posted
Thinking that there would be no room for any human error once one has declared oneself to believe in God is a pretty good reason to refrain from the declaration.
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quote: I think it's the "conscious" bit that gets me. Because while I've unthinkingly done myself and others harm, I've never done so knowingly and can't imagine choosing to do so when I would know, from the mouth of God Himself, that no greater good would come of it.
Boy, I have. Lashed out in anger for example. I knew that what I said would hurt someone and that I would regret it and said it anyway. Slept with someone just to make myself feel less lonely knowing that it was the wrong thing to do. Mostly I fail to do stuff. I am perfectly aware that God wills good for me and I choose not to heed that will everyday.
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quote:I am perfectly aware that God wills good for me and I choose not to heed that will everyday.
See, what I'm hung up on here is your use of the active verb. You don't just fail to heed. You choose not to heed. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever made that sort of choice.
I've done things thoughtlessly, and I've done things that I thought would turn out for the best that wound up not turning out for the best, but I've never actually chosen to do something while certain that it would turn out badly.
Katie mentions "human error," but the kind of thing we're specifically talking about isn't error. It's deliberately choosing to do something that will produce a result unsatisfactory to God and, theoretically, also unsatisfactory to the individual. There's no mistake being made here; it's a completely flawless implementation of stupidity.
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posted
You are a better person than I am (and I think I am a reasonably good person). As a matter of fact you may be better than anyone I know - and I know some really great people.
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posted
I doubt it. I think, again, the issue lies in the "knowingly" bit. That's not just semantics.
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posted
Oh, I absolutely know that I shouldn't say hurtful things in anger, or that I should get my butt out of bed in time to catch the bus instead of having to pay for a cab, or that I shouldn't eat that second helping. It isn't a matter of not knowing; it is a matter of discipline.
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quote:I absolutely know that I shouldn't say hurtful things in anger, or that I should get my butt out of bed in time to catch the bus instead of having to pay for a cab, or that I shouldn't eat that second helping.
See, I dispute this entirely. I don't think you do know it, not in the same way that you know, say, addition. We're defining "know" differently.
I submit that if you knew you should get up earlier, you'd get up. But you mentally run a little equation in which the value of the extra rest exceeds the cost of the cab and the lost exercise, and stay in bed. If the equation gets it wrong, that's because you estimated those values incorrectly; in other words, you didn't know how much the extra rest was actually worth.
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posted
So what drives you, then, to sleep in late? If you know it's the wrong thing to do, and if it's not worth it to you at that time to do it, why do you do it?
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posted
As a student of psychology, I learned a long time ago that if I wanted to help people who wanted to change their behavior, I had to do a lot more than help them realize that their behavior was not in their own best interest. I wish simply knowing something was bad for you or others was enough to get people to never again choose to participate in self-destructive behavior.
Knowing does not equal doing. Not by a long shot.
A great example is procrastination. Ultimately, it only makes things worse. But, there is an immediate pay off, which pay off is the reason we do it. The pay off is we can for a moment avoid feeling whatever bad feelings we feel as we approach working on the project. Those bad feelings could be worrying that we might not do a good job, or that the work will be painful, or that we will disappoint others, or that we won't be able to finish what we start, etc.
By procrastinating we are actually helping those fears become reality, but as we distract ourselves or rationalize why we are procrastinating we can forget about our worries for the moment.
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That's not an irrational decision, then, is it? If it felt BAD, it would be irrational. And if you thought at the time that it wasn't worth feeling good temporarily to pay more for the cab, it would be irrational if you did.
But clearly you DO think it's worth paying more for the cab to feel good for a little while longer, or you wouldn't do it; otherwise, you've lapsed into some kind of temporary cab-taking insanity (and even insane cab-takers usually manage to come up with some reason to justify to themselves why they should take a cab before they take the cab). Now, your assessment of that worth might be heavily biased and rendered inaccurate by your condition or mood, but that just means you weren't fully aware of the value of your choice. It doesn't mean that you deliberately chose the BAD thing; it just means that you're lying to yourself about what you consider bad.
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posted
Nope. I can't weasel out of it that easily. Sometimes I am just lazy. I know this is wrong and I do it anyway. I am not an idiot. I know that I will regret the decision.
Sometimes I say things in anger that I know I shouldn't. I am just angry.
Really.
And (back to God) people who, according to the Bible, had more "close encounter" with God argued with God more than once.
edit to add: And even if I were weasely enough to be able to pretend that I was making a good for the short term decisions, I know that God wants what is good for me in the long term.
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God.. The Gods. Everywhere we look, they are there, looking at us. The Hindus say, you go to a Temple to be looked at by God, not to look at God.
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quote:Sometimes I say things in anger that I know I shouldn't. I am just angry.
Wow. That's a level of arationality that I really can't fathom. I've never been that disengaged from my brain. Even when I'm angry, I'm thinking "I'm angry because..."
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posted
I know why I'm angry. Didn't mean to give you the impression that I was angry for no reason. I am sometimes angry enough not to care that I am doing something wrong.
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quote:I am sometimes angry enough not to care that I am doing something wrong.
See, again, that's the leap I'm not quite getting. If you know at the time that it's wrong, why do you do it? I'm just not grasping how you're able to act without self-justification.
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posted
Simple human weakness, Tom. Some of us have it.
I really do have a hard time believing that I am the only person you know of that will occasionally fail to do what she knows is the right thing. Even so, you are just going to have to take my word for it.
quote:Tom, are you by any chance an off-the-chart T on the Myers-Briggs scale?
No. I'm ENFP, usually, although only mildly N and P.
But I think I'm hung up on Kate's definition of "know," because I can't think of any situation in which I'd know something was bad and do it anyway. I think she's using a much less powerful version of the word.
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quote:understand, "get", be aware, recognize, be sure of.
I think I'm being considerably more stringent in my definition of "be sure of" than you are. We had similar problems when you were talking about being able to "perceive" God without thought, sensation, or experience; the definition of "perception" that I use is dependent on those things.
In the same way, being sure of something is for me a considerably higher standard than it appears to be for you.
Because from where I'm standing, what you're saying is "I didn't want to do this, wasn't compelled to do this, and yet chose to do it anyway."
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posted
What I am saying is that I wanted something that I knew was wrong, wasn't compelled to do it, choose to do it anyway.
Here are different examples (since you seem disinclined to believe me):
Smokers who already have lung cancer or heart disease and still smoke. People who are morbidly obese.
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posted
Tom: Why don't you define "know" for us, the way you are using it? Then take us through kmb's example of people who choose to smoke while knowing that they are making themselves seriously ill by doing it using your definition of "know".
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