Good so far.
And you lost it. You can't compare the subjective because you can't show it to others. You can't evaluate it because it's an opinion.

The subjective isn't useful to anyone but the subject.

Explain to me what's subjective about math. Last time I checked 2+2=4 without any room for anyone thinking differently. Logic has aimed to get away from the subjective since it's inception as subjectively making someone look bad devalues their arguments when that doesn't actually address any of what they've said.

I'm really thinking you don't understand what subjective and objective mean.

Do these definitions match what you're talking about:
Objective: 1. not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion.
2. being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject
Subjective: 1. pertaining to or characteristic of an individual; personal; individual: a subjective evaluation.
2. placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.
3. relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself.

What else could it mean?

I've been getting to know you guys for closing in on two hundred posts now. (And as large as they are you might as well count most of them as two or three posts.)

Actually I was quoting him
He's telling me that if I don't believe I had a creator I can only believe that I was an meaningless accident. We've been reworking the meaning of happenstance in the last few pages and with what we're using now there is no way it could not mean that.

I was doing that for awhile but stopped when abra started chopping up what I said so much. I was mostly keeping it together because I responding to four or five of his posts at a time.

I'll try and reply to you and sky in separate posts I guess.

I'm probably getting pretty close to telling you for the hundredth time that "it just happened" is not what I've been saying. It's really disgusting how you can't let life have any meaning unless it's got the meaning you want it to have.

You could tell me a thousand times and I still wouldn't buy it.

As far as I'm concerned there can be no middle of the road. Either life was the purposeful result of intent, or it was a totally random accident with no intent at all.

You might look at the process of evolution and say, "It's not just a random accident, it's natural selection - survival of the fittest", but that's utterly meaningless.

The pure random-chance accident would have already occurred via the very existence of a molecule that can self-duplicate itself into becoming living beings in the first place.

Attempting to give any meaning to the process after that initial random event is already "after the fact".

It was either a random nonsensical happenstance, or it was by design.

There is no middle of the road.

What would be the middle of the road between intentional design, and unintentional happenstance?

Like Jeannie has been saying, "Natural Processes" doesn't cut it because any natural process in a happenstance universe would necessarily be happenstance itself.

There is no midway between happenstance and design.

We're either by design, or we're happenstance.

Period.

Most scripture is simple story telling and very little opinions or thoughts of the authors are expressed. Scripture simply says: Then he said this and she did that and then this happened etc. It is nothing like the kind of writing that humans do today. It clearly shows a different state of consciousness.

What I don't understand is why Shoku or anyone would feel that just because we might be here by happenstance that we are suggesting that our lives "have no meaning" and why he would think that even if we are here by design that then we think our lives would "have meaning."

One has nothing to do with another.

Having meaning or not is strictly a personal prospective and an opinion. Some hopelessly depressed people go through life thinking and feeling that life has no meaning. They may even think that their life has no meaning. It is a sad individual indeed who does not realize that HE or SHE is the ONE who decides what has meaning or not.

A supreme being is NOT NECESSARY to tell us our life has meaning. We are the ones to give meaning to our lives. The most hard core atheist who might push the idea that our lives are just a freak accident does not necessarily feel that their life has "no meaning."

On the contrary, they realize that if there is to be any meaning to life then they must be the one to create meaning, define meaning and take control of their own thoughts and opinions about what has meaning to them.

Shoku you asked what else could it mean? Are you so fixated on that idea you can't see that it is YOU who assigns meaning to life?

You and you alone have that power, not some creator or designer. Not other people. Only you can find meaning and purpose whether you are an accident or not.

So quit whining and go find your purpose in life.

You can't deconstruct the subjective. If you could it would be objective.

How does a creator get to be the last turtle? We create thing but we needed many turtles to explain where we came from.

But if you say the creator is the last turtle isn't that the same as saying it just got there by chance? As the final step there could not possibly be any reason it got there, else that reason would be another turtle and we'd need who knows how many other turtles to explain it.

Or at least that's how it would have to work the way you've described things.

That's understandable.

But it does lead to the quest of "If you don't know how to recognize anything that is not a design how can you say it's not all around you?"

But people made sports and such. There are rules you follow to play that game. We're talking about the origin of rules.

Or we're not and the designer is just some turtle in the middle and we've not yet even begun to talk about if there must be one or not.

Nope. Never said or implied anything even remotely like that.

What I am saying is that as far as I’m concerned, there cannot be anything that God didn’t do on purpose, by the very definition of God.

(Noting that the terms “God” and “designer” are exactly synonymous in this context.)God yes, designer no. We could potentially create a universe and not intentionally control every aspect of it.

Well, “meaning” is entirely subjective, so there is no way I can answer that for you. Your life may or may not have meaning to you and it may or may not have meaning to a creator. That’s up to you and the creator to determine, each for themselves.And if I don't have a creator?

My objection is in your saying that anything without the intention of God behind it is happenstance.

It's just an opinion, you can't say it's wrong and I'm sick of you trying to.

Here's a phrase that works: Either life was the purposeful result of intent or it was not the purposeful result of intent.

Happenstance does not mean a lack of intention.

Well I guess I should probably throw out a definition here as well to ask if we've even been talking about the same thing:
Chance: the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled.

Is that it?

No, it tells you there's a pattern. That it's the very opposite of random.

I used the word stochastic quite awhile ago. If you know what that word means then you know I understand that.

Without design there are other possibilities that "random nonsense." You threw enough of a fit that I wouldn't go into the philosophy of this but how can anyone do that without first establishing what we're looking at.

I am telling you that we have a very non-random pattern of sense to the universe and that it didn't have to come from God.

Then call it a fork in the road and take a minute to understand that I'm talking about a road that splits off and goes in a different direction than either of those.

Unintentional design, but I'm not supporting that either.

Scarecrow argument fallacy. Nobody here is telling you that our universe is random nonsense.

Because you say so?

And we write differently than our grandparents did. Why should we think that the way we do it is somehow "more conscious" than what they did instead of just that the way people use language changes over time?

They have everything to do with each other. Haven't you seen Sky saying that the meaning of my life is up to God and that in designing our universe there is nothing that was not God's intention? Haven't you seen Abra telling me that without a designer I can be nothing but random nonsense?

Well of course you understand that. You're an atheist.

They clearly are not and refuse to understand how there could be any meaning without God.

Ya. I already mentioned nihilists. I don't particularly like even talking to those people often.

Well in calling me random nonsense I'm basically being told my thoughts are not real.

I know that, I'm just revolted that they have the audacity to tell me I'm not.

You should come over to this side of the fence and help me explain that to Abra and Sky n_n

I've already got enough purpose to tide me over for now. Maybe I'll get some other purpose later in life but for now I have enough.

Interesting. That may be the very reason we so often disagree.

So we have to know logic and facts in order to use logic. I agree with that.

The kicker is that the “logical conclusion” is dependent on logic. And logic is completely man-made.

So value logical conclusion is dependent on a complete fabrication.

Any way you cut it, it eventually comes down to a dependence on the subjective (with the next step up from that being “agreement”).

There is no other starting point.

Which is my point. The “reliability and repeatability” is directly related to the amount of invesigation and research. And there is has been virtually zero investigation and research into the subjective. So it’s no wonder the subjective is considered unrelaible.

It’s almost as if science has decided to take the easy way out and ignore the “hard questions”.

Yes, and that is exactly the whole point of my whole post. The subjective has never been investigated, so how could we possibly know how much and in what way the subjective might actually affect the objective?

We know for a fact that it does in some cases.

And we know for a fact that the effects are “unreliable” in some cases.

But what we don’t know is if and/or how much it effects any of those oh-so-carefully-designed-to-be-completely-subjective “scientific experiments”.

The 'subjective' is only the source of these things because they are man-made concepts/terms which are in place to describe things which are not necessarily man-made...I don’t see any point in the first phrase there. “Man-made concepts/terms” are by definition subjective. So that’s just an identity – “subjective is the source because subjective is the source” or “man-made things are man-made things because they are man-made things”.

So the very concept of “not man-made” is itself subjective. Which means that the concept of something not being subjectively created (i.e. man-made) is subjective. And thus we end up with a subjective concept being created to describe a subjective concept.

In other words, it’s quite literally “all in your head”

I don’t agree with the way that is stated. The way I would state the relationship between subjective and understanding would be more like: “Understanding is subjective”. It may very well influence itself, but that only says “subjective influences subjective”, which I would agree with wholeheartedly.

Oh gosh, there’s that nasty word again.

I’d like to see a definition of, or means of determining, actuality that is not fundamental based on something subjective. (Hint: It can’t be done.)

Well of course they don’t – because that is how they are subjectively defined.

I think this is the perfect place to make my point.

That is a statement of a relationship between two subjective concepts “sky” and “blue”.

What makes it “objective” is the assignment of the relationship. But “assignment” itself is a subjective process. So where’s the “objectivity”?

As best I can tell, objectivity is based on “agreement”. That is, agreement is what determines objectivity.

True.

But it is dependent on your subjective concepts of both “chocolate” and “cacao”.

“…as we have come to know it…” refers strictly to agreement. ”Held up” refers to either agreement, or assertion. Assertion is strictly one-sided, thus subjective. Agreement is dependent on a subjective decision.

Quite the contrary. Those psych pseudo-sciences are the very epitome of the very paradox we ran into with this thread’s OP – assessing first-person qualities from the third person viewpoint. It can’t be done.

This entire post is very misleading and frames subjectivity in such a way as to add value where it does not belong.

Sky: Actually doesn't care about subjectivity. It's there without it. If someone doesn't think bullets can kill them that doesn't stop a sniper round from tearing through their grey matter.

You could be picky and say the bleeding is what killed them but we all know what caused the bleeding, though it didn't need us to know for it to happen.

Tell that to Creative.

I agree. That is profoundly true. But it doesn’t answer the question.

(Although, changing the subject like you did is an actual demonstration of what you do. So in that sense, I guess you did answer the question indirectly.)

By definition.

No more so than saying an eternal universe got there by chance. An eternal universe didn’t “get there”, it was always there. Just as a creator didn’t “get there”, it was always there.

I’m not saying the design is not all round mew. I’m saying the design is all around me.

(However, I think I may be misunderstanding the referent for “it” in you question.)

Yes, that’s what we’re talking about – the creator of the rules.

Then there can be no meaning to a creator.

But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m only saying that anything without intention behind it is happenstance, by definition.

Shoku said:WOW!
I don’t know where you got that from, but it is so totally not related to any meaning I ever intended that it’s no wonder your questions and replies have baffled me.

Because the difference is that ancient writing and scripture just tells stories. It shows no opinions, no self awareness, no thoughts, no other perspective other than third person narration. The authors are not "self conscious." The writing is primitive third person narrative. It has no feeling. It reads like a police report or news article.

If you can't see the marked difference in consciousness and perspective of the authors, then I will see if I can give you an example.

*********************************

Example #1:

Yesterday the sun came up at 6:23 a.m. and John was eating his breakfast. Later he heard a loud noise and he went out of his house and in the sky he saw a large airplane flying low. Then the airplane took a dive strait down towards him and crashed in the field next to his house. Then he noticed more fire falling from the sky, and the sky seemed to be on fire. Meteors were falling all around him.

Example #2: (same story)

It seemed to be a somewhat average day for John as he finished his breakfast of Cherrios and sipped his coffee before his drive to work. The sun had just peeked over the horizon and the chirping of birds was interrupted by a loud roar of a jet engine passing over his home.
Still holding his coffee in his hand, he went to the door and stepped outside just in time to see the plane nose dive into the field behind his house. His first thoughts were about the possibility of there being any survivors. He wondered how soon rescue workers would arrive. Then he realized that this plane crash was just the beginning of something much worse. Heat from the intense fire blasted the air and in the next two hours it seemed like the world was coming to an end as meteors began hitting the earth.

****************************

The difference in writing is that one just reports observations, or events, and the other has opinion, feeling and a subjective point of view. It gets into your head and the head of the characters and author. It does more than report facts or events.

Shoku, I think you are having a conversation with a group and you are not separating the individuals you are speaking with.

Slow down and try talking to one person at a time.

Well I will admit that I obviously lost you

I disagree. I find other peoples opinions are often quite useful to me.

Math and logic are both fabrications. See below for reference to subjective.

You’re quite right that I have been using the word subjective with an intended meaning that does not exactly match any of those definitions. Unfortunately, I know of no other common word that does match exactly. And I often find it impossible to convey the idea of what I mean, even in lengthy and involved face-to-face discussions. (We’ve all had exierience with people who “just don’t get it”. )

But over the course of this thread I think I may have come up with a way of explaining it…

If everything is divided into two categories of “self” and “other”, then subjective is caused/created by self and objective is caused/created by other.

Which could also be stated as: self is the source of the subjective and other is the source of the objective.

Now in that sense, “objective” is pretty close to definition #2 and “subjective is pretty close to both #1 and #3. The main difference is in the assignment of cause/creation/source.

So yes, I know that is somewhat different from the dictionary definition, but if anyone knows of two comparative words that mean what I just described, please let me know.

Creative,

I screwed up the quote tags in one of my above replies to you. Sorry.

Sky,

I see no point in carrying on a conversation with you regarding the differences between objective and subjective when you are equivocating between the two.

Just because we must subjectively assess the objective, it does not make the objective things dependant upon us. Your confusing things in your mind with things in and of themselves.

There is a difference, and you are not clearly making a case to show otherwise.

I think objective things are dependent on observers, in that if there were no observers, objects are a moot point.

I also think we actually manifest reality and that includes objects.

And even if that is NOT TRUE it would not matter because if you can't perceive an object, then it is a moot point. It essentially does not exist.

If you died right now, and could no longer observe reality, then reality (from your point of view) no longer exists. Black is Black.
No reality, no objects etc.

And... You have no way of knowing.. (if you could "know" anything, being dead) -- if any of your previous reality still exists after you are gone.

And if you cannot know or observe your previous reality after you die, then none of it matters anyway.

Therefore, the objective totally depends on the "subjective."

Objects depend upon the observer. With no observers, there can be no objects.

The funny part is this: EVEN IF THAT IS NOT TRUE IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Because objects are a meaningless moot point without observers.