New blog on Disbelief
Its the biggest, baddest, blog of all time! No, really, its the longest blog I've published. Its something that's taken months of on and off again work. For those who dare, its certainly not going to be the easiest read in the world. Its a critical analysis/logical deconstruction of a book called "Scientific Faith". If you're a cherished member of my family who happens to be Christian, and you'd rather not confront a load of anti-religious thinking at the moment, feel free to avoid the blog. For everyone else, enjoy! Kidding. I wrote the blog for myself, of course. Its just the first significant thing I've done as part of my larger life long passion/hobby/project. To see, click the "disbelief" link down there on the right.
posted by Josh @ 1:14 PM
2 Comments:
Hi! I have been trying to post a comment on your Disbelief blog for a couple days and the page doesn't load on my computer.
Anyway, how interesting! I think that I was most shocked by the assertion that truth is more important than happiness. I disagree. First of all, in terms of what values I have for life, happiness is more important to me. Also, the truth sucks. People do terrible things and knowing about some of these horrors makes me lose some happiness and takes away from my overall ability to enjoy being a part of this world.
I would like to propose something that I was thinking about....say that there were two communities of people, one community where everyone was fully happy and one where everyone was fully aware of truth. This is not to say that the happy people would be living lies and have no truth in their community, or that the community of truth contained no happiness, but that the happy community would have everything required for them all to be happy, and that the truth community would have everything needed to know truth. Which would be the better community? And which community would people have the best quality of life?
Just something to think about. It takes me back to Rousseau and having a distribution of social justice so that the most people have happiness.
Good question. And not an insignificant point. Perhaps the most significant of all points; first; that seeking absolutes almost always fails. Instead, a "best balance" question always arises. What proportion of truth to fables best guarantees happiness? All truth-obviously not. All lies-that's not going to work.
To me, it all depends upon what appiness is. Happiness is not ecstacy. Happiness is not the simple lack of pain.
Its hard to pin down. Happiness hard to define. Its hard to guarantee. Its no commodity. You can't walk into a store and say, "I'd like to $100 worth of happiness please!"
If happiness were a commodity, and if obtaining it meant accepting a specific amount of truth and believing some fables, we could go ahead and make some definite choices-we could confidently act in accordance with whatever formula we came up with.
Alas, happiness remains enigmatic. There are too many variables varying constantly. We feel its presence, we feel its absence. We sometimes do that which usually bring us happiness and feel rewarded, sometimes not.
So, the claim that fable equals happiness is nearly meaningless. It is definately not founded. Different myths and different truths will have different effects. Happiness does not grow at the same proportion and rate as the aquisition of knowledge. Some of the happiest people are retarded, I'd dare say.
Which community would be better? Which would have a higher quality of life? I'd say the happy community, because ultimately the only truth that matters is that which dissolves pain and grows happiness. The community with all the truth would know a lot of useless shit. The truth that a certain myth makes one happy is a very important truth--it is far more profound than the fact that Sirius is the Dog Star-the brightest star in the sky. Yes, myths should be seen as one more possible means of increasing happiness. Thus far though, I have not been convinced that lies are useful for this. I need some evidence that belief, fables, lies in general correlate to happiness...
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