Book Burning

[leo9]

I will admit, I have difficulty understanding why you would go on such a search, or why anyone else would.

And I don't understand what manga fans or opera lovers or politicos get out of their particular interests, but it's variety that makes the human race so amazing. One just has to accept that there are a lot of people out there who feel intensely about things that leave us cold, and their concerns are as legitimate as ours. As we say back here in perveland, YKIOKIJNMK.

Ahh, I see. You were lonely! Well, invisible friends are better than none, I suppose.

I guess you could call spiritual searching loneliness for something that humans can't offer. And not better, different from the human kind.

One question, though. How can one differentiate between invisible friends and mental illness? (see my sig.)

Only pragmatically, the same way you differentiate between apps and viruses: do they do something useful? In the immortal words of the Prophet Bokonnon, "Live by the lies that make you healthy and happy."

It's been observed that love - the swept-away-infatuated kind - meets all the clinical tests of mental illness. The same can reasonably be said for religious devotion, which proves that psychology is still far from having a complete description of human nature.

. I mean, YOU claim they are there, and I'm sure you BELIEVE they are there, but how can you prove to ME that they are there?

As I've said many times, I have no interest in proving it to you, and I'm relaxed about the view that it's probably impossible. I don't ask you or anyone else to prove to me that your spiritual belief system is true in the physical sense that the law of gravity is true, because that is applying a test that is meaningless in the context: as if an accountant were to ask you to prove that your atheism is profitable, and refuse to accept it if you can't.

(Possibly not a good metaphor, now I think of it, because televangelism shows that some religions can be very profitable indeed. But that still doesn't prove they're true.)

If a person's religion makes them happy and useful, it's a good religion, but whether it's true or not is a null question for me: only they can decide that.

If you try to run your life based on superstitions, then it IS a bad thing. People like to think that astrology, for example, works. But in reality we KNOW it doesn't work. There is no demonstrable basis for claiming that the planets can control our destinies. The claims of the astrologer cannot be tested, they cannot be demonstrated, they cannot even be agreed upon by other astrologers. Do you consider it a good thing to allow one's life to be ruled by such nonsense?

That depends. If a person makes good decisions and feels secure in their life because they believe they are guided by the planets, I feel it's no worse than being guided by any of the other objectively absurd belief systems that people live by.

I think it's wise to have a solid grasp of the difference between a belief system and physically verifiable facts, but that's my only caveat.