logical fallacies

[Monica]

LOL... I am myself a king of "Text Walls"!

Ahem! Woe be to whoever gets in the middle of you and me! Someone with a text phobia might want to avoid the Tenet-Monica dialogs!

What I mean to say is people who write text walls wanting others to read them, but who won't take the time to read the text walls of others.

Oh, well in that case, I agree. That's kinda rude, to reply to the other person without having read what they said. On second thought, no not kinda, but very rude!

Not that I read every text wall, either! I will also admit, sometimes I just write for my own enjoyment, and couldn't care less whether others read it or not.

Nothing wrong with that! Writing is fun. (To us writers anyway!) As long as one is careful to not be misleading; ie. implying that they have read the other person's comments when they haven't.

But realizing it shouldn't be.

I wonder about that. Maybe 'doing it' is actually easy, when true realization has occurred. Maybe what we think is realization, isn't really realization after all.

I long for the days when it will be generally assumed that, when faced with two seemingly "opposing" views or forces, the ultimate goal is to balance and unify them.

Or...how about this: Create a 3rd possibility.

That is the nature of reconciling paradox! Creation.

So many of us still seem to think that the "point" of life is to choose between one extreme viewpoint over another, and then to defend that extreme even unto the death!

Again, harder said than done. But it seems really obvious to me that BOTH/AND thinking trumps EITHER/OR thinking. But clearly, it isn't obvious to others, and I'm sure many people would heartily disagree with my point of view.

I agree. But I would take it a step further and offer the option of both disagreeing heartily and reconciling disagreement. That is the paradox.

In other words, instead of

BOTH/AND vs EITHER/OR

how about

BOTH/AND as the entity on one side of the /, with EITHER/OR as the entity on the other.

To see how he responded.

He was a coworker, not an internet forum buddy. He didn't agree to any sort of discussion or debate. So it wasn't my place to question his religious beliefs.

I did, however, call him on his bigotry. I will never stay silent in the presence of bigotry! It didn't do any good, though, because his religious beliefs defined his bigotry. There was no way to access his bigotry without tearing down his religious beliefs, and I didn't have the right to do that.

I was raised Catholic, too

What I meant was that Catholics don't read the bible like the evangelicals do. The priest just read a couple of passages (1 from the NT and 1 or 2 from the OT) at each mass, and that was the extent of our bible education.

The evangelicals, in contrast, really study their bibles.

So I didn't actually read the bible from start to finish until I got involved with the evangelicals, and went to their bible study. Of course, they explained away all the horrors in the OT quite conveniently. But later, in the privacy of my own home, with dog-eared, highlighted amplified bible in hand, a gnawing sense of horror began to grow inside me, until finally I did what I'd been told to never do...I did the unthinkable!!

I questioned the presupposition that all of the bible was from God.

And my conclusion was so radical, so blasphemous, so scary, that it still took me several years to process it.

It still took me many years to be confident in the notion that yes, in fact, all these people around me really don't have much of a clue what they are talking about. After all, I was a kid! The adults were supposed to be the ones guiding me, right?

Did you go to Catholic school? Catechism class? Did your family pray the rosary every night?

Yeah, I can see what you mean. In the end, a moderate view would seem to also be the most logical.

Why do you say that? That seems rather arbitrary to me. (See, I can't help but question your logic! haha) On what logical premise has it been determined that the middle ground is always the best one or the most logical one?

Further, on what criteria is the definition of 'moderate view' defined? And, who gets to decide what that criteria is?

Sometimes, it isn't a matter of the person lacking logic skills. Both sides of the debate might be presented with flawless logic, but just appear illogical to the other side. Why? Because the presupposition is different.

They try to account for that. Presuppositions are established. But I contend that, in a spiritual or philosophical discussion, in which unknown biases lie sleeping beneath the surface of consciousness, presuppositions abound, and in fact are the norm, invisible and undetected though they may be.