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Cary Cook's

MENTAL EVOLUTION

from turning Christian in early 1971 to the present

After I turned Christian, my thoughts were jumbled and irrational, because rationality was the enemy of my faith.  It remained like that until I started learning critical thinking from Christian apologists.

year profound wisdom
1972 He who is not grounded in the Word shall be floored in the fellowship.
1974 Some truth is not worth the price of understanding it.
1977 Formality for the sake of appearance is hypocritical.  Formality for the sake of obedience is not.
1978 Is there a place in the Kingdom of God where questions don't exist?  Would I be allowed to live there?  Would I like it if I did?
1978 I would rather die with unrealistic ideals than survive in a meaningless reality.  But to go on living with unrealistic ideals is intolerable.
1982 The Kingdom of God is built out of the ambitions of forgiven thieves.
1982 The most blatant of all liars is he who believes his lie to be for the glory of God.
1985 The pretense of knowing God.  Is life worth so great a lie?  Or is life doomed without it?
1986 Nothing produces spiritual changes faster than the anticipation of death.
1986 Spiritual growth is fastest in an atmosphere of uncertainty.
1987 Bullshit is anesthetic.  Without that anesthetic, the horror of reality is unbearable.
1987 Spiritual maturity is getting your priorities straight and keeping them straight under pressure.
1987 Better to adopt those values which will ultimately lead to satisfaction, and allow yourself enough hypocrisy to live with them, than to adopt those values which will ultimately lead to torment, and adhere to them with perfect integrity.
1987 Christians love to admit they are sinners, but hate to admit they are selfish.
1987 Requirements of God must take precedence over requirements of personal integrity.  Otherwise intelligent beings would annihilate each other over conflicting ideologies.
1987 Better to be in God's will and unhealthy, than to be out of God's will and healthy.
1987 If you act in accordance with what you believe, you will find out if what you believe is true.  If you don't act in accordance with what you believe, you may go thru your entire life believing lies and never know it.
1987 When God chooses to communicate, any idiot can understand Him.
When God is not communicating, many idiots will put words in His mouth.
1987 The only religious act I can perform without hypocrisy is service.
1988 PRIME OBJECTIVE: to find out from personal experience:
1. that God pays off on His promises.
2. that life is worthwhile within the perimeter of His rules.
1988 Submitting to the lordship of Christ is like submitting to brainwashing.  Truth, reality, and sanity are being redefined.
1988 The only way universal peace can be established is by voluntarily submitting to whatever government has the most legitimate claim to supremacy.
1988 Most scripture was never designed to guide the spiritually minded, but to restrain the carnally minded.
1989 You don't read a billboard with a microscope.
1989 Nothing is so obvious that it can't be ignored for the sake of sound theology.
1989 Life is not worth living in the kingdom of any god who doesn't make life worth living.
1990 Being right is not enough.  No matter how obviously correct I am, people will ignore the truth of what I say unless they see benefit in it for themselves.
1990 Are they truly seeking answers?  Or are they just reciting ritualized questions for the sake of religious catharsis?
1990 They said, "you can't out-give God."  Bullshit!  God can be out-given by anyone who is fool enough to try.
1992 Tip to rescuers:  A few people stay rescued after you rescue them.  Most just keep coming back for more rescuing.
1992 I can live with a God who is a benevolent liar.  But I can't live with a God who is an honest slave driver.
1992 If you have to become what you hate in order to get what you want, even if you get it, you paid too much.
1993 If you "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness," be careful.  There is no marker at the point of no return.
1994 Anyone who thinks submitting to a spiritually tyrannical God will save your soul doesn't know soul from Shinola.
1994 Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."  The bastard never told us the examined life isn't worth anything either.
1994 Consistency is a hobgoblin only to small minds.
1994 A change of spiritual location is often accompanied by illness.
1994 Apparently God can live with all manner of repentant scum, but can't tolerate honest disagreement on matters of principle.
1995 Christianity is submitting to voluntary slavery for the goal of a satisfaction that may not exist, but sure as hell doen't exist anywhere else.
1995 When one is logically forced to conclude something intuitively unacceptable, one must either conclude that a premise is incorrect or abandon common sense.
1995 God has a long established tradition of doing what He's never done before.
1995 There is no such thing as liberty and justice for all.  Liberty for all means some are deprived of justice.  Justice for all means some are deprived of liberty.
1995 It's more honorable to go to hell with integrity than go to heaven without it.
1996 Thought happens.
1996 If I can't talk straight and make it in life - fuck life.
1996 The purpose of theory is to explain experience, not to force a reinterpretation of it.
1996 Don't ask me who I'm voting for, when I don't even know if I'm voting for God.
1996 Familiarity breeds contempt only when at least one of the parties is worthy of it.
1996 I'd rather be a happy dog than an unhappy god.
1996 Mercy is a counterbalance to law, not to justice.  Mercy is necessary to achieve justice, only because law is imperfect.  When justice is perfect, mercy is unjust.
1997 Talking straight attracts the people I want to attract, and repels the people I want to repel.
1997 Truth seekers always clarify issues.  Salesmen & lawyers clarify when they are right, and obscure when they are wrong.  Politicians & theologians always obscure, because anything they say that's clear can be used against them later.  Professional philosophers complicate issues in order to expand simple statements into books.
1997 What is a man profited if he gains the whole kingdom of God and loses his integrity?
1997 I was at a Unity meeting.  They sang, "Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me."  I thought, "Let truth prevail if it kills every one of us."
1997 No matter how obviously right I am, people rarely agree with me.  But they often end up saying the same things I say, as though they thought of it.
1998 I fear God, but not as much as I fear the possibility that God may be unjust.  An unjust God is not worth fearing, even if He roasts you in hell forever.
1998 Spiritual pride is an unavoidable consequence of the knowledge that you are doing your best.  If you're not proud, you could be doing better, and you know it.  (But if you are proud, it may be for dumb reasons.)
1998 Admitting evil, no matter how dishonorable, is more honorable than masking evil.
1998 Any God salesman is probably a liar.  Even if he is honest, his God is probably a liar.  But you either trust God, and risk being cheated, or make the best of nihilism.
1998 The only pleasure that doesn't cost more than it's worth is food - unless you're fat.
1998 Faith is not the substance of anything.  It is the simple decision to gamble.  It is identified in what is bet on, and measured in how much is risked.
1998 How typical of Biblical inerrantists to deny the existence of common sense, non-statistical probability, and burden of proof!  Do they plan to spend eternity evading the obvious in favor of conclusions logically forced from their fear based premises?  How I do hate living in a world where such people are the most logical company I can find!
1998 The church encourages Christians to lie.  e.g. to sing words they don't mean, to claim knowledge they don't have, to pretend to think what they don't think, to express emotions they don't feel, and to justify it all under the banner of attitude.  Yet somehow God seems to prefer their lies to my loveless honesty.
1998 "I can't possibly be making a bad argument, because I've stated many that I'm opposed to bad arguments."   (This is satire, in case you haven't figured it out.)
1998 If eternal damnation were just, why would God create a world full of creatures who all think it's unjust except for a minority of those who believe Him?  Why would He create us with values which are in conflict with His own?
1998 Theists are likely to be more honest than atheists in business because theists fear God.  Theists are likely to be dishonest about their experience of God for the same reason.
1998 Science is neutral.  It takes a religion to oppose a religion.
1998 Exceptions don't prove rules.  Exceptions prove exceptions.
1998 When appearance conflicts with revelation, I can choose to trust revelation, but I cannot help thinking that appearance is probably correct.
1998 EGOCENTRIC GOLDEN RULE:  Behave in a manner that makes you worthy of the life you want.  If there's justice, you'll get it.  If not, nothing matters anyway.
1998 Despair is better than futile hope.  Why? - because it kills you quicker.
1998 No one can be trusted to tell you the truth about God - no man, no institution, no book, not even what appears to be God Himself.  You either find out by personal experience, or remain ignorant.
1998 I cannot be what I think God wants me to be.  I can fake it, but I can't be it.  I think God wants me to fake it.  And I'm refusing without apology.  I will not build my eternal life on a lie - not even a God-authorized lie.
1998 There appears to be a serious conflict between the God who created my concept of good & evil and the God who reveals Himself to me.  If no actual conflict exists, I pray for correction.  If the conflict is real, I choose the former God.
1998 Truth is nobody's primary value.  Worthwhile life is everybody's primary value.  Truth matters only in so much as it is necessary to get to worthwhile life and stay there.  Let anyone who claims to love truth acknowledge that this is truth.
1998 Seeking truth is different from defending what you believe to be true.
1998 He who loves lies.  He who doesn't lie doesn't love.  God is no exception.
1998 Faith is perception distorted by emotion.
Faith at its best is inductive reasoning based on data selected by emotion.
Faith at its worst is assumption based on emotion.
Faith is training wheels for those who haven't figured it out.
Faith is a condom for horny minds who fear catching nihilism.
1998 If a principle you assert belies a principle by which you operate, you are either asserting an untruth, or behaving hypocritically or both.
1999 There are no divinely authorized lies.  But there is a divinely authorized church which authorizes lies.
1999 Where truth is terrifying, the pursuit of truth is social exile.  Truth ceases to be frightening when one realizes that fearing it is stupid.
1999 Eternal damnation is no reason to fear an unjust God.  But fear of eternal damnation is the greatest blessing a world of criminals could ask for.
1999 A just God would never punish anyone for what he believes or fails to believe, but neither would He allow into a community committed to justice anyone who is not committed to justice.
1999 If you seek a righteous God, then act in a manner worthy of a righteous God.  Only those who are willing to defy an unrighteous God are worthy of a righteous God.
[Oct. 2010: I now believe the second statement to be wrong.]
1999 The God of an inerrant Bible cannot possibly exist, because he inspired the appearance of errors, but is not the author of confusion.
1999 When the truth or falsity of any given proposition is discernible by personal experience, the contradictory testimony of other people, no matter how great their number or credentials, is irrelevant.
2000 The only necessary trinity:  Creator - middle management - us
2000 The Kingdom of God is like a sausage.  If you want to partake of it, don't ask how it was made.
2001 What kind of God would program noble values into a person, and then bully him into sycophancy?
2002 Only an evil god would allow his creation's good & evil evaluator to become corrupt and then judge him by an uncorrupted standard.  A righteous god would judge his creature by the creature's standard, and change that standard if he doesn't like it.
2002 KNOWLEDGE: that faculty by which a mind accepts the existence of truth, and its own ability to distinguish it from non truth.
2002 Humility is not a virtue.  It is a social expedient to facilitate solicitation.
2002 Believe the lies that feed you?  I prefer to starve.
2002 The God you serve is the God you deserve.
2002 The most popular compensation for lack of integrity is a good attitude.  I don't do attitudes; I do ethics.
2002 Emotional attachment to the truth or falsity of any proposition hinders ones judgment of the truth or falsity of that proposition.
2002 Optimism and pessimism are both deviations from realism.  And realism is the only ism that's realistic.
2002 Truth seekers never complicate issues.  If in any dispute, you find that you are introducing unnecessary complications, you are not seeking the truth in that issue.
2002 Knowledge of truth is frightening.  If you don't desire it more than you fear it, there is no reason to pursue it.
2003 No matter how stupid their faith is, if you kick the props out from under it without offering something better in its place, you're just a child molester.
2003 Part of being a good philosopher is refraining from the pretense of knowing more than you know.  But if you do that, you will never get a job teaching philosophy - in my opinion.
2003 The main distinction between a truth seeker and a religionist is that when a particular truth cannot be known, nor statistical probability ascertained, a truth seeker will choose common sense probability, and a religionist will choose to err on the side of perceived safety.
2003 Nothing is so clear that a good philosopher can't find a way to misunderstand it.  If I speak clearly enough for anyone with common sense to understand me, they will object to some vagueness or ambiguity in my terms.  If I define my terms and speak precisely, it will be so tedious that no normal person could understand me, much less a philosopher.
2003 Philosophy is the effort to discover truth.  It is achieved by applying critical thinking to personal experience.  The effort to figure out what other philosophers are saying is philosophy only if it is an effort to figure out if they are right, which is achieved by critical thinking.  The effort to be conversant in the opinions of philosophers is meta-philosophy.
2003 If you have to pretend to be what you're not in order to sustain a relationship, it is only a matter of time before that relationship costs more than it is worth.  Relationship with God is no exception.
2003 It is evil to create evil.  If you create free will beings, some of them will become evil.  The only way to create free will beings without becoming evil is to influence them such that the good they do outweighs the evil.  Such influence will necessarily be in the form of reward & punishment.
2003 Logic cannot tell you that logic is reliable, because logic tells you that circular reasoning is unreliable.  You need common sense to tell you logic is reliable.
2003 Communication is possible only within that set of parameters on which the communicants agree.
2003 Personal beings are all by nature frustrated.  They want more than they have.  The Supreme Being is no exception.
2003 There are some things so obvious that only a fool or a philosopher can fail to see them.
2003 The right to do any particular thing implies the right to do anything that is necessary to do that thing.  But it does not imply the right to do similar things, greater things, or even lesser things.
2003 I was conversing with my ass this morning.  Once again it reminded me that despite my lofty ideals, I am still basically a digestive tube.
2003 "Sinner saved by grace" is a decent way to begin an eternal life.  But no God would finance it, and no sentient creature would want to remain in it very long.  Christianity may have been designed by God to be intellectually repugnant, so that intellectuals would outgrow it.
2003 Principles necessarily come into conflict unless prioritized.  Even then they sometimes produce unjust results unless tempered by an outside factor such as common sense.
2003 There are some who measure faith by the stupidity of the belief rather than the amount invested in it.
2003 A person who is offended by the non-threatening content of another person's honest expression deserves to be offended.
2003 Any truth, no matter how obvious, is easily obscured by one whose world view is threatened by it.
2004 I have never liked being alone.  But if I must be alone, I prefer to be alone by myself.
2004 I?  Swallow a camels?  But look how many gnats I've strained!
2004 The fact that your worldview gives you a knowledge claiming license does not imply that you actually know what your worldview allows you to claim to know.
2004 A philosopher's best friend is his most competent opponent.
2004 There ought to be a connection between "is" and "ought", but there isn't.
2004 If your quality of life is better than you deserve, you will adjust to it either by losing your undeserved benefits, or losing your taste for justice.
2004 The vagueness of a category's boundaries does not negate its existence.  Vagueness merely raises a question as to the inclusion or exclusion of some things as members.
2004 When the truth or falsity of a given proposition cannot be known, and there is insufficient data to judge probabilities, and you must act as though it is true or false, then its truth or falsity should be judged pragmatically.
2004 The truth or falsity of any given proposition is:
1.  totally independent of the purpose for which it is said.
2.  unaffected by the consequences of saying it, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant those consequences may be.
3.  irrelevant to those whose decisions would remain the same either way.
2005 The God who created you is at least as wise as you are.  If you find yourself worshipping a God who is not as wise as you are, assume not that you should dumb down to accommodate Him, but rather that you should wise up.
2005 To have faith in a proposition is to abandon the effort to seek the truth of that proposition.
2005 The truth or falsity of any declarative statement remains unaffected by the purpose for which it is made.
2005 When God Himself appears to be challenging your theological premises, He may be trying to correct them, and He may be testing your resolve.  You don't know which.  The Bible tells us to hold fast to what we have been taught.  I say it is better to admit what you honestly believe, pray for correction, and see what happens.
2005 Nothing is so epistemologically inescapable that it cannot be overruled by emotion.
2005 Faith in any lie is better than nihilism, but only until its falsity is exposed.  Faith in an exposed lie is worse than nihilism.
2006 I really enjoy doing righteous stuff that doesn't cost me anything.
2006 The best literary criticism is not necessarily the harshest, but it is almost always the most irritating.
2006 I hate being a Christian like I hate being a Republican.  In both cases, they are just the least disgusting of the available options.
2007 There are two kinds of people in the world - those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't.  If you deny that there are two kinds of people in the world, you may be rational.  But if you deny that people can be divided into two categories, you're wrong.
2007 We all act in our own self interest.  Our only moral differences are in what we believe to be in our best interest, and the amount of delay we are willing to tolerate before gratification.
2007 Love and loyalty are often euphemisms for an exchange of unjust favors.
2007 I can become a good person simply by choosing to.  But to remain a good person without becoming a sanctimonious asshole is beyond my ability.
2007 I can be tortured into the pretense of loving my torturer.  But until then, I am resolved to talk straight and take what comes of it.  I have yet to see a God I love.
2007 About 3 decades ago, I adopted a policy of, "talk straight and take what comes of it."  If I had not adopted that policy I never could have written Abram.  Now that I've written it, I don't intend to abandon that policy in order to sell it.
2007 Abram: Saying something that people don't yet know they need to hear.  I'm trying to sell a cure to people who don't know they're diseased.  It's hard to persuade people to take a step toward sanity when they think they're already sane.
2007 In politics, when you find all the parties disgusting, you can always register as an independent.  In religion, I have not found God to be so accommodating.  For this reason alone, I'm Christian.
2007 I'd rather be sanctimonious than unethical.  I've found no third alternative.
2007 For all I know, there may be people living today who like Shakespeare.  But I am certain that there are people who pretend to like Shakespeare just to impress other people who pretend to like Shakespeare.
2007 If you think you probably should do X, then you necessarily should do X, even if the end result of X shows that you should not have done X.  Epistemological "should" is unrelated to ontological "should".
2007 Failure to do a sufficient amount of good deeds makes you feel evil.  Doing a sufficient amount of good deeds makes you feel righteous.  Exceeding that amount makes you feel stupid.
2007 My regret at offending those who don't deserve it is generally outweighed by the joy of offending those who do.
2007 Switched from Republican to independent.  I just wish God offered such an option.
2007 I'm a Goldwater Christian: I'd rather be right than saved.
2007 The 2 basic choices of sentient life are nihilism or non-nihilism.  Morally conscious persons prefer non-nihilism, which requires faith in a particular explanation of how it is the case.  But once a morally conscious person figures out that non-nihilism is the only sensible bet, no faith is required to bet on it and all of its pre-requisites - primarily a just God.  Faith in a particular explanation is epistemologically unnecessary, but so far, I've found it spiritually necessary.  i.e. Refraining from commitment causes unacceptable stress.
2007 Allying with a faction requires either a lot of moral certitude or a lot of self interest.
2007 Faith in any particular thing should be a theory to be tested, not a lifetime commitment to be clung to regardless of its consequences.
2007 Rules don't bend.  People bend in order to break them without calling it what it is.
2007 Religion at its best is a search for the least stupid alternative to nihilism.
2007 Never put anything in your shirt pocket that will cause you distress if it falls out when you lean over to flush a toilet.
2007 There is an important difference between truth seekers and lie exposers.  Truth seekers look for truth.  Lie exposers look for lies.
2007 Truth seekers, question lovers, and argument lovers are all separate categories.  When they overlap, it is only coincidental.
2007 It's not easy to overcome one's fear of an evil God, and still maintain proper respect for the God with whom one must deal.
2007 No need to argue.  Just get right, stay right, keep saying right stuff, and wait till people catch on.
2008 A less correct theory that you can relate to is often more beneficial than a more correct theory that you can't relate to.
2008 A man once told me he was trying to understand my position.  But our discourse revealed that he was just trying to fit it into a category he already understood, even after it was shown to be outside those categories.
2008 Any creature that is going to be rewarded or punished for its behavior has an inalienable right to have its behavior corrected if it asks for correction.
2008 The kind of men who say, "all men are pigs," actually are pigs who try to justify being pigs by saying all men are like them.
2008 Proven existence of a pattern does not prove it continues beyond where it is proven to exist.
2008 If I did everything I should do before starting, I could never start.
2008 I will not be bound by the childish concept of God required by my ancestors, or by any of the adolescent attempts to upgrade that childish concept.  My Creator designed me to think, and I will think without apology.  But there remains that invisible line, the other side of which is error, and some errors are costly.  I need correction from outside.  I assume that asking God for such correction is sufficient.  It appears to have worked so far.
2008 Possibly I'm prejudiced, but it appears that among all the Semites, the Jews are the only ones with a sense of humor.
2008 If doing good does not ultimately benefit the doer of it, there is ultimately no reason to do it.
2008 Justice is, and should be, dependent on economics.  No person, community, or nation should be required to grant any individual more justice than it is worth to those who pay for the legal system that provides it.
2008 Nothing screws up a person's sense of justice more than faith in an unjust God.
2008 The worst thing about being perfectly correct is that by the time the world figures it out, you'll probably be dead.
2008 Most people start out as truth-seekers.  But they drop out one by one as they see what it's going to cost them.
2008 People who want to know truth can learn to figure out anything figureoutable.  People who don't want to know truth cannot be forced to recognize even the most obvious elements of it.
2008 No one would ever be disillusioned if lying bastards didn't fill them full of illusions in the first place.
2008 Nothing is more expensive than integrity - mine, not theirs.
2008 If you desire a better deal than you deserve, then you deserve to live in a world full of people who desire a better deal than they deserve.
2008 Scripture is necessary to tell us that there is historical evidence of a God.  But faith in that God does not imply faith in scripture as the inspired Word of that God.
2008 Existence is ontologically more important than justice, because justice needs existence in order to exist.  Justice is axiologically more important than existence, because existence without justice is worse than non-existence.
2008 Sincere believers in God must learn to interpret scripture such that they are not obligated to do the evil things scripture appears to be telling them to do.
2008 I don't talk about the Quran much because there are too many fools who react irrationally when the Quran is talked about rationally.  Any Muslim who reacts irrationally to that statement proves it.
2008 I don't care what you think unless I think you can help me think more correctly - or unless I think you have the sense to let me help you think more correctly.  That means I don't care what most people think.
2008 Conservatives confuse tradition with ethics and law with justice.  This causes liberals to put equality above ethics and love above justice.
2008 "Seek, and you will find," is necessarily true.  "Seek X, and you will find X," is not necessarily true.
2008 My message is anti-bullshit.  And I can't find anyone to help me sell it except professional bullshitters.  They keep offering me advice on how to be a better whore.
2008 You can't know more than your epistemology allows you to know.  The best epistemology allows you to know all that is knowable without allowing you to think you know anything you don't know.
2008 August 18:  Jesus has just told me to shift my focus from correctness to cooperative effort with other Christians.  This will be interesting because other Christians are so terribly incorrect.
2008 I can't make anyone more correct, but I can help them become as correct as they want to be.  Of course, if they are already as correct as they want to be, there's no point in talking.
2008 Wrong beliefs are challenged by circumstances more often than correct beliefs are challenged.
Stupid beliefs are challenged by other people more often than intelligent beliefs are challenged.
2008 There are no levels of honesty.  There are, however, levels of dishonesty.
2008 The only requirements for human knowledge to exist, and logic to be reliable are a Supreme Being in whose mind knowledge & logic reside, and that this Being is either identical to or in agreement with the God who created mankind, and that the God who created mankind jumpstarted the connection between brain cells and knowledge.
2008 Two kinds of people are worth my social time: those who can teach me something, and those whom I can teach something.
2008 There's a big difference between knowing truth and learning to parrot authority figures.  Most people learn to parrot authority figures, and pass it off as knowing truth.  Truth is known by applying critical thinking to personal experience.
2008 The blacks are the new Jews, and the Hispanics are the new blacks.  How come white men are still the assholes?
2008 If you want truthiness, nothing feels truthier than Gospel Truth.  If you want truth, forget about how it feels.
2008 I would rather deserve good things and not have them, than have good things and not deserve them.
2008 All emotions and emotion based mindsets impair probability judgment.
Emotion based mindsets include: optimism & pessimism, faith & cynicism.
2008 You cannot be liked and right in the land of the wrong.
2008 There are people who know how to talk integrity, but don't recognize it when they see it.  I can only hope I'm not one of them.
2008 Evidence of a possibility doesn't imply evidence of a probability.
2008 It doesn't matter what the meaning of life is.  We can't possibly know it, so we have to place a bet.  I choose to bet on justice, not because it appears to exist, but because life is disgusting without it.
2008 Prov. 14:12  There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
My response:  If, in order to live, a man must abandon what seems right, what good is living?
But I admit that the best philosophical position may not be in one's best interest.
2008 Don't read between the lines until you've read the lines.
2008 An ideal world can exist only in the realm of idea.  Even God can't make one in extension.
2008 All other things being equal, it is moral to kill one person in order to save two people.  Morality is subject to arithmetic.
2009 Humor is an alternate way of looking at what would otherwise be stupid, tragic, or disgusting.
2009 If I read something about God, I won't know if it's true until I verify it by experience.  So I might as well just experiment.
If I read some convoluted reasoning, I won't know if it's true until I figure it out.  So I might as well just figure stuff out.
2009 Relationship with God starts with religion.  But it doesn't stay there.
2009 Tell them what they want to hear, and you get rich.
Tell them what they need to hear, and you get ignored.
2009 Under a just system, worthwhile life is possible only for just people.
Under an unjust system, worthwhile life is possible only for unjust people.
2009 When a paradigm makes no logical sense, there's a wrong premise, either in the paradigm or in my mind.
2009 When two descriptions or definitions differ only in precision, the more precise is the more accurate.  But precision itself does not imply accuracy.
2009 When failure to make sense is the point of the joke, and the joke is funny, you are not far from nihilism.
2009 Statements exist that are perfectly clear and obviously true.  But no statement is so clear or obvious that it cannot be challenged by someone who wants to challenge it.  Such people will surely challenge any defense of that statement, and are likely to do so ad nauseam.
2009 Failure to be believed is no reason to quit speaking the truth.  But it is sufficient reason to abandon a stupid audience.
2009 Truth seekers pursue conclusions.  Truth avoiders pursue tangents.
2009 If you'd rather be safe than right, you're neither.
2009 I don't need to know what a person deserves in order to know that I want him to get what he deserves.
2009 A Christian friend once asked, "Why are Christians stupid?"  I propose it's because God designed Christianity for stupid people, knowing that the smart people would figure it out.
2009 Philosophy has been hijacked by theorists, and must be taken back by truth seekers who just figure out what's true and don't need to justify it with a theory.
2009 No person, including me, cares intrinsically about truth and/or justice.  We all care about getting what we want.  Those of us who care about truth and/or justice care about it extrinsically, because we believe we can't ultimately get what we want apart from the confines of truth and justice.
2009 Good & evil are not hard to figure out once you decide to figure them out rather than let other people tell you what they are.  Good & evil exist subjectively and objectively.
Subjective good is pleasure; subjective evil is displeasure.
Objective good is disserved pleasure and disserved displeasure.
Objective evil is undisserved pleasure and undisserved displeasure.
What is disserved is that quantity of pleasure or displeasure that one expected to cause by his willful actions.
2009 I do not believe scripture (Bible or otherwise) to be inspired by any deity in the sense that everything in it is true, or that the directives are applicable to all generations following those to whom the books were written.  I do, however, believe scripture (at least most of the Bible) to be inspired by the God to whom mankind is accountable in the sense that the directives were applicable to the generation to whom the books were written, and to a limited and/or diminishing sense applicable to succeeding generations.  I also believe scripture (at least the Bible) to be inspired in the sense that God inspired men to leave a record of their efforts to understand and communicate with God, so that succeeding generations can learn from the successes and failures of their predecessors.  I think this position is not only more philosophically and pragmatically defensible, but also more scripturally defensible.
2009 An author may not mean what he says.  But he damn well says what he says.  And what he says means something, whether the author meant it or not.
2009 Once you admit that you don't believe bullshit, being classified as an atheist comes with the territory.
2009 If you accept gifts from an unethical person, it's only a matter of time before he asks you to do something unethical in return.
2009 Without justice, love keeps things alive that would be better off dead.
Without love, justice cannot sustain life.
2009 It has been my experience that "seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness" leads to a disgusting quality of life, with little in return but the promise of doing well on Judgment Day.  But then I haven't asked for much more than to do well on Judgment Day.
2009 If a creator (Supreme Being or otherwise) does not provide worthwhile life to those members of his creation who prove worthy of it, then that creator is evil.  Proving worthy of worthwhile life does not imply never erring.  It implies trying not to err, and trying to correct errors made.
2009 If God provides revelation, and doesn't make it look like revelation, He can't expect people to believe it was revelation.  And He can't rightly punish a person for disbelieving that it was revelation.  But a person can rightly be held accountable for obeying what he believes to be revelation.  Divine revelation is relative to individuals.  Any statement or set of statements is divine revelation if believing it would cause a person to conform more closely to God's will.  The same statement or set of statements ceases to be divine revelation when believing it no longer has that effect.
2009 Most people have a disgusting habit of calling things what they are not.  This is to be expected when they are selling stuff.  But sometimes it's just to muddle issues.
2009 Indiscriminate correction of errors can itself become a moral error, because often people's errors are all that keeps them out of nihilism.
2009 A truth seeker is always on the edge of nihilism.  All that keeps him from falling over that edge is an assumed connection with an assumed personal Creator who is assumed to be good.
2009 Some pain is necessary.  Some pain is beneficial.  And some pain is there to tell you you're doing something wrong.  Only experimentation can teach you which is which.
2009 Any time you say, "X is possible," you risk being accused of saying, "X is true."  If you say you believe X is true, you risk being accused of saying you know X is true.
2009 If you don't understand what I mean, I may have said it wrong.  But if I said it right, and you don't understand it, you're not listening.
2009 A righteous God may require you to lie to the Gestapo, but He will never require you to lie to Him.
2009 If God loves sycophancy more than integrity, I don't want God's love.
2009 Morally correct behavior can't be overdone.  But some particular morally correct actions may be done to such an extent that they are no longer morally correct.  And some morally correct principles may be overdone or applied in such a way that is not morally correct.
2009 The purpose of law is to achieve justice.  It doesn't always succeed.  When law fails to achieve justice, one of the few people in a position to do something about it is a juror.  A juror should strive for justice even if he has to violate law.
2009 The Golden Rule can be overdone.  I prefer that people talk straight with me without regard for ego.  Most people don't like me to do that with them.
2009 The stupidest part of a human being is ego.  All of its efforts to feel superior become counter-productive when you realize that only a low self-esteemer would do that sort of thing.
2009 Never accept the necessity of illusion.  Or if you must, then strive to need less of it.
2009 If you're blatantly right, the religious establishment will generally admit it - after you and everyone who called you a heretic are quite dead.
2009 In general, accuracy is more important than clarity, and clarity is more important than precision.  But a less accurate paradigm that you can understand is often more beneficial than a more accurate paradigm that you can't understand.
2009 There appears to be a great difference between what is true and what I want to be true.  But there is no conflict between what is true and what I want to be true, only because I choose to keep those categories separate - despite social pressure to let them merge.
2009 I would rather live in a dangerous place and enjoy living, than live in a safe place and not enjoy living.  But I don't need danger to enjoy living.  I do, however, need some things I don't have presently.
2009 Yes, I'm self righteous.  I wish everybody were self-righteous - as long as they're righteous.
2009 The concept of infinity implies logical conclusions that violate the law of excluded middle.
2009 Some physical phenomena can't be explained without either violating the law of excluded middle, or conceding that no physical thing is what it appears to be.
2009 There's real morality and bullshit morality.  Real morality excludes those actions which adversely affect the ratio of pleasure to displeasure in the universe.  Bullshit morality excludes those actions which offend the prevailing power structure.
2009 I no longer care about liking people and being liked by them.  I care only about helping people and being helped by them.  This feels like dangerous ground.  I may be going too far.  I will experiment with it and find out.
2009 The fact that you can imagine a category doesn't mean you can imagine anything in it.
A category exists called paradoxes.
The category of paradoxes includes all and only those things which are irrational.
Some imaginary things exist in the category of paradoxes,  e.g.  irrational numbers.
It cannot be known if any non-imaginary thing exists in the category of paradoxes, because anything non-imaginary that appears to be a paradox may be a rational thing interpreted incorrectly.
2009 It is always better to help (i.e. improve) a person than to be liked by him.
But some people won't let you help them unless they like you.
Though a principle may be clearly correct, the application of it may require trial and error.
2009 Hell is a place where people reproduce in order to outpopulate their enemies.
2009 Intelligent company may not make you more intelligent, but rational company will make you more rational.  Conversely, irrational company will make you more irrational.
2009 Complexity is often a euphemism for inconsistency.
2009 I know that I know some things.  But I don't know how I know anything, because I don't know the mechanism by which stuff is known.
2009 I think thoughts beyond my pay grade, because my Creator designed me to think them.  I owe Him no apology for them.
2009 When the odds appear to be in your favor, bet as much as you can afford to lose.  When the odds appear to be against you, don't bet any more than you must.  But when there is only one chance of winning, bet all you have on it regardless of odds.
2009 Heaven and hell are places to meet others of your own kind.
2009 Any community of people will evolve sub-communities whom the majority would be better off without.
2009 When I speak normally and say things they don't want to hear, they either misunderstand or ask for greater precision.  When I speak with enough precision to eliminate all ambiguity, they accuse me of double-talk.
2009 Better to be a servant in a just world than a king in an unjust world.
2009 Justice exists as an abstract concept.  General rules exist that tell us how to achieve justice.  But any set of rules, followed to the letter, will produce some cases of injustice.
2009 I don't give a damn how I'm remembered in this world.  I care how I do in the next one.
2009 I'm arrogant.  I became arrogant when I learned critical thinking.  And though I try not to express myself any more arrogantly than necessary, I would rather be blatantly arrogant, than humble but misleading.
2009 Fuck ego.  Mine as well as yours.  It's the basest of all motivators, it's socially destructive, and it hinders truth seeking.  Ego is an enemy of correctness.
2009 If the quality of your eternal life depends on believing things that appear improbable, then the creator of the system is evil.
2009 You can read books all your life, and never know if you've been told the truth.
Do one experiment, and you know more than you knew before you did it.
2009 The suppression of justice by tradition rarely lasts long once it is recognized as such.
2009 If you find truth insulting, you deserve to be insulted.
2009 Errors warrant correction, however unpleasant it needs to be in order to correct.  But the only behavior that warrants punishment is failure to do what one believes he should do.
2009 Survival of the fittest does not imply survival of those people who believe truth.  It implies survival of those who believe whatever is most conducive to survival.
2009 Don't allow yourself to want something that you probably won't get unless you pretend to be what you're not.
2009 Duty is a socially imposed concept that is linked to morality only in some particular instances.  No one is morally obligated to acknowledge duty as binding.
2009 After you have pushed the envelope so far that it no longer envelops anything, you must either make another envelope or accept nihilism.
2009 If you do what the Bible tells you to do, you will eventually acquire enough personal experiences that those experiences will be more reliable than anything the Bible tells you.
2009 The moral purpose of law may be to achieve justice, but the effective purpose is to benefit legislators.  Only when legislators see justice as beneficial to them will they make just laws.
2009 Just as objects are attracted together, so are soul/spirits.  The difference is medium vs. message.  Objects are attracted by physical forces: magnetism, gravity - the medium.  Souls are attracted by intellectual understanding of experienced reality - the message.  Bodies of scripture are soul-magnets.
2010 A question is epistemologically unanswerable if it is illogical, unclear, or based on a false premise.  Refusal to answer a question for any other reason is emotionally motivated.
2010 Reality can't be taught.  It must be figured out.  You can help a person figure out only those parts he wants to figure out.
2010 A spiritual error can cost years or even decades of wasted time.
2010 DO NOT CARE about arguing well!  Care about being right.
2010 God designed our recognition of math, logic, probability, justice, and ethics.  Though this recognition may be eclipsed by social programming and/or emotional greed, God would not design us to think one way, and then tell us to think contrary to it.  If a conflict exists between what we are designed to think, and what God appears to be telling us to think, we can't be mistaken about what we are designed to think, unless we have allowed social programming and/or emotional greed to eclipse it.  Otherwise we must be mistaken about what God is telling us to think.  God may, however, tell us to do something we don't want to do, even though He designed us not to want to do it.
2010 Talking about a question doesn't mean you've answered it.
2010 My dreams have proven that I am basically an immoral being coerced into moral behavior by fear of punishment.  I'm not ashamed of this fact, because I've no reason to think anyone else is a bit better.
2010 I can be coerced into behaving other than I now behave.  But I can't be coerced into thinking other than I now think.  That requires either new data, or a change in my processing ability.
2010 To have the option to terminate existence, or not to have it:  that is the question.
2010 A thing cannot precede (logically or temporally) the parts of which it is made.  Therefore the Supreme Being either has no parts, or is not made of His parts.  It should not be hard to figure out that the latter is correct.
2010 A perfect worldview cannot be recognized as perfect by a finite mind.  Any worldview held by a finite mind is necessarily imperfect.  The best a finite mind can do is to adopt that worldview which appears to have the least amount of epistemological defects.  This worldview will not necessarily be the most comfortable, or even life-supportive, because life may in fact ultimately cost more than it is worth.  Worthwhile life, if it exits, can be found and sustained only by continuing to adopt that worldview which appears to be the least epistemologically defective.  The least epistemologically defective worldview should be adopted even if it kills you.
2010 Living an ideology is not the same as living as a salesman for an ideology.  There will be times when a salesman will have to either fake the manifestation of the ideology he is selling or lie about its benefits.
2010 I've never liked being alone.  I just like it better than stupid company.  And I've gotten terribly used to it.
2010 To deny the existence or efficacy of a category that is part of your own operating system is an error -- specifically a hypocritical error.
2010 If the principles by which you judge the truth of scripture are more lenient than the principles by which you judge the truth of other ancient literature, you're not looking for truth; you're looking for faith.
2010 Truth seekers are people who want to push the cutting edge of their understanding of reality.  Truth seekers are not faith seekers.  But truth seekers don't object to faith where truth can't be known, and faith offers pragmatic benefits.
2010 A finite mind can only tolerate a certain amount of truth at any given time.  But that amount will increase if, when you are able to tolerate more, you try to find it.
2010 "That which should be" is an imaginary state of affairs that resides only in a mind.  If there is no objective mind, there is no objective "should".
2010 Recognition of truth happens one step at a time.  If you tell someone something that is perfectly true, but more than one step ahead of what he already knows, he won't recognize it as true.  Better to find out what he already knows, and help him figure out the next step.
2010 I could never make sense of the Bible until I figured out that it doesn't make sense.  Then it all made sense.
2010 All willful activity is an effort to get what you want.  All social activity is an effort to get other people to do what you want.  The only social system that will not ultimately self-destruct is one in which the participants want justice.
2010 Romulans vs. klingons, predators vs. aliens, vampires vs. lycans, republicans vs. democrats.  Good vs. evil at least made some sense.  Evil vs. evil is not interesting.
2010 Humility should not be used as a general guiding principle.  It causes people who are right to defer or apologize to people who are wrong.  Ethically, a person who thinks he is right should not defer or apologize to a person whom he believes to be wrong even when that person has clobbering power.  Also, if a person places value on humility, every time he says something humble, it is more likely to be a lie than if he did not value humility.
2010 Saying things more precisely helps you understand truth and reality more correctly.  But speaking with maximum precision is not always worth the trouble.
2010 Faith in the power of God (any version of God) to do miracles does not imply faith that any particular miracle attributed to that God actually happened - unless of course that God is defined as the God who did that particular miracle - which is possible for some versions of God, but not necessary for any version of God - unless that miracle necessarily happened in order for present reality to exist.
2010 Seymour was quite proud of his vision, having never seen what he was missing.
2010 If any two parts of a theory or worldview are inconsistent, that theory or worldview is necessarily incorrect.
2010 Emotions are incorrigibly greedy.  Nothing can be done about it.  You can't repent of it.  It's pointless to apologize for it, and stupid to be ashamed of it, because we are all designed that way.  The best you can do is to refrain from acting on emotions when doing so appears to be stupid or immoral.
2010 In a just system:
  1. every person gets what he deserves, and is able to act so as to deserve enough of what he wants that if he gets it, he will want to exist.
  2. unjust people may exist, but when they get caught, they will be appropriately punished.
  3. all unjust people will get caught, but some may avoid capture for a long time.
  4. the effort to catch and punish unjust people will cost the public no more than the majority is willing to pay for.
2010 Once a unit of matter can be made to feel pain, it can be coerced to do anything it is able to do.
2010 I'm not trying to be understood by the most people.  I'm trying to be understood by the most rational people.
2010 You always know what you want to do, unless you want to do what you should do, and you don't know what you should do, in which case you don't know what you want to do.
2010 A logical possibility does not require evidence.  It requires lack of contrary evidence.
2010 Jesus said many stupid things because those things communicated effectively to his ignorant audience.  That fact does not require him to say the same stupid things to us.  Nor does it require us to feign ignorance, much less stupidity, in order to submit to him.
2010 If God wanted you to believe stupid stuff, He would have made you stupid.
2010 Illegitimate concepts exist:  e.g.  square circle.
Impossible hypotheticals exist:  e.g.  illogical universe.
The existence of people who propose illegitimate concepts does not make those concepts legitimate.
The existence of people who propose impossible hypotheticals does not make those hypotheticals possible.
2010 Evil creators may exist.
An evil creator is one who does one or more of the following:
1.  compels a member of his creation to exist after that creature desires not to exist, and:
a.  that creature has done nothing deserving of punishment
    or
b.  that creature has already been justly punished for infractions of justice
unless that creator adequately compensates that creature for undeserved grief, such that the creature becomes grateful for the sum total of its existence up to that point
2.  promises reward for doing things deserving of reward, and does not pay up

Any non-omnipotent emotional being has motivation to be evil.
Only the Supreme Being can possibly be omnipotent, but He is not necessarily omnipotent.
It is possible that our creator is not identical to the Supreme Being.
Though our creator programmed knowledge of good & evil into us, he may still be evil.
2010 Unpleasant thoughts can be blocked temporarily by faith in pleasant hypotheses.  But unpleasant thoughts keep returning until they are worked thru and resolved.  Once a thought is resolved, the pleasant hypothesis is shown to be true, false, or irrelevant.  Therefore faith in it becomes obsolete.  Though faith is necessary to keep minds out of depression and nihilism, it is a stop-gap measure at best, and should not be cultivated as a way of life.  Figuring out truth should be a way of life.  If truth does not support sentient life, then sentient life is stupid to try to preserve itself.  "The just shall live by faith" only until they figure out that justice is necessary to worthwhile life whether faith - in justice or anything else - exists or not.
2010 If your reasons for faith are themselves faith-based, then you have no reason for faith.  You only have faith, however decorated it may be with circular reasoning.
2010 Arrogance can be either voluntary action or an involuntary self-opinion.
As self-opinion, arrogance is an unavoidable side effect of:
    1.  understanding critical thinking in a world full of people who don't.
    2.  knowing what you're talking about.
Arrogant speech is justified when its benefit to its target audience exceeds its annoyance to its coincidental audience.
2010 Christian bibliolatry is a theological error, the existence of which necessitates a counter-error, which is provided by Islam.
2010 Creeds pressure people into pretending to believe things they don't believe in order to be accepted by a community who appears to believe them, and/or by a God who appears to require belief in them.  Creeds also cause people to believe that the pretense of believing things they don't believe will eventually causse true belief.
2010 If there is an afterlife, and it is managed justly, there are 2 kinds of wealth not lost at death: deserved reward for good works and eternal knowledge, such as math, logic, and spiritual matters.
2010 Getting to your destination as quickly as possible in the physical world is helped by surpassing those ahead of you.  In the spiritual world, the effort to surpass those ahead of you causes delay.
2010 I have no confidence in my own political opinions, because they are all borne from other people's testimony.  Most other people are liars.  Even when they think they are telling the truth, they are likely to be wrong, or missing relevant parts of the issue.  I prefer to focus on that truth which I can figure out or discover by experiment.
2010 Justice is not hard to figure out, once you abandon the idea that God is necessarily just.
2010 Justice (that which is deserved) is consistent with grace (unmerited favor) if and only if those who ask for grace are made to live in community with others of their own kind, until they get sick of it, and ask for what they deserve, so that they might live among others who want only what they deserve.
2010 Civic duty is subordinate to moral duty.  This does not imply that all civic duty is moral.  Moral duty may require disobedience to civic duty.
2010 Emotions are so stupid that they try to make you act contrary to their own best interests.
2010 A creature is able to deserve reward or punishment if, and only if, it has free will and knowledge of good and evil.
2010 A God who compels the existence of creatures that don't want to exist and don't deserve punishment is an evil God.
2010 If you think a personal God exists, you may be insane.  But if a personal God doesn't exist, nihilism is true, and it doesn't matter if you're insane.
2010 The fact that I believe in God and Jesus does not mean I believe in Christian bullshit.
2010 If heaven is accessible only by children and gullible people, then if it exists, its inhabitants are probably being cheated.
2010 Critical thinking is composed of six parts:
1.  understanding of logic
2.  term/concept distinction
3.  disambiguation of terms
4.  identification of concepts and categories
5.  recognition of the three categorical relationships:
separation, intersection, hierarchy
6.  recognition of proper categorization of concepts
Assuming that a person has no intellectual defects, his chief obstacle to learning and applying critical thinking is emotion,  i.e. emotional preference for the truth or falsity of a particular statement.
2010 Probability judgment is more likely to be correct when it is made without emotion or willful choice.
2010 Telling a person to get his head out of his ass does not make him more likely to do so.
2010 Trying to conduct a philosophical discussion with people on this planet is like playing chess with someone who acknowledges no obligation to either make a legal move or admit defeat.
2010 Truth insults no one who doesn't deserve it.
2010 In most fields of study, he who has read the most understands the most.  In philosophy, he who has read the most may intimidate, but he who understands critical thinking the best understands reality the best, and can be most helpful.
2010 If you must ignore truth in order to satisfy your emotions, it is only a matter of time before that satisfaction ends up costing your emotions more than it was worth.
2010 That which is beneficial for the human race is not necessarily that which is beneficial for any subset of it.
2010 That which is ultimately beneficial is not necessarily that which is immediately beneficial.
2010 The only moral principle universally applicable to any sentient creature is that he should always do what he thinks he should do.  If other universal principles exist, they cannot be known, much less articulated, by anyone but the Supreme Being.  Moral principles generally applicable to persons and communities exist, and can be known and articulated, but always carry exceptions to the rule.
2010 There exists a set of statements that is universally true.  That set begins with math & logic, but extends beyond math & logic.  Some of those statements may be unknowable.  It is beneficial to any sentient being to know as many of those statements as possible, because all of his knowledge rests on those statements.  Next after math & logic follows an elucidation of the types of knowledge.
2010 Mental conversion is not the moment when probability judgment changes.  It's the moment when that change overcomes emotional resistance.
2010 The ostensive purpose of sacrament, ritual, and liturgy is to serve as physical illustrations of spiritual realities.  It cannot be known if these acts have any real spiritual benefit.  But they definitely have emotional benefit to some people, in that they offer trivial and easily obeyed directives to those who want to feel God-compliant, while ignoring God's more important and costly directives, such as those that interfere with one's pursuit of happiness.
2010 I'm pursuing happiness as fast as I can - just not in this life.
2010 There is a big difference between a question-lover and a truth-seeker.  If you just like asking questions, say so, and I'll quit trying to answer them for you.
2010 A question-lover is, at best, a fledgling truth-seeker.  If, after finding some truth, a question-lover refuses to graduate, he becomes a phony truth-seeker.
2010 Intuition is not categorically opposed to reason.  The degree to which intuition has proven reliable is the degree to which it is rational to rely on it.
2010 Figure out what can be done, and quit trying to do what can't be done.  Care about only those things that end in results you care about, and are affected by being cared about.
2010 They ask me,  "Whose side are you on?" Answer:  "The side of truth and justice, to the best of my ability."
2010 Minds are finite.  They can handle only a finite amount of truth.  Even if that amount is constantly increasing, it is forever finite.  Minds stuck in bodies can handle even less truth.  The learning process causes stress, which if overdone, damages bodies.
2010 Even if I fade into oblivion, my thoughts will re-emerge, simply because they are more reasonable than those of tradition.
2010 Honest self-expression is evil, if and only if, it influences people to do more evil than good.
2010 Any set of beliefs which shows visible benefits to believers will attract hypocrites who pretend to believe them and don't.
2010 You don't need one bit of faith to bet your soul on a righteous God once you figure out that the only alternative is nihilism.
2010 If you are forgiven as you forgive others, it doesn't take a genius to see that the way to beat the system is to cheat more than you are cheated.  Paul's attempted rebuttal (Rom 6) is an emotional statement of how things should be ideally.  It does not refute the logic of system manipulators.  Considering all the monks and clergy who have ever lived, surely some of them must have seen this.  Yet I see no record of it.  That frightens me.
2010 If you believe in God and Jesus, but don't believe everything the Bible tells you to believe, I can help you.  If you have a satisfactory system that allows you to believe everything the Bible tells you to believe, then ignore me.
2010 The Nuclear Age cannot afford any religion that promises reward for killing people who do not believe in that religion.
2010 I don't like being a spiritual hermit, but it's better than conforming to a pathological society.
2010 Truths can be learned in the wrong order, and thereby cause confusion.  Remember this when God refuses to answer your question, and when people fail to see your obvious correctness.
2010 The purpose of scripture is to get people connected up with God.  It must be simplistic because people are ignorant. It must be assuring because people are frightened.  After scripture has accomplished the connection, it has no further spiritual value.  All subsequent spiritual progress comes from personal interrelationship with God.  Scripture then becomes the refuge of those who want justification of ignorance and reassurance of safety without further spiritual maturation.
2010 The scripturalists' hidden creed behind their stated creeds:
  1. Choose the scriptures you like, and interpret them at face value.
  2. Formulate a theology around those scriptures.
  3. Locate all scriptures that are inconsistent with that theology.
  4. Reinterpret those scriptures to mean what you want them to mean.
2010 You owe God no apology for being what he made you.
2010 It is not possible to create a creature in a state of deserving punishment.
If it were possible, only an evil creator would do it.
2010 Every community has the right to define itself - as long as the terms of its definition don't violate the rules of the greater community of which it is a part.
2010 Integrity and community are necessarily in tension.  Every point by which a community is defined is a point at which integrity will require some persons to depart from it.
2010 Absolutists don't hate relativists.  We just hate contented relativists.  We really enjoy watching relativists try to make sense apart from an absolute.
2010 All worldviews contain blank spots caused by lack of data.  Those blank spots are rightly called "mysteries".  But if known data conflicts with your worldview, that conflict is no mystery.  It means your worldview is wrong.
2010 When social status in a community depends on commitment to the community's ideology, zealots rule, regardless of merit.
2010 I assert that there is no such thing as an irrational possibility, but I can't prove it.
2010 Truth is indifferent to life.  Some truth supports life.  Some truth kills.  An indiscriminate truth seeker is dangerous to himself and others.  An indiscriminate truth publisher even more so.
2010 When a truth seeker over-doses on truth, but still hasn't found the truth he needs, his only choices are faith or nihilism - the same choices he had when he started.
2010 You think it's morally good to save the life of a starving child, even when that child is likely to grow up and produce more starving children.  That's stupid, and you all know it.  But you pretend not to know it because the Bible tells you to.  And you think the Bible is the Word of God.  If the "Word of God" exists at all, it's what God tells you to do now, not what he tells someone else to do, much less what he told other people to do 2,000 years ago.
2010 If it eats, it shits.  Minds are no exception.
2010 When life imitates art, both get stupider.
2010 When confronted with any proposition, an epistemologically based mind asks, "Is this statement true (or probably true)?"  An axiologically based mind asks, "Should I believe this statement is true (or probably true)?"  My mind is epistemologically based.  I think epistemology is the only correct or even "good" base for a mind.  Therefore I think my mind should be epistemologically based.  But it has not led to worthwhile life.  Therefore I must admit that I may be somehow wrong.
2010 If another Reformation is coming, it won't be from people who pretend the Bible doesn't say what it obviously says.  It will be from people who admit they see what they see, and think what they think, and reject any authority that tells them otherwise.  Just like the protestants short circuited the pope by going directly to the Bible, the next wave will short circuit the Bible by going directly to Jesus.
2010 You can cover up what you are with lies, but you can't repair it with lies.  Lies will change you, but that change will not be healthy.
2010 Amenities serve little purpose but to generate the illusion of obligation to return the supposed courtesy.
2010 Even if you can't tell it like it is, you can at least admit it appears to be what it appears to be – at least as much as you can get away with without getting punished for it.  If you don't do at least that much, you have no right to claim any integrity at all.  I wish I could say more.
2011 Any given law is good if and only if the justice caused by it exceeds the injustice caused by it.  Any law may be good for a time (year, century, millennium, etc.) and then turn bad.
2011 Loving people muddles your thinking – especially your priorities.  I'm glad I love nothing but truth and justice.
2011 The world is made a better place by the fact of certain people being offended in certain ways.  I try to commit such offence whenever convenient.  I think the good caused by this effort outweighs the harm caused by occasionally going over the line.
2011 Faith is not the only alternative to nihilism.  The simple decision to bet on the possibility most likely to offer worthwhile life doesn't take a bit of faith, and it provides a firm foundation on which to operate, without any false knowledge claims.
2011 Santa Claus teaches children an important lesson – you can't trust your parents to tell you the truth about reality.
2011 Perfect justice may be impossible to achieve, even for God.  But the effort to approximate justice within the confines of one's budget is perfectly realistic for any sentient being or community.
2011 I have a dream today.  I have a dream that I will one day live in a world where the truth of statements will not be judged by the credentials of their conveyor but by the correctness of their content.
2011 I don't know for sure that miracles don't exist, or that none ever happened, or will happen.  I don't even know that I've never witnessed one.  I only know that I don't remember seeing any event that could not be explained otherwise.
2011 There are many people in the world – mostly old men – who truly want their lives to be worth something, but have failed in that effort.  So they come up with theories of how the world or the nation might be saved if everyone would but listen to them.  I greatly fear becoming one of these old farts – or possibly having already become so.
2011 A mortal creature cannot be tortured forever, and can therefore choose martyrdom.
An immortal creature can be tortured forever, cannot choose martyrdom, and therefore can be coerced into doing anything its creator wants, including lying to mortal creatures in order to sell them immortality.
2011 A living being having infinite power can do anything it wants to do.
Only an evil being wants to cause undeserved displeasure.
Therefore a living being who causes undeserved displeasure is either evil or does not have infinite power.
2011 Committees don't produce the best ideas.  They produce the ideas least objected to.
2011 When truth is overwhelming, confusion is protective.
2011 Most people don't have a coherent worldview.  They have disassociated pieces of worldviews.  Once a person sees the necessity of a coherent worldview, he works toward a stable worldview.  A stable worldview is emotionally acceptable and lacks unignorable epistemological inconsistencies.  Epistemologically stable worldviews exist on incremental levels rather than on a continuous gradient.  e.g.  Aristotelian, Newtonian, Einstinian.  Once a person is forced to acknowledge an error in a stable worldview, the whole thing collapses, leaving him in crisis until he is able to either adjust to agnosticism or work his way up to the next stable plane.  This is unpleasant and time consuming, which is why people are so resistant to acknowledging even the most glaring error in a comfortable worldview.
Faith is useful as a safety net to keep a person out of nihilism while his worldview is either not yet formed or under reconstruction.  When faith is allowed to be a component part of a worldview, it will continually conflict with epistemology until that worldview is abandoned, or until epistemology is thoroughly subordinated to faith.  Only a worldview gambling on a just afterlife, while admitting ignorance of its existence can keep a person out of nihilism without faith.
2011 After four decades of talking straight, I can testify that integrity feels great.  I love integrity.  It bothers me, however, that I may never know if it has been worth all the nooky I missed.
2011 Problem of the one and the many:   Either I don't understand this problem, or it's a bogus problem created either to sell a bogus solution, or just to sell books on the problem.
2011 The existence of wrong people is no reason not to say right stuff.
The existence of improbable theories is no reason not to say probable stuff is probable.
2011 The effort to be right will not only make you more right than you would have been otherwise, but if pursued it will make you more right than anyone on this planet who doesn't also pursue it.  There is amazingly little competition.
2011 I'll sell truth if I can think of a way to sell it.  But if I can't sell it, I'll still state it to the best of my ability, even knowing that it won't sell, just to have it on record that I stated it.
2011 A person seeking truth has no reason to care about the opinions of those who aren't.
2011 The world is benefitted by both vigilantism and laws against vigilantism.
2011 Humility coming from me feels either phony or sarcastic or both.
2011 Ego masturbation feels the same as integrity when engaged in it, but they can be distinguished in retrospect – I hope.  Ego masturbation stops working once you catch yourself doing it.
2011 If you make up your own term definitions, don't be surprised when nobody speaks your language.
2011 Paul said, "Be followers of me, as I am of Christ."
I say, "Be followers of Christ, as you think Christ wants you to follow him."
2011 Do not fear your own mind.  Your Creator designed you to identify truth, whether or not that truth makes your Creator look good.  Fear your Creator only if you are willfully disobeying him.
2011 For some people, the right to resist the coercive force of truth is more important than accepting or even identifying truth.  Exercising this right is detrimental to one's epistemology.
2011 Neither monism nor dualism can be proven or disproven.  Dualism carries a vast array of arguments, none of them conclusive.  Monism carries no arguments.  It simply declares itself, and then either reiterates the same declaration or shuts up.
2011 If God is just, he will give you what you deserve whether you believe in him or not.   If God is not just, he will screw you over, unless you happen to be a competent enough sycophant to get on his good side.
2011 I care what Plato thinks is true, because his thoughts are milestones in the evolution of truth seeking.  I care what you think is true only if you are seeking truth.  But I don't care what you think Plato thinks, because that is tangential to truth seeking.
2011 There is a serious difference between understanding something and knowing how to talk like you understand it well enough to fool anyone who understands it less.  I despise people who do the latter, and hope to never become one of them.
2011 You have the right to throw off the shackles of logic.  But you will be smarter if you let them bind you.
2011 If you are designed by a creator, then you think what you are designed to think, and you owe him no apology for thinking what you think.  But if you pretend to think what you don't think, because you don't like where those thoughts take you, then you deserve punishment.
2011 The way to get what you ultimately want is to do what you think you should do, even when it doesn't get you what you presently want.
2011 If you're able to understand something, and don't understand it, then you've chosen not to understand it, in order to preserve the apparent benefits of ignorance.
2011 There is no way to compel a chronic point-misser to get the point.  Once I recognize a person as such, I simply quit talking to him.
2011 All minds are finite.  They all have areas where they are looking for more truth, and areas where they've got all they can handle.  A truth seeker in a social situation will look for either people who know something he wants to know, or those areas where people are looking for more truth.
2011 Truth will keep biting you in the ass until you accept it.  So you might as well turn around and embrace it, no matter how ugly it is.
2011 Unless you have found rationality to be always reliable, it is irrational to assume it's always reliable.
2011 I refuse to use the term miracle, because I've never seen an adequate definition of it.  But unless it is taken to mean doing the impossible, I cannot rule it out.
2011 Worship is something that unrestrained egos require of other egos when they have the power to require it.  Certainly the Supreme Being would have no use for it.  Nor would any deity unless he were in competition with other deities, which doesn't happen in monotheism.
2011 Voluntarily divulging information may be rude even if true.  But answering a question truthfully is not rude.  Any questioner who is offended by a straight answer deserves to be offended.
2011 A truth seeker is open minded until he has found truth, and closed minded afterward.  It is the closed minded non-truth seekers who are the assholes.
2011 The best philosophy doesn't come from reading philosophy.  It comes from experimenting and critical thinking.
2011 When I talk straight, I sound like a pompous ass, because I am one.  This is no reason to not talk straight.  I wish I lived in a world where everyone talked straight, regarless of how it sounds.
2011 Justice includes compensation to those who have received undeserved displeasure, and punishment to those who willfully cause undeserved displeasure.
When a deserver of pleasure receives pleasure, that's justice.  When he receives more than he deserves, that's beneficence.
Beneficence is granting undeserved pleasure.  Beneficence is good only when it occurs after justice has been achieved, and only if the beneficiary proves deserving.  A beneficiary proves deserving only when he pays the beneficence back, or pays it forward.
2011 Logical precision can cost more tedium than it's worth – value, in this sense being determined by a person employing logic for the purpose of understanding and/or communicating a concept or concepts – the greatest value being the clearest understanding of, or communication of the concept or concepts in question, and tedium being a negative emotional reaction to a perceived excess of data, which can, in fact, diminish the understanding of, or communication of, that concept or those concepts.
2011 All scripture is sanctioned by God, and is profitable as a record of both good ideas often made obsolete by better ones, and bad ideas worthy of note lest they be revived.
2011 I will not bore God by stupidly repeating the mistakes of my predecessors.  If I must make mistakes, they will be fresh ones.
2011 The stupidest of people are those who fear to get beyond bullshit, because they don't know if there's anything on the other side.
2011 Everyone is primarily a happiness seeker.  Truth seekers are the ones who think truth is necessary in order to sustain happiness.  They seek truth even when it makes them unhappy because they think it's the best way to get the kind of happiness that doesn't end up costing more unhappiness than it's worth.  Truth seekers are theory testers.  They are theory defenders only in opposition to less probable theories.
2011 There necessarily exists a mental faculty apart from logic by which logic is recognized as reliable for determining truth.  That faculty is probably identical to the faculty that recognizes patterns, but this has not been proven.  It has no name that I'm aware of, and is popularly lumped together with either intuition or common sense.  Rather than being a subset of either, it is probably a superset of both.
2011 When your worldview is rationally coherent and not improbable, you don't need faith to believe it.
2011 I don't want to get comfortable where I am.  I want to get to where I'm comfortable.
2011 I know how to be right, but I don't know how to love – because I don't know if life is ultimately worth what it costs.  If it's not, then the most loving thing one person can do for another is kill him.  Love has a nasty habit of keeping things alive that would be better off dead.  I may be one of those things.
2011 The optimal spiritual path is narrow, but it's not straight.  It zigzags.  It alternates between tightening and loosening.
2011 An ethical system is not a game strategy.  When they overlap, it's coincidence.
2011 Anti-war quotes sound cool, but most are oversimplifications at best.  Some wars are justified.  That's not cool, but it's true.
2011 If there is an afterlife, then there are a potentially infinite number of afterlives.  In every one there will be people telling you both truth and lies about God.  Therefore decide here and now to bet your soul not on what you have been told, but on what you know to be right.  When you don't know what is right, bet on what you believe to be right, and ask for correction if you're wrong.  If your Creator is righteous, he will approve of this behavior and reward you justly.  If not, then your existence is an unfortunate but rectifiable accident.
2011 Don't follow me.  Surpass me.  If you can't surpass me, improve me.  If you can't improve me, add to me.  If you can't, add to me, criticize those who claim to surpass, improve, or add to me.  Judge me all you like.  Just don't misrepresent me.
2011 I enjoy playing philosophical chess, but only with people who know the rules and follow them.
2011 It's good to play philosophical chess with God.  Win or lose, you learn something - most importantly that some games are winnable.
2011 "What is X?" is an ambiguous question.  Are you asking what the term means or what the concept is?  i.e.  Are you asking:
Of the concepts conventionally labeled X, which one do you mean?
or
What are the boundaries of concept X?
2011 I would not have remained Christian if I had not explored all of the alternatives before becoming Christian.
2011 Individual rights vs. national security is rarely a clear moral issue.  The manifest displeasure of individual rights violation must be weighed agains the potential displeasure of damage to the state.  I see no way to judge the problem in principle.
2011 Knowledge is always claimed far beyond what the evidence warrants, and people get rich and respected for claiming it.  The ever present temptation to join them diminishes with age.
2011 The Bible is a record of man's failed effort to create a Bible.
2011 The Golden Rule is a great ethic, but a bad social policy for anyone who wants straight talk.  If I talked as straight with other people as I wish they would talk with me, I would be considered rude.
2011 Rules of grammar standardize communication.  But adherence to a standard does not always facilitate communication.
2011 If humanity is to survive, it must be saved from both nihilists and monotheists who serve an evil God.
2011 There is no practical distinction between a known truth and a necessary assumption.  But this does not diminish their epistemic difference.
2011 The probable truth of any premise is judged by its compatibility with other premises assumed to be known.  One false premise in an epistemological foundation nullifies the reliability of all probability judgments built on it.
2011 Conflation of concepts causes confusion.  "Conflating concepts causes confusion" is cleaner, but less clear.
2011 Starving child on a dirt street trying to sell a piece of junk.  For $10. a month I can save her life, so she can grow up and reproduce.  That may have been a moral act, before I did the math.
2011 If believing in a particular version of God saves your soul, I see no way for your God to be just, or for you to have much of a soul.
2011 Art doesn't have to be uplifting, but it shouldn't be downpulling.
2011 If your method of interpreting scripture incites the less intelligent to religious violence, you cannot expect to be allowed into a "heaven" where people are expected to be beyond that crap.
2011 I really enjoy offending those who deserve it.  But that’s a dangerous pleasure to indulge in, because it makes me likely to offend those who don't deserve it.
2011 I didn't become a truth seeker to call myself a truth seeker.  I became a truth seeker to find truth.  Now that I've found some of it, I refuse to pretend not to have found it, so I can call myself open minded.
2011 Rhetoric is the merger of epistemology with politics.  It makes good politics, but bad epistemology.
2011 The premise that anything imaginable is possible results in epistemological nihilism.
2011 If a hermit is murdered in the forest, and no one is displeased by it, was it evil?
2011 Seeking truth increases your comprehension of reality.  Defending a worldview retards your comprehension of reality, even if your worldview is essentially true, because all worldviews created by finite minds have unessential and incorrect parts.
2011 Being offended by profanity is not a natural repugnance like the stink of shit.  It is an acquired taste passed down from parents to children for the sake of conformity to a herd.
2011 Having a dirty mind is not about profanity.  It's about bad logic and epistemology.
2011 No matter how obviously true a statement is, a volitional agnostic cannot be forced to understand it, if he doesn't see a pay off for doing so.
2011 If you're walking the walk, you don't need to talk the talk.  But talking against the walk, is not part of walking the walk.  If you're talking against the talk, you may or may not be walking the walk, depending on what version of the talk you're talking against.
2011

A self referential statement may be:
self affirming, self negating, or neither.
true or false or neither.   e.g.

All statements are true. self affirming   false
All statements are false. self negating false
This statement is true. self affirming neither  
This statement is false. self negating neither
This statement is self affirming.   self affirming true
This statement is self negating. neither true
2011 I'd rather be happy where I am than fondly remembered where I'm not.
2011 Ego, stupid ego.  I see how stupid you are.  They see how stupid you are.  Why do they not see how stupid their's is?
2011 You cannot be loyal to both principles and persons.  That includes the person of Jesus Christ.
2011 Love may or may not be an irresistible force, but truth and justice are definitely immovable objects.  I choose loyalty to truth and justice, and shout my identity into the void.  If there be no echo, I will remain alone.
2012 Human language was designed primarily for solicitation.  Communication happened accidentally.
2012 There is a maximum speed at which a mind can pursue truth safely.  Exceeding that speed will cause stress, which can damage you.
2012 I can't be sure I'm totally free of illusions.  But either I'm more free of illusions than anyone I've ever met, or I'm totally insane.
2012 There exists a faculty not of mind, but of biology, whereby living creatures are forced to want to continue existing, often despite gross unhappiness.  That faculty appears to be necessary in order for life to exist at all, though the cause of that faculty appears to be evil beyond description.  For truth seekers, this is the axiological equivalent of the black hole in the center of the galaxy, which must be discovered, and then pulled away from, to go in some other direction, remembering, but ignoring, the fact that it will eventually swallow you.
2012 Evil exists for no reason but to be conquered, and will continue to exist until then.
2012 I don't want to be harmful, but I don't care if I'm hurtful.
2012 The fact that some people make no distinction between sophists and philosophers does not obligate me to ignore the distinction.
2012 FREE WILL & OMNISCIENCE:  Let's say you (or God) have all the info necessary to accurately predict a persons choices 100% of the time.  That in no way diminishes the person's freedom to choose.  Ability of person A to choose is unaffected by person B's knowledge of what A's choice will be.  An imaginary paradox is generated by the question, "does person A have the ability to choose something other than what omniscient person B knew he would choose?"  The answer is no, but that in no way diminishes person A's freedom to choose, because choosing other than he will choose is outside the realm of possible choices.  Omniscient person B is likewise unable to know person A will choose other than what he will choose.
2012 A masochist is a person with a sense of justice who has done bad things, and hasn't figured out that redemption comes by doing good things.
2012 Who is worse, welfare leeches or corporate plunderers? – if they both act within the law?  Without proper legislation, either set will destroy us.
2012 If you're seeking truth, I can probably help you get to the next step.  If you're seeking comfort or faith, I have nothing to offer you.
2012 Faith is not a spiritual ladder.  Faith is a safety net for when you fall off the ladder.  The ladder is the decision to seek truth, regardless of where it takes you, and the decision to do what you think you should do, regardless of unpleasant consequences.
2012 Not all questioners are truth seekers.  Some are deliberate obfuscators.
2012 You can't think any more precisely than your language allows.  Every ambiguity of every term is an obstacle between you and truth.
2012 A lie is beneficial if it helps you learn more truth than you would have learned otherwise.  Believing a false paradigm (e.g.  the universe consists of earth, air, fire, and water) can help you learn more truth than a person who has no paradigm.  But if you keep discovering truth, a lie or false paradigm will become a hindrance.
A dirty operating system (DOS) is better than no operating system.  But after the world is hooked on it, programmers will find it easier to sell upgrades to DOS than to sell a better operating system.  But once another operating system is proven better, the world will be better off if it switches as quickly as possible.
2012 Even if all Christians committed heinous crimes, those crimes would still be in violation of their claimed philosophical position.  Even if no atheist ever committed such a crime, there would be nothing in their claimed philosophical position to forbid it.
2012 It's easier to be productive now that I'm not so distracted by testosterone.
2012 The fact that you force me to wait does not mean I'm patient.
2012 In an over-populated world a Christian gay-basher or abortion clinic bomber would be more beneficial to God if he were an atheist.
2012 Fear of punishment can be used to teach morality, but it can also be used to teach any arbitrary system that is sold as morality.  True understanding of morality must evolve beyond fear of punishment.
2012 The fact that you can't choose what you won't choose doesn't mean you don't have free will to choose what you will choose.
The fact that my choice is known prior to making it doesn't constrain my ability to choose otherwise.  It constrains the ability of the knower to know otherwise.
When knowledge of a future event exists, the knowledge depends on the event, not the event on the knowledge.
Epistemology always depends on ontology, never the reverse, even when knowledge of an event precedes the event.
"Whatever will be will be" in the sense that everything will be something, but not in the sense that whatever particular thing something will become is the only thing it can become before it becomes it.  Linguistic description doesn't affect ontological reality.
"A" will keep on being "A" in the future, even after some particular "A" in the present changes to a "non-A" in the future.
Unchangeability of eternal reality does not preclude multiple possibilities on the cutting edge of temporal reality.
2012 To think you know what you don't know is a mistake.
To pretend you know what you don't know is a lie.
2012 It is objectively good to willfully oppose the God to whom you believe you are accountable, if he appears to be evil, according to the sense of good and evil programmed into you by the God who created you.
2012   '