No, Seriously!

[Callie]

Sometimes, when in the course of a conversation, the other person might respond in surprise or disbelief to a fact concerning yourself. So, what kind of facts about yourself often elicit a surprised response? (Or even one of disbelief?)

 

For me (off the top of my head):

 

-I have been seriously injured by a laundry hamper.

-I have nearly been suffocated by means of an obese mastiff sitting on my head.

-I have lived in Mexico.

-I don't like The Matrix or the The Dark Knight.

-How fundamentalist my parents are.

-I have some Lady Gaga tracks in my music library.

-I like figure skating.

-I hate lagers.

-I don't see any reason for the government to prohibit public nudity.

-I'm not vegan or vegetarian.

-I have never liked cake (except cheesecake).

-I oppose patriotism.

-I prefer freezing weather.

-I was falsely diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

[keira]

Oh, where do I begin...

[Randomizer]

I'm not dead -- while during a blood pressure test the pre-med student couldn't hear my pulse because my blood pressure was 90/60 and he was still over 100 as he let the air out of the cuff.

 

I'm a high school drop out -- I really, really hated high school so I went to college as an early admission student.

 

I'm over 50 and tell people that I beta test computer games for a living -- I don't mention that great non-existent salary that Jeff doesn't pay us. Besides it makes guys just out of college regret their career choice.

[Cairo Jim]

Well, I haven't got much, but anyways.

 

-I can be a bit fundamentalist sometimes. I even looked into Islam a few times.

-Although I won't sleep with anyone until I'm married, I don't see going down that road critical. In fact, I'm quite happy to ignore that whole thing completely.

[Lilith]

i once won a giant fake dog as first prize in a nationwide contest

[Triumph]

People are almost invariably surprised by my age (I'm older than I look).

 

And the fact that I lived in Hawaii a while often garners some reaction.

[Harehunter]

- I was born in Hawaii, but I have no memories of it aside from photos my parents had.

- It was there my mother learned to make kimchee. It is a substance that is either craved or abhorred; there is no in between. I crave the stuff.

- Cheesecake is my one food weakness.

- Most folks know I served as an officer in the U.S.Army. I strongly believe in patriotism, but I will defend the right of those who don't.

- I flunked coloring in kindergarten. I would do the math problems on those pages, but I hated coloring. I am not artistic.

- I am one mean draftsman though when equipped with the proper tools. I designed and built the patio roof and deck.

- I did poorly in history, but always scored high in the sciences. Now I wish I remembered more from history.

- I got tossed from my college finals for both FORTRAN and Assembly; because I was blowing the hell out of the curve and the other students needed a break.

- B.S. in chemistry, army engineer 4 years active, 3 of which in ADP. Now I am a computer DBA working for an engineering company for the petrochemical industry. Coincidence, or something else?

- I have Parkinson's Disease, and came very close to having to go on disability. But I went to Baylor Methodist hospital in Houston, where there is a teaching/research clinic for P.D. and motion disorders. I'm still working, and intend to for as long as I can. Non illigetemi corubundum!

- I also love the study of languages, thanks to my Latin teacher.

- I am not religious, but I am a Christian. There is a difference. I strongly believe in the rights of the First Amendment for people of other faiths, including atheism, to openly believe as they choose, so long as they do not attempt to infringe upon my right to express my beliefs just as openly.

 

Much of this is already known, but just a quick recap for newcomers.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

- I am not religious, but I am a Christian. There is a difference.

this comes off as a super patronizing thing to say fyi

[Harehunter]

I don't understand.

[Upon Mars.]

If all of this happened to you then you must live amongst very naive people.

 

Also for the record I'm not bad myself:

 

-One year before my birth a plane filled with biological and chemical weapons, helicopter missiles and napalm crashed in my parents neighbourhood nearly killing my parents (confer El Al Flight 1862.)

-I'm allergic to most pesticides.

-I don't like the movie the sound of music because it's racist, and I strongly dislike a certain scenes in the star wars films for the same reasons.

-I was hit by car running at least for 50 km per hour and got only a small head cut and a slight head trauma.

-My mother worked at Disney, she was responsible for the camera animation behind hercules, Mulan, tarzan etc... (you know the scene where Tarzan surfboard on the tree-trunks... she did most of the camera work on that)

-My father who was of Jewish origin became a Christian, converted to Islam and became a sufi before establishing himself as a pseudo - Buddhist, met Idris Shah, Doris Lessing and worked for the queen of England and of Holland and backed financially Afghan families during the Afghan conflict with Russia.

 

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

- I am not religious, but I am a Christian. There is a difference.

 

Do you in fact mean: "Although I am Christian, I don't believe in the rituals and all that organisations that has accompanied Christianity for a long time."?

[Trenton.]

I'm secretly 42.

 

 

Wait, did they have to be true?

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

- I am not religious, but I am a Christian.

Do you mean you are a secular christian?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

I don't understand.

this article sums it up pretty well from a Christian perspective: claiming that Christianity is not a religion is easily perceived as a disingenuous attempt to make Christianity seem more "special". plus the claim that it isn't a religion is directly contradicted by the Bible so there's that to think about as well

the illogical "Christianity-is-not-a-religion" argument has harmful real-world consequences, too: it's been used by Italian courts to give special privileges to Christianity at the expense of other religions

[Upon Mars.]

But you might just say then that it's just a sect...

[Harehunter]

You've got it right. I find there is room in God's plan for other religions. I do not believe that any one religion is the ultimate truth to the exclusion of all other religions.

 

Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all derived from the same root theology. Why they fight each other is totally beyond me, any more than the situation that existed in Ireland for so many years.

 

The Native American Spiritualism is in most respects more Godlike in that it regards all living things with respect.

 

Science and theism are not exclusive of each other. Creationism and evolution are two perspectives of the same series of events.

 

Theocracy is just another form of dictatorship. It's leaders are chosen by a small, closed group of individuals, not by the people themselves.

[Rowen]

Little things that have shocked people are;

 

I am Mormon.

I choose how to live my own life while being Mormon.

I am fluent in Spanish.

I failed Spanish in high school.

I served an Mormon mission in Chile.

I am married.

No, we don't have children. (Stop asking me every Sunday you dumb Mormons.)

I have been in one fist fight all my life and gave the other kid my shirt for his bloody nose and walked him back to his house to tell is mom that I am sorry and hoped he could play later that day.

I own and love shooting guns.

I got a 40 dollar speeding ticket for going 109 mph.

My Great Grandpa and I where share our birth dates, and I was named after him for that.

 

Yeah, nothing very ground breaking about me and its fine with me.

[Harehunter]

The Italians have it wrong. Christianity is no more privileged than any other religion.

 

I am not a strong supporter of evangelism, although I accept that there are people who feel 'called' to it.

I also hold that atheists should be free to hold to their faith that there is no God.

 

I differentiate my faith from religion in this way: My faith is personal and I do not feel the need to go through the ritual of performing certain acts just for show. This was the hypocrisy of the Sadducees that Christ threw from the temple.

[Upon Mars.]

If I am opposed to Mormonism, being a very strict atheist, I'd like to say that you do seem to be a pretty decent and normal person, even though that shouldn't be grounds on which anybody should be judged.

 

Also I'd like to add that even if I can't understand religious people in general, I think I'm doing a good job living with them: my latest companion is Muslim.

 

Also :

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

I am not a strong supporter of evangelism, although I accept that there are people who feel 'called' to it.

I also hold that atheists should be free to hold to their faith that there is no God.

 

Faith? Actually assumption, or belief we assume that God does not exist because we are not a religion.

[Harehunter]

Theology defined morality, but morality is not confined to those who adhere to any particular theology.

[Upon Mars.]

Perhaps this is true. But then, how do you explain moralistic behaviours and attitudes in animals?

[keira]

Originally Posted By: Rowen is having tea with Gramzon

I got a 40 dollar speeding ticket for going 109 mph.

When was this? Nowadays it seems like you'd get the chair for driving like that.

[Harehunter]

Social behavior is not confined to humankind. All creatures that live in communities, such as apes, canines, cetaceans, ad-infinitum have had to develop social behavior in order to co-exist and benefit their clan. This would have been a natural evolution.

[Upon Mars.]

Then why do say that theology "defined" morality?

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

I differentiate my faith from religion in this way: My faith is personal and I do not feel the need to go through the ritual of performing certain acts just for show. This was the hypocrisy of the Sadducees that Christ threw from the temple.

You didn't actually read the first article Lilith posted, did you?

---

Originally Posted By: Upon Mars

If I am opposed to Mormonism, being a very strict atheist, I'd like to say that you do seem to be a pretty decent and normal person...

That's really condescending, since the implication of that statement is that Mormans are awful people. It's like me saying, "Hey Upon Mars, you're a pretty decent and normal person for someone who lives in France." Wouldn't you be offended if I say that?

---

Also: this thread is getting awful so fast. Harehunter, could you, like, think things through before posting another blithe statement about evolution or morality or whatever else?

Dikiyoba.

[Upon Mars.]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Upon Mars

If I am opposed to Mormonism, being a very strict atheist, I'd like to say that you do seem to be a pretty decent and normal person...

That's really condescending, since the implication of that statement is that Mormons are awful people. It's like me saying, "Hey Upon Mars, you're a pretty decent and normal person for someone who lives in France." Wouldn't you be offended if I say that?

I'll apologise to Rowen. Thank you for telling me this Diki.

[Harehunter]

No I did not, but in scanning it I recognized many tenets that some people hold to be truth, that I personally do not. There are many stereotypes about what Christianity is and what it isn't. When you look at all the denominations and sub-denominations, it should be obvious that such stereotyping is going to be wrong most of the the time. Even Islam and Judaism have the the same problem in that there are many sects within the religion as a whole. I just gave the short answer as to how I see it.

 

I did not intend to seem flippant or offensive with regard to morality. I apologize if it seemed so. I was asked a question and I responded with my regarded opinion which I have thought about for many decades.

 

Edit; I have re-read the article Lilith refered to, and I strongly disagree that the non-religious Christian is in fact an evangelical. I am not. That is the stereotypical kind of thinking that I rejected in the first paragraph of this post.

[Upon Mars.]

I'd like to apologise about a response on this thread; http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/279715/3/No_Seriously . I'd like to express my sincere regrets, for not only have I proven not to be willing to talk to you equal to equal, I have proven to be a fool condescending towards Mormons.

 

Sincerely Uponmars.

 

Oups! I intended this to be private response sorry.

[Harehunter]

I meant that it had codified, for example the 10 commandments and the Book of Deuteronomy. I do not mean that morality did not exist prior to that time, only that it was written down.

[Alorael at Large]

Except most of the commandments are just that: commands. They're more law than morality, and although a moral system is the underpinning of any decent legal system, I'd say the Old Testament is far more concerned with laying out a systematic legal system, complete with punishments, than with laying out a consistent code of ethics.

 

And for that, the Code of Hammurabi is probably older than the Old Testament, and if it's not an ideal code of law, I'd argue the same for the Bible.

 

—Alorael, who for that matter is pretty sure that ancient Egyptian and Sumerian documents suggest ethical behavior, although it's tied into superstition. Greek philosophers put forward serious ethical systems without influence from the Judeo-Christian tradition. And finally, if you're confusing functional social behavior with moral behavior, please take a tougher look at how dolphins behave.

[Student of Trinity]

I'll admit to being a religious Christian, but I'm also a materialist.

 

Nowadays I'm a real absent-minded professor type, but I was in the Canadian army reserve for several years as an infantry officer. I never came remotely close to being shot at, or anything, but I led small mobs of people through swamps in the dark, and blew stuff up, and so on.

[Upon Mars.]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I'll admit to being a religious Christian, but I'm also a materialist.

How is materialism opposed to Christianity?

[Alorael at Large]

Materialism is the belief that matter and energy (so... mass?) are the only things that are real. In other words, it's denial of any soul or spiritual self or energy. Since Christianity strongly emphasizes the existence of an immortal, immaterial soul, these two beliefs are usually held to be incompatible.

 

—Alorael, who is most intrigued by variations in atheist non-materialism. Not agnostic, because that's a cop-out.

[nikki.]

Quote:

I have been in one fist fight all my life and gave the other kid my shirt for his bloody nose and walked him back to his house to tell is mom that I am sorry and hoped he could play later that day

You're now my new favourite Spiderwebber, Rowen. Please, do me proud.

Oh, right, I was supposed to share something that'd make you go "no, seriously?", wasn't I? Well, sorry. I'm very boring and average.

[Harehunter]

Aloreal, I had read that there were earlier codifications of law, but not being very familiar with them I did not speak to them.

 

And once again, you have taken my pitifully incomplete thought and expressed it in a manner that is more lucid and understandable. There is a distinct difference between morality and a legal system that is based upon morality.

 

As for morality being a derivative of social behavior that has developed in many non-human species, that may be a bit of a stretch. It was just a theory, and theories are meant to be examined and torn apart in order to prove them or to disprove them.

[Alorael at Large]

Oh, some evolutionary psychologists will say that moral behavior is an outgrowth of social behavior, a kind of consequence of having to get along when you're all self-aware.

 

—Alorael, who has recently been thinking about theology as a source of morality. It has a pretty basic problem: do what God wants, because He is perfect is clear and consistent but not always sufficient. There are plenty of cases not covered by the Bible, and then what you should do is unclear. A clearer theology would also lay out a very clear ethical system. Interestingly, if God tells you to be Kantian, which isn't so far off from how most interpret Biblical ethics, he is in fact, what philosopher Peter Railton called a Kantian demon[//i].

[Student of Trinity]

My materialism consists in not being a "substance dualist". I think that spirit is a feature of form rather than of substance, so that people have souls in the way books have stories, not in the way books have pages.

 

Explaining this to scientific colleagues has always been quick and easy, and their reaction has usually just been a shrug. It's not a radical idea, since everybody has the same sort of assumption about the relationship between mind and brain, anyway. Minds, souls: ehh, who knows, could be. Whatever.

 

Explaining the concept to non-scientist co-religionists has generally been difficult, alas. But I did once get a bunch of evangelical theologians to accept that it might perhaps be okay. Since I'm not Catholic, I'm never going to need anybody's imprimatur, so I'm not worried. Just a little tired.

[Randomizer]

It's easier to explain a soul to a scientist because you can propose experiments to measure it. Scientists are used to experiments not producing useful results because that only means the experiment wasn't done right and not that the soul doesn't exist.

 

After all they tried measuring the body's weight before and after death to see how much a soul weighed. The experiment showed no difference within observable error.

[Harehunter]

A scientist views the world with an analytical perspective. Anything and everything is subject for analysis. When I look at the complexity of the biochemical processes that make up life, and consider the second law of thermodynamics, it thoroughly amazes me. For me, the study of all the sciences, and yes, even the social sciences, confirms that there is something of a greater power than myself.

 

By the way, even though I may speak disparagingly of the social sciences, it does not mean that they are valueless. It is only because I feel that there is more subjectivity than objectivity. But when considering the human psyche, what is there to objectively observe?

[Cairo Jim]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

After all they tried measuring the body's weight before and after death to see how much a soul weighed. The experiment showed no difference within observable error.

Can it be said the same with someone's thoughts and emotions perhaps?

[Upon Mars.]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

Aloreal, I had read that there were earlier codifications of law, but not being very familiar with them I did not speak to them.

And once again, you have taken my pitifully incomplete thought and expressed it in a manner that is more lucid and understandable. There is a distinct difference between morality and a legal system that is based upon morality.

As for morality being a derivative of social behavior that has developed in many non-human species, that may be a bit of a stretch. It was just a theory, and theories are meant to be examined and torn apart in order to prove them or to disprove them.

It's a bit provocative to say that in the sense that now field psychologist are only arguing to what extent animals are moral, not whether or not they are moral. (conf: Frans de Waal Age of empathy.)

[Sudanna]

I'm not sure that obeying biological imperatives counts as morality, whether they align with human morality (biologically inspired or otherwise) or not.

[adc.]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

I have never liked cake (except cheesecake).

--------
-A

[Sudanna]

Keep it in the meme thread.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Cairo Jim

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

After all they tried measuring the body's weight before and after death to see how much a soul weighed. The experiment showed no difference within observable error.

Can it be said the same with someone's thoughts and emotions perhaps?

Those aren't material and don't help answer the question.

—Alorael, who thinks the distinction between moral behavior and prosocial behavior, for a naive system of morality that does not hinge on ethical systems that permit/require awfulness (i.e. all of them), is that animals just have to get along for survival, whereas humans are self-aware enough and introspective enough to need a reason to get along.

[Rowen]

This feels like a discussion my class had in philosophy 101 once. I'm sure that animals display what we can classify and morality, but how do we distinguish what is moral behavior and instinct?

[Lauren CW]

RE:Sylae

I like to set up the resolution on my screen when I'm watching TV/Movies so that my desktop ponies can walk around at the bottom of the screen. without obscuring what I'm watching. Occasionally RD/Derpy will fly up towards the mouse.

[Rowen]

Originally Posted By: Future Wonderbolt

Originally Posted By: Rowen is having tea with Gramzon

I got a 40 dollar speeding ticket for going 109 mph.

When was this? Nowadays it seems like you'd get the chair for driving like that.

This was in Montana, just before Clark Canyon Reservoir. I made the drive from Moscow, ID to Idaho Falls ID, that day in 6 hours. It was the most scary drive of my life, but time was against life so I sped. Also, the state patrolman was amazing cool when I explained why I was and would continue to speed.

[Harehunter]

Rowan, I do believe that my remarks have indeed led us astray into the Twilight Zone of philosophy. I did not anticipate the resulting firestorm it would invoke. I am regretful that I brought it up.

 

I present this one last note. I have read articles such as this one which theorize on such things. But then again, this is exactly what I meant about the subjectivity of the social sciences. We can observe behavior, but without knowing what exactly is going on in the mind of the subject, can we really arrive at the correct conclusion as to the motivation behind such behavior?

[Cairo Jim]

I, for one think your posts can break the monotony a bit. Gets people to think a bit, and outside the square a little bit.

[Rowen]

I didn't mean for you to feel regretful, I have found the topic to be refreshing. I find myself understanding the plausibility of not only monkeys, but humans agreeing upon a forced social code in order for survival and compete against the larger, more aggressive ones such as alphas.