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Tim Lyons · 04-04-2008, 01:10 AM

To Karen: I don't know what "take me at face value" might mean for a deity, particularly one that, as I recall, didn't show his face.

To Kate: I admit: strange idea: I am = I do.

I think may Popeye's statement made more sense than the Biblical one does, considering the context (i.e. we have a more accurate record of Popeye's actions than we do of Jawveh's), but that may reveal my non-theistic bias. If we have a statement that we feel tempted to categorize as "non-sense," and if we want to make it into a sensible statement, we generall try to reduce the abstraction-level. This generally means that we take the "is" and try to find what operations lie behind it.

It seems that our sense of -- or, my sense of who I "am" arises from various physical and mental operations, not all of them deliberate. I do this and that; I think this and that; I conclude that I "am" this. One of the mental operations, I suppose, goes like this: I tell myself that "I am this person." I wonder if this idea of "being" amounts to anything other than operations mental (including emotional insofar as emotions arise as mental events) and physical (and emotional, insofar as emotions arise as physical events). Some will find this hopelessly "unspiritual" or even depressing, but some have said that all our suffering comes from our fixation on this "I am" business. I don't know if it all does, but a lot of it seems to.

04-04-2008, 01:10 AM	#12 (permalink)
Tim Lyons Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 4	Responses to Karen and Kate To Karen: I don't know what "take me at face value" might mean for a deity, particularly one that, as I recall, didn't show his face. To Kate: I admit: strange idea: I am = I do. I think may Popeye's statement made more sense than the Biblical one does, considering the context (i.e. we have a more accurate record of Popeye's actions than we do of Jawveh's), but that may reveal my non-theistic bias. If we have a statement that we feel tempted to categorize as "non-sense," and if we want to make it into a sensible statement, we generall try to reduce the abstraction-level. This generally means that we take the "is" and try to find what operations lie behind it. It seems that our sense of -- or, my sense of who I "am" arises from various physical and mental operations, not all of them deliberate. I do this and that; I think this and that; I conclude that I "am" this. One of the mental operations, I suppose, goes like this: I tell myself that "I am this person." I wonder if this idea of "being" amounts to anything other than operations mental (including emotional insofar as emotions arise as mental events) and physical (and emotional, insofar as emotions arise as physical events). Some will find this hopelessly "unspiritual" or even depressing, but some have said that all our suffering comes from our fixation on this "I am" business. I don't know if it all does, but a lot of it seems to.