haven't read the creators of classical liberalism then?

Quote:

EtI Wrote:There is no such thing as "agency" in materialism. Everything is claimed to be explained by the behavior of nerve cells and muscles, as you claimed above. No, there is no free will in materialism at all. Liberty is strictly denied. YOu can be a classical liberal and a materialist, but not without accepting complete contradiction and cognitive dissonance in your mind.

  That is Behaviorism which is a psychological school.  It is a branch of materialism to be sure--one I find to be short sighted.  Suffice it to say that if a man has the physical capacity to imagine he has agency he has the capacity for it.  Just like a gallon jug has the physical capacity to hold a gallon of a liquid.  Now whether man has agency or not is a matter of opinion.  Whether a gallon jug is filled with liquid, partially filled or empty is a matter of condition.

It is my view that each man has agency, within his physical limits, to act on the material world.  I suppose you will say this makes me an idealist.  That's fine, I really don't care what you say.  Since I already know that you are wrong.

It is just the truth that you can't claim you have agency, and be a materialist. Your "agency" is supposedly explained by movements in your brain and nerves, which are explained by something else. There's no agent anywhere. All your behavior is caused by something else, in your view.

Agency is not a gallon of fluid. That's just a piece of matter that does nothing. So is your brain.

Your alternative to behaviorism is just another form of behaviorism that suits your prejudices. You can't explain the agency that you claim for yourself; not even one little bit.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You are so misguided. I and others everywhere have discussed this ad nauseum. The notion of "job creaters" (Dubya pronunciation) is so false it has long wooden noses growing out of it.

ROFLMAO!

I've never gotten a job from a poor man.  Simply put the poor lack the capital to hire anyone.

It is also obvious you didn't read my post.  I said that it is ludicrous that that surplus value (the basis of exploitation/oppression/etc) under Marxism and all other derivative lines of thought (one of which you obviously subscribe to--and no I don't care if you recognize that fact or not, you do) comes up with the whole "exploitation of the working class" thesis operates.  A man who takes a job sells his labor power for a given period--it is not rented it is sold.  As such after he is paid he is no more entitled to his labor power than Ford Motor Company is entitled to my car.

There are no "job creaters." (Dubya pronunciation). You are so naive to believe that they are. Ford is NOT going to hire you. Ford is going to hire a machine.
But that makes no difference to you, because as a materialist, you think you are a machine, and that there's no difference.

And workers are entitled to a living wage; and ideally should own the company together, and not greedy Mr. Ford.

Name the stupidist ideas in the world, and Dummy Kinser believes it.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:True, but they still happen, and such Marxists are as left still want, as they did before, to take over the means of production and put it in the control of the state, allegedly for the benefit of the working class.

And in every case where they are successful the results will be the same.  Everyone will be equal.  Equally poor, equally exploited, equally desperate, and equally depressed.

If the goal was merely employee ownership of the means of production it is far easier to get that under a classical liberal regime than it is after a communist revolution.  I would have thought a century of such revolutions would have proved that already.

No argument with all that, but you entirely missed the point; whatever it was.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:(on employer "exploitation") As a classical liberal, you now DENY this fact.

No I deny that it is a fact.  Employers are going to try to extract as much labor power out of their employees as they can, that is their interest.  Employees are going to try and extract as much compensation from their employers as they can, that is their interest.

What I deny is that this is exploitation.  Both parties know the game, and the rules of the game going in.  The presence of contradictory interests does not exploitation make.

You as a classical liberal DENY that bosses exploit their workers and abuse the people. You think bosses are pure of heart, and have no profit motive. Under classical liberalism, workers have no power to extract anything. Classical liberals suppress unions and all laws that favor workers. They issue injunctions to suppress strikes. Classical liberals are only interested in bourgeois property, capital and power.

Whatever stupid thing Daddy tells you, you believe it. He shouts "believe me," and like a reflex, you believe him. You are a monkey.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:It just means there are lots of Americans who prefer non-traditional spirituality.

Actually it doesn't.  Ever met these "spiritual but not religious" people?  I have.  I'm related directly to one, my sister.  She's neither religious nor spiritual (Like literally does not think about anything remotely spiritual, unless going to the weave shop is some how spiritual) but says she is because she thinks it is what she's supposed to say.  I could go on with other examples but the point remains with her alone, she is but one example.

So we should go by your sister, and not by a study by Pew Research? OK LOL

She belongs in the category "neither religious nor spiritual." That's on the graph.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Definition one agrees with me

No it doesn't.  It is the study of the interactions of separate identities and their physical surroundings.  If they are "all connected" if the nonsensical statement "we are all one" is true then it is impossible for there to be separate identities to exist much less study.

To study them is to separate them for the purposes of language and study. An ecologist knows that every organism is mutually dependent on all the others. Physics knows this too. As a classical liberal, you prefer the discredited 18th century atomist view that there are such things as separate identities. It is simply stupid, and obviously false.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:And yet you claim to know for certain that matter exists, and you are SO certain of this that you ALSO claim that anyone who disagrees with you about this is insane.

Everyone with eyes and has seen, everyone with ears and has heard, everyone who has a nose and has smelled, everyone who has a tongue and has tasted, everyone who has skin and has felt knows that matter is real.  They know it is real because they have seen it, heard it, smelled it, tasted it, and touched it.  Anyone who denies this reality must be insane by definition.

Insane:  in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.

So VERY open minded of you LOL

YOU are simply a naive materialist who has no interest in reflective thought. You just buy whatever Daddy Lenin or Daddy Drump tells you.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Even despite the fact that science no longer claims that matter exists.

ROFLMAO.

I'll be sure to inform MIT's physics department that they are no longer needed because what they study does not exist.

Sure it exists. It just isn't what YOU think it is.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:<snip> rant about EPA</snip>

I take it you've never had to deal with the EPA then.  Having worked in agriculture myself I can tell you point blank they do regulate such a thing.  And no cow shit isn't poison.  It isn't particularly pleasant either, but it isn't poison.

But over all I want the whole works shut down.  If Commiefornia wants a big expensive bureaucracy because people there can't help but shit in their mess kit let them pay for it.  Also have I mentioned that the EPA is unconstitutional?  Environmental protection (if that is what they even do--doesn't seem like it to me) is not an enumerated power.

Literally, bullshit. You have no idea what the EPA does. Of course cow shit is poison, and it doesn't belong in rivers.
Your destruction is reprehensible.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You don't give a tinker's damn about the environment we all depend on. Even less than a tinkle damn.

And you don't give a tinker's damn about the economy we all depend on.  Was that supposed to shame me or something?  That juju doesn't work on me Eric.  

And you don't give a tinker's damn about the economy OR environment we all depend on.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Your point does not refute MY point. Paul wrote wisdom in the Bible.

No your point was that he preached wisdom which he did not.  He preached salvation, the wisdom came later in his letters. 

The Letters are what's in the Bible. Checkmate.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:"No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics."

Come on, pony up.

Don't need to....schizophrenia is a psychotic condition everyone knows that.  Mystical experiences being psychotic episodes is nothing new.  Next.

"No, you made a statement.  I want some statistics.  Statements =/= statistics." You claim all schizoids are mystics, then. You have no basis for your claim; period.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You haven't read my works. If you had, you'd know that YHWH is the name of God that means "I am that I am."

I knew that before I even knew you existed Eric.

Then why do you accuse "I am that I am" of wiping out populations, silly?

Quote:

EtI Wrote:You can call that "asshole," but that's just uninformed interpretation.

Apparently you've never read the Old Testament.  When he isn't bothering someone in the middle of the night he's wiping out whole populations.  How that is not the very definition of being an asshole I don't know what is.

Stories in the Bible are not to be taken literally by anyone with half a brain.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:Christianity at its root, is mysticism.

Actually there is a branch that thinks that.  They were proclaimed as heretics in the second century.  Christianity is best understood as an Hellenistic version of Judaism designed for gentiles.  Which you should already know since you apparently like Paul so much.

All religions are mysticism at their root. That is 20th-21st century scholarship. Haven't you heard of Aldous Huxley? Some of you Xers are so uninformed. It's like the 2T never happened for you guys. You can't absorb anything from before your time. Jesus was a mystic; Buddha was a mystic. All religious founders are mystics. And you call them insane. Your privilege I guess. There are Christians today who "thinks that." I belong to a group which does.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:No generation "runs the show" at any time. I don't care who runs the show. It doesn't matter, despite what generation theory says.

In that case why are you even here?  Why even bother if apparently you don't even believe in the most basic of tenants of the theory.  And you have the temerity to tell me I don't understand it.  I don't know if I should laugh, cry or roll my eyes.

False. You can't use the generation theory to claim that things will go according to your ideology when your one generation is of a certain age. There are always three or four generations in power, and their ideology is not determined by which generation they are from.

All that is obvious. Why are you so dense that you can't understand the obvious?

Quote:

EtI Wrote:If Silents now have more than two in the Senate now, it's reasonable to predict that Boomers will have more than two in the 1T.

Yet you still persist in using the phrase "one or two in the Senate." You don't listen, or you can't. I'm not sure which.

Apart from McConnell those Silents are irrelevant.

They are in positions of power. Your comments are irrelevant.

According to you, only a few people are in power. They don't represent entire generations. McConnell's policies don't represent the views of all Silents, nor Trump's of all Boomers, nor Ryan's of all Xers.

Quote:

EtI Wrote:I did though. I switched 180 degrees, but from materialism to spiritualism. I switched in the right direction. You switched from Marxism to classical liberalism. Both are wrong, but you regressed a century.

If I regressed a century you regressed far more than a mere century.  Assuming you're not being full of shit when you say you were a materialist, then you should have had a mid-20th century understanding of the world, and yet you changed that for philosophies and methods that were given up in the late middle ages!

Which one of us is going backward here?  Not me, I'm acting exactly as the regulator predicts I should....I'm going for the Classical Liberal tradition which runs deep in America.

No, spiritualism does not have a century.

Classical liberalism is 18th century. Marxism and socialism (even the watered-down version here called liberalism) is late 19th/20th century. You have regressed three centuries. You are naive and deceived, silly boy. Your philosophy is very harmful.

[pbrower2a]

Not so fast, Kinser. Marxism is obsolete. Marx failed to recognize the power of technology to cut the need for labor contributions to the meeting of basic needs. What used to be done in 70 hours might now be done in... I dunno... 28? I'm guessing that in the typical 40-hour workweek in an office, perhaps 12 hours go into office politics.

Control of the means of production is no longer so important anymore. I can easily imagine an elite controlling people as harshly as capitalists of the Gilded Age by controlling the means of consumption -- perhaps even dictating how people spend what is supposedly 'their' money. Banks do that with farmers -- they lend money and tell farmers when to buy new equipment.

[Kinser79]

(03-18-2017, 01:26 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Not so fast, Kinser. Marxism is obsolete.

Precisely why I'm no longer a Marxist. Though for different reasons than you provided.

[Hintergrund]

Yeah. To hell with marxism, Marx was a yuge fraudster and nothing more.

[pbrower2a]

(07-11-2018, 01:24 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Yeah. To hell with marxism, Marx was a yuge fraudster and nothing more.

For your information, Kinser has gone from being a Stalinist to a fanatical supporter of Donald Trump. True Believer (from the title by Eric Hoffer) types can make such drastic changes in ideology. It's a real shocker, but many fascists were renegade leftists. Commies found the fanatical enforcers (at low levels) of fascistic regimes useful as their own brutal enforcers. I read once of a recent neo-Nazi becoming a fanatical supporter of ISIS.

If you want to know who would have been the ideal enforcer for Stalinist commies in America ... look to a Klansman who undergoes a short session of brainwashing and replaces his recent fascist ideology with Marxist indoctrination.

I pay attention to the fundamentals of philosophy, to history, and morals... and I find Trump abominable.

...Marx said a few things that needed to be said, but he also made some huge mistakes in his prediction of the course of history due to no small extent his oversimplification of history.

[Hintergrund]

(07-12-2018, 12:58 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-11-2018, 01:24 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Yeah. To hell with marxism, Marx was a yuge fraudster and nothing more.

It's a real shocker, but many fascists were renegade leftists.

Nothing new to me. And after WW2, many nazis turned into "good" anti-nazis.

[Kinser79]

(07-11-2018, 01:24 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Yeah. To hell with marxism, Marx was a yuge fraudster and nothing more.

I would largely say that Marx was a pre-scientific sociologist.  Much like Freud was a pre-scientific psychologist.  Most of his theories have been debunked because new information and developments have made them obsolete.

As for PBR's accusation.  Well I honestly don't think he's even read that book and if he did he clearly didn't understand it.  Like Eric he seems to think himself more intellectually gifted than he actually is. How much of that is being a Boomer and how much of it is Dunning-Kruger effect I've yet to determine.  But don't take my word for it.  Look around, read his posts.