More religion stuff

[amicus]

Something Mab said, on this thread, I think, still irritates me...that of considering emotions and logic/reason/rationality, as conflicting with each other and that one should have emotions in ones life.

No shit, dick tracy.

However...the origin of emotions and just what they are and what they mean is another matter.

First off, you are not born with them. Take that to the bank; you are born tabula rasa, without any emotions or fears.

Like everything else in life, they are learned, bit by bit as the new human matures.

Babies are born knowing how to suckle and even that is not instinct, rather reflexive reaction. Babies have no fear of height but a loud sound will startle them, again, a reflexive act, not an instinct.

Emotions, to paraphrase Rand, might be described as 'automatic responses to previously made value judgements.'

You like soft and quiet because yo mama's boobs were soft and she coo'ed to you as you nursed.

You favor blue because you had a blue blanket...or a pink one.

You hate harsh voices because they were accompanied by pain.

Every emotion, every feeling you have was learned in one of a thousand, a million different aspects and seconds of your life.

Emotions like love and hate did not come from God or your parents by gene transfer, sorry kiddies, it don't work that way.

You are what you are, feel what you do...because you chose to and choose to, every instant of your life.

Amicus...

 

[ishtat]

Out of context?

becasue that guy is just awesomeness incarnate.
.

I hope you don't mind but in the context of this thread this phrase makes me chuckle.

 

[Corylea]

My brain is an atheist, and my heart is a pagan. This can make me either a half-assed pagan or an atheist with spiritual pretensions, depending on how you look at it.

Intellectually, I notice that there have been zillions of gods over the years, across many, many cultures. The culture in which I grew up said, "The Greek gods were just myths, the Norse gods were just myths, the Hindu gods are just myths, but our God is real." And my mind snorted and said, "Not very likely, dimwit. If all of those other people in all of those other cultures have felt compelled to make up gods, then it's almost certain that yours is made up, too."

But when I'm in a forest or by a waterfall, I feel a connection to the natural world and an awe at the beauty and mystery and immensity of Nature. There have been times when I have looked into my lovers eyes and seen Someone more than he gazing back at me. (Of course, that particular lover was a multiple personality, so maybe it wasn't Someone, maybe it was just several of his someones.)

I don't believe in deity; it doesn't make any sense to me. Everything I've ever seen, in all of the religions I've studied, suggests that humans have an immense need to create gods, in order to make sense of their world and in order to make themselves feel less alone. I like to think that it's the brave people in the world who can realize that we are alone and that there are no gods and so we must depend on and care for one another, for other humans are all that we have.

But then I feel the life force running through a tree or the energy of a waterfall and feel as if the world is alive in some way that science has not yet explained. Ah, yes, I've managed to rediscover the most primitive religion of all -- animism.

My mind is an atheist and my heart is a pagan. It's an uneasy balance, and sometimes one side calls to me more than the other. But I believe my brain, and I believe my heart. There are no gods, in the sense of concrete, personal entities and the world is alive and mysterious and wonderful, powered by the life force that runs through all things.

 

[Corylea]

There's a fascinating anthropological study of religions that you may have heard about. I read it so long ago that I'm afraid I don't remember the author's name -- if someone knows it, please tell me, because I'd like to reread the study.

In any case, an anthropologist divided cultures into those whose means of subsistence required that people show up every day and work -- which included most forms of agriculture but especially dairying, since cows must be milked frequently, no matter what -- and those whose forms of subsistence required considerable ability to work alone or in small groups, such as all hunter-gatherers and those whose agriculture was a little more hit-or-miss, with relatively hardy crops that didn't require daily care.

He then looked at the religions of each culture and rated them as to whether they encouraged obedience to authority or independent thought. And, whaddayaknow, the dairying peoples had very authoritarian religions, which promoted respect for authority -- the same authority that was telling people that they couldn't go off and do whatever you wanted today, because they needed to feed the chickens and milk the cows and mend the fences. And the hunter-gatherer societies had religions that encouraged people to be able to work either independently or cooperatively in small groups, the better to be able to go hunting or to remember where the berry bushes were and when they were likely to ripen and that sort of thing.

If each culture develops the gods it needs for the sort of social structure it has, it's hard for me to take any of the "known" gods seriously.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

But then I feel the life force running through a tree or the energy of a waterfall and feel as if the world is alive in some way that science has not yet explained. Ah, yes, I've managed to rediscover the most primitive religion of all -- animism.

My mind is an atheist and my heart is a pagan. It's an uneasy balance, and sometimes one side calls to me more than the other. But I believe my brain, and I believe my heart. There are no gods, in the sense of concrete, personal entities and the world is alive and mysterious and wonderful, powered by the life force that runs through all things.[/QUOTE]

Forces of Nature, emanations of Deity, I call them. Manifestations of the Cosmic Intellect, the Logos. But, then, I'm a Stoic.

 

[WRJames]

We've been having a stretch of exceptionally beautiful weather, and I've been trying to finish editing an interminably long (but very interesting!) novel for Terrie -- so I haven't been paying too much attention to this thread.

So instead of trying to comment on all the various posts, I'll just make some remarks.

As some of you probably realize, I'm a "liberal" Christian. A lot of you may not realize that such a thing even exists. It seems like any time religion is characterized here, it is always the most ignorant, fundamentalizt, narrowminded, hatefilled, repressive variety.

There are pitched battles going on within the Christian community, within individual denominations. Many serious Christian scholars are trying to point out to the fundamentalists that they don't even have the Bible right, let alone anything else in their warped version of the faith, But a lot of folks are attracted to them because they have simple answers to all the big questions. The fact the answers are bogus, even to other Christians, doesn't seem to bother them a bit.

I can fully understand why so many of the Lit posters would reject a religion that requires you to check your brains at the door. On the other hand, the "blessed assurance" that we liberals feel is by necessity more tenuous -- we know, that as Paul said, we see through a glass, darkly.

There has been discussion about a "rational" morality. And, certainly, all societies have evolved standards of conduct. The legal codes enshrined in the Old Testament in fact are almost identical to those of nearby civilizations in the Middle East -- you have find the same rules etched on clay shards. There was no distinction between religious and civil life, and these "sacred" laws were more like the civil laws of the time. The same is true for Islamic law.

But -- there are moral precepts that come from the mouth of Jesus that are so astonishing that they defy "rational" explanation. Return good for evil. Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Walk the second mile.

Add to this the concept of God's arbitrary, boundless mercy (the parable of the prodigal son, for example) and you have a morality that is exuberantly irrational, completely contrary to any reasonable self interest -- and profoundly, trascendentally liberating.

 

[past_perfect]

Something Mab said, on this thread, I think, still irritates me...that of considering emotions and logic/reason/rationality, as conflicting with each other and that one should have emotions in ones life.

No shit, dick tracy.

However...the origin of emotions and just what they are and what they mean is another matter.

First off, you are not born with them. Take that to the bank; you are born tabula rasa, without any emotions or fears.

Like everything else in life, they are learned, bit by bit as the new human matures.

Babies are born knowing how to suckle and even that is not instinct, rather reflexive reaction. Babies have no fear of height but a loud sound will startle them, again, a reflexive act, not an instinct.

Emotions, to paraphrase Rand, might be described as 'automatic responses to previously made value judgements.'

You like soft and quiet because yo mama's boobs were soft and she coo'ed to you as you nursed.

You favor blue because you had a blue blanket...or a pink one.

You hate harsh voices because they were accompanied by pain.

Every emotion, every feeling you have was learned in one of a thousand, a million different aspects and seconds of your life.

Emotions like love and hate did not come from God or your parents by gene transfer, sorry kiddies, it don't work that way.

You are what you are, feel what you do...because you chose to and choose to, every instant of your life.

Amicus...

Nonsense. Sorry, but Mrs Rand is no authority in Psychology - I suppose she was echoing some theories of her time, which hasn't worked out particularly well for others either (Schopenhauer and the head measuring fiasco for instance).

The base emotions appear to be inborn (survival function, for example fear) and modify/qualify through socialisation. Children born blind and deaf show normal emotional reactions.

 

[rgraham666]

Ms. Rand was a sexual submissive who never got over her upbringing in Soviet Russia.

I take Groucho Marx more seriously. He had more insight into human behaviour as well.

 

[colddiesel]

We've been having a stretch of exceptionally beautiful weather, and I've been trying to finish editing an interminably long (but very interesting!) novel for Terrie -- so I haven't been paying too much attention to this thread.

So instead of trying to comment on all the various posts, I'll just make some remarks.

As some of you probably realize, I'm a "liberal" Christian. A lot of you may not realize that such a thing even exists. It seems like any time religion is characterized here, it is always the most ignorant, fundamentalizt, narrowminded, hatefilled, repressive variety.

There are pitched battles going on within the Christian community, within individual denominations. Many serious Christian scholars are trying to point out to the fundamentalists that they don't even have the Bible right, let alone anything else in their warped version of the faith, But a lot of folks are attracted to them because they have simple answers to all the big questions. The fact the answers are bogus, even to other Christians, doesn't seem to bother them a bit.

I can fully understand why so many of the Lit posters would reject a religion that requires you to check your brains at the door. On the other hand, the "blessed assurance" that we liberals feel is by necessity more tenuous -- we know, that as Paul said, we see through a glass, darkly.

There has been discussion about a "rational" morality. And, certainly, all societies have evolved standards of conduct. The legal codes enshrined in the Old Testament in fact are almost identical to those of nearby civilizations in the Middle East -- you have find the same rules etched on clay shards. There was no distinction between religious and civil life, and these "sacred" laws were more like the civil laws of the time. The same is true for Islamic law.

But -- there are moral precepts that come from the mouth of Jesus that are so astonishing that they defy "rational" explanation. Return good for evil. Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Walk the second mile.

Add to this the concept of God's arbitrary, boundless mercy (the parable of the prodigal son, for example) and you have a morality that is exuberantly irrational, completely contrary to any reasonable self interest -- and profoundly, trascendentally liberating.

A few points:-

1.These lit posters weren't rejecting the christian religion they were rejecting all forms of theism including the christian one.

2 There is nothing either new or unique in Jesus' moral teachings. His most important statement was "I come to teach the law (the Torah)." He was a Jew who taught other Jews how to be more properly Jewish . His appalling treatment of the Greek woman at Smyrna(?) shows his limitations.

Furthermore every single one of the "astonishing moral precepts from the mouth of Jesus" can be found in the writings of Zarathustra, Confucious, Lao Tse, Buddha and Mohammed as well as in the Jewish Bible.

3 Paul invented christianity . Jesus wouldn't recognise it.

4 I agree with your comments about fundamentalism but wouldn't limit criticism to christian fundamentalists.

5 God merciful? even if this entity did exist there is no evidence of any compassion whatsoever

 

[Shwenn]

well, i hope you'll tell us the NON subjective experiences you base your beliefs on.

i know amicus has them: for example he experiences the objective fact that homosexual acts are disgusting and unnatural.

would yours be anything like that?

No, my experience is that homosexual acts are simply of no interest to me and don't affect me in any way so I will base any judgements I make about homosexuals on the same criteria I use with every other human being except the person I am currently fucking, whose sexual proclitivities are of great intrest to me. And that is subjective.

However, if I lift a ball two meters off to the groung and release it. And 500 other people do the same thing. And we all report the same exact behavior in the ball, I will NOT call that subjective experience. I'm going to say it's a little more trustworthy and reliable than my ideas about homosexulity. That is the sort of thing I will refer to as objective reality.

I'm going to go ahead and make that distinction.

You don't have to. Nobody is forcing you to.

Let's call that an assumption. That, if pretty much everybody reports the same event, that event probably happened and we can call it objective. That's the assumption upon which I am working and, should you disagree with it, you need not consider any of my words.

Agreed?

 

[Shwenn]

I hope you don't mind but in the context of this thread this phrase makes me chuckle.

What makes you think that wasn't intentional? It makes me happy; I'm usually the only one who gets those little jokes of mine.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

No, my experience is that homosexual acts are simply of no interest to me and don't affect me in any way so I will base any judgements I make about homosexuals on the same criteria I use with every other human being except the person I am currently fucking, whose sexual proclitivities are of great intrest to me. And that is subjective.

However, if I lift a ball two meters off to the groung and release it. And 500 other people do the same thing. And we all report the same exact behavior in the ball, I will NOT call that subjective experience. I'm going to say it's a little more trustworthy and reliable than my ideas about homosexulity. That is the sort of thing I will refer to as objective reality.

You're still talking about facts and not the experience of dropping the ball. I'm not interested in the facts of consiousness, the chemical reactions that cause it. I was talking about the failure of science to be able to explain the experience. That's simply beyond science's ability. It's a theological question and only theology (or maybe poetry) can explain it.

As far as subjective experience, you might not care for it, but that's where we all live our lives, with our feelings and desires and the mystery of our own existence and death, and all that other messy human stuff, questions that are usually more important to us than dropping balls, and harder to solve. So we all come to some sort of religious accommodation with them, even if we just make rationality our god and assume that some day Science will solve all these mysteries.

 

[mismused]

******

 

[Pure]

note to schwen

However, if I lift a ball two meters off to the groung and release it. And 500 other people do the same thing. And we all report the same exact behavior in the ball, I will NOT call that subjective experience. I'm going to say it's a little more trustworthy and reliable than my ideas about homosexulity. That is the sort of thing I will refer to as objective reality.

I'm going to go ahead and make that distinction.

You don't have to. Nobody is forcing you to.

Let's call that an assumption. That, if pretty much everybody reports the same event, that event probably happened and we can call it objective. That's the assumption upon which I am working and, should you disagree with it, you need not consider any of my words.

Agreed?
----

Pure: your tone is quite arrogant, and your central point that 'pretty much everybody' establishes probability, is defective;

for millennia, pretty much everybody, if not everybody, experienced the sun rising and the earth being stationary.


the perceptions of witches [Mrs Jones is a witch], not to say angels [I saw an angel], in previous centuries are another example.

[[in present times, about 30 percent of the US folks say they are 'born again' and a great majority say there is a God who answer prayers. the first group report experiencing receiving the love and blessing of Jesus as their 'personal savior.' the second group report instances of 'God answering my prayers.']] [ADDED: this is not a good example, as stated. consider it deleted.]

 

[Shwenn]

You're still talking about facts and not the experience of dropping the ball.

I didn't talk about it in that particular post. Because that particular post responded to a person who asked me to address facts and what I consider to be facts. She specifically wanted to know what I consider to be objective truth. And I answered her.

I believe I have written to you on this subjective experience you are addressing. Yet you have chosen to avoid my response to you and, instead, pretend my response to a different person with a different question is some intentional attempt to avoid your topic.

 

[Shwenn]

Pure: your tone is pretty arrogant, and your central point that 'pretty much everybody' establishes probability, is defective;

for millennia, pretty much everybody, if not everybody, experienced the sun rising and the earth being stationary.


the perceptions of witches [Mrs Jones is a witch], not to say angels [I saw an angel], in previous centuries are another example.

in present times, about 30 percent of the US folks say they are 'born again' and a great majority say there is a God who answer prayers. the first group report experiencing receiving the love and blessing of Jesus as their 'personal savior.' the second group report instances of 'God answering my prayers.'

Look, you can be as catty with me as you want to be. But don't complain to me about my tone when I respond accordingly, okay?

And, if you tell me that God answered your prayers, you are the only person who can report on that event, making it dubious. There can be lots of other people who report similar experiences but each event is singular.

You need to something where you say, "You people pray for this one guy to get better and we'll see if he gets better." Then you have all sorts of people bearing witness to the singular event. This has been done. I'm being simplistic, the experiments were more sophisticated and had control groups. And, not that you care, but the guy doesn't get better.

 

[Pure]

ami First off, you are not born with them. Take that to the bank; you are born tabula rasa, without any emotions or fears.

Like everything else in life, they are learned, bit by bit as the new human matures.

well this is lockean psychology of ca 1700. no one outside of the Randroids believes it any more. it is without empirical base and was clearly "invented" --or put forward as her own-- by ms rand sitting in an armchair. indeed that was pretty much Locke's procedure. it produced rather poor results, by todays standards.

 

[Pure]

note to schwen

Look, you can be as catty with me as you want to be. But don't complain to me about my tone when I respond accordingly, okay?

And, if you tell me that God answered your prayers, you are the only person who can report on that event, making it dubious. There can be lots of other people who report similar experiences but each event is singular.

You need to something where you say, "You people pray for this one guy to get better and we'll see if he gets better." Then you have all sorts of people bearing witness to the singular event. This has been done. I'm being simplistic, the experiments were more sophisticated and had control groups. And, not that you care, but the guy doesn't get better.

your response perhaps fits the phenonemon of 'saved by Jesus' or personal-prayer answerings, but you ignore the other examples i gave. loads of people bearing witness [to a single event], in your terms, is a fairly crummy criterion for objectivity. loads of people, in classic Greece saw the sun rise each morning, and experienced no earth motion. they also witness the progress of the planets through the zodiac. and they had that wrong, in the basics.

 

[rgraham666]

Regarding objectivity.

I've a book in my library,Killer - Autobiography of a Hit Man for the Mafia By Joey.

In it he described one of his hits. Joey walked into a busy restaurant during lunch, shot his target three times and walked out again.

Later he got to see the police report on this hit. Nearly thirty people saw him do it. They gave nearly thirty different descriptions of him. None of them came close to describing him.

Objectivity only belongs to God.

 

[Pure]

note to schwen

schwen said
And, if you tell me that God answered your prayers, you are the only person who can report on that event, making it dubious. There can be lots of other people who report similar experiences but each event is singular.

You need to [set up?] something where you say, "You people pray for this one guy to get better and we'll see if he gets better." Then you have all sorts of people bearing witness to the singular event. This has been done. I'm being simplistic, the experiments were more sophisticated and had control groups. And, not that you care, but the guy doesn't get better.
=====

you don't seem to be up on the empirical studies, some of which i give below. benson, et al. reported negative results. and, not that you care, but the others did not, iow good effects of prayer were reported.

your attitude appears dogmatic. that is to say, neither grounded in empirical science, nor in sound philosophy.


http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/prayer.html

Byrd, R.C. 1988. Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population. Southern Medical Journal 81: 826-829. [online paper]

Harris, W.S., Gowda, M., Kolb, J.W., Strychacz, C.P., Vacek, J.L., Jones, P.G., Forker, A., O’Keefe, J.H., and McCallister, B.D. 1999. A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit. Arch Intern Med. 159:2273-2278. [PDF version ]
Leibovici, L. 2001. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal, 323, 1450-1451 .

==
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567

Am Heart J. 2006 Apr;151(4):934-42.
Benson H, Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Lam P, Bethea CF, Carpenter W, Levitsky S, Hill PC, Clem DW Jr, Jain MK, Drumel D, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Marek D, Rollins S, Hibberd PL.

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer.

The study is discussed at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0403/p13s02-lire.html
The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), published online March 30 by the American Heart Journal,

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That's not quite true. We don't have to come to a religious accommodation--we can simply wonder at the marvels of existence and the universe, and our part in it. Wondering is good for one. It allows for a lot of appreciation, as well as some beautiful subjective feelings and sensings sometimes. JMHO.

To me, marveling itself is a religious act. In fact, that's the point I've been trying to make here. Marveling is acknowledging the miraculous, and whether you shake your head and say you don't understand where these feelings come from or say you can't deal with them (which is something like agnosticism to me), or try to come to some sort of terms with them (the beginnings of a religious quest), you're taking a religious stance, whether you want to or not.

The wonder itself is the source of the religious impulse. And I know you, mismused , and I know you're one of the more religious people on the board in that sense, fascinated by consciousness and existence.

And that's why I say that God doesn't need to be proven, because he can be experienced in that sense of wonder. That's where the religious impulse comes from, in an attempt to deal with the marvelous fact of existence. And the way we deal with that, no matter what it is -- thinking about it, meditating on it, ignoring it -- that's called worship.

 

[amicus]

Mab, like Black Shanglan, (who hasn't surfaced in a while and I wish him well), are very intelligent, well read and thoughtful individuals who, unfortunately, suspend rational judgement when it comes to moral issues.

That's fine, what ever pleases you and answers your own personal inquiries about the Universe, our existence and what it all means. Good questions all.

But the velvet glove replacing the sledgehammer approach Mab has been using is still just a ploy to reign supreme that atheism is a religion, a belief, just like any other.

It is not.

Rejecting superstition and the supernatural is an act of intellectual honesty, not a matter of faith or belief.

The word, 'marvelous', bandied about by Mab, might better be used to acknowledge the long and tortuous path man has taken to acquire knowledge of reality; that which is.

The billions and billons of human man hours wasted contemplating the existence of a supreme being and the reasons for all things, was not a total waste. It demonstrated irrevocably, if one takes the time to read, the absolute futility of building a philosophy or a theology on the assumed premise of the existence of a 'watchmaker', somewhere distant in the myriad of stars.

There ain't none, folks...we be all alone in the vastness of time and space and each day, we 'go where no man has gone before', in our thoughts about our origins and purpose of man.

It should be viewed as a delightful and challenging journey, instead, the 'believers', such as Mab, keep searching for a big daddy in the sky to take them home.

Ain't gonna happen

Amicus the Atheist

 

[Corylea]

To me, marveling itself is a religious act. In fact, that's the point I've been trying to make here. Marveling is acknowledging the miraculous, [...] The wonder itself is the source of the religious impulse.

And that's why I say that God doesn't need to be proven, because he can be experienced in that sense of wonder. That's where the religious impulse comes from, in an attempt to deal with the marvelous fact of existence.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable agreeing with you here if you called god "it," rather than "he." Experiencing a sense of wonder is a long, long way from an anthropomorphic deity, and talking about the ineffable immanence as if it had a gender feels very jarring to me. If it has a gender, so what color is its hair, and what does it like for breakfast? See how weird that seems?

And the way we deal with that, no matter what it is -- thinking about it, meditating on it, ignoring it -- that's called worship.

You're redefining the word "worship" here; it usually means "to adore, praise, and venerate," and neither thinking or ignoring has the right emotional tone to be worship.

 

[Stella_Omega]

To me, marveling itself is a religious act. In fact, that's the point I've been trying to make here. Marveling is acknowledging the miraculous, and whether you shake your head and say you don't understand where these feelings come from or say you can't deal with them (which is something like agnosticism to me), or try to come to some sort of terms with them (the beginnings of a religious quest), you're taking a religious stance, whether you want to or not.

The wonder itself is the source of the religious impulse. And I know you, mismused , and I know you're one of the more religious people on the board in that sense, fascinated by consciousness and existence.

And that's why I say that God doesn't need to be proven, because he can be experienced in that sense of wonder. That's where the religious impulse comes from, in an attempt to deal with the marvelous fact of existence. And the way we deal with that, no matter what it is -- thinking about it, meditating on it, ignoring it -- that's called worship.

But I do understand where these feelings come from, and I am perfectly comfortable with wonder, awe, celebration- even a sense of diffuse gratitude, that so many people attach to a deity. The learned need to attach theseemotions to an object-- that's the religious impulse.

 

[Shwenn]

your response perhaps fits the phenonemon of 'saved by Jesus' or personal-prayer answerings, but you ignore the other examples i gave. loads of people bearing witness [to a single event], in your terms, is a fairly crummy criterion for objectivity. loads of people, in classic Greece saw the sun rise each morning, and experienced no earth motion. they also witness the progress of the planets through the zodiac. and they had that wrong, in the basics.

a) witches and angels also not bearing witness to a common event.

b) "loads of people, in classic Greece saw the sun rise each morning, and experienced no earth motion."
A -> B
does not tell us
!A -> !B

In other words, not witnessing an event doesn't mean it didn't happen. That doesn't follow from what I said.

c) they also witness the progress of the planets through the zodiac.

Yes and the events they witnessed happened. Their interpretation of those events was faulty.



loads of people bearing witness [to a single event], in your terms, is a fairly crummy criterion for objectivity.

Seriously, where are you going with this? If you mean to show that there is no reality, I have neither the time nor the pateince. If a schizophrenic's delisions are just as real to you as an event witnessed by hundreds of people, we're just going to have to disagree. I can't imagine a bigger waste of time than having this conversation which may not even be happening.

If you think there is a better criterion, tell me what it is.