I have noticed that most people do not seem to understand what I am claiming and what I am not. Whether due to unintelligence, lack of attentiveness, or confusion caused by some other reason, people at large just don't seem to grasp my worldview.
I will list three specific examples.
1). Someone at my college mistook me for a moral relativist this year, seemingly misunderstanding me when I told her that our perceptions of right and wrong, left to themselves, are totally subjective. She had thought I was saying that morality itself is subjective when I said no such thing. Of course, anyone who both listens well and has a working intellect can easily distinguish between when someone is talking about moral skepticism and moral relativism. She also later told me that many of my claims "sound crazy" when they are nothing but rational, yet she refuses to admit the utter illogicality of her beliefs that "existence is obviously better than nonexistence" (begging the question, circular reasoning, appeal to emotion, appeal to the stone), that "it is impossible to have absolute certainty about anything" [1], and that Plato/Socrates was a very rational philosopher (but things like his theory of forms, reincarnation hypothesis, and arbitrary moral system testify to his fallacies). But no, I'm the crazy one. Damn this nonsense.
2). One of my parents told me that some of Alex Jones' claims about the universe, consciousness, and dimensions sound like things I would say. I actually just wrote a post last night criticizing these very claims of Alex Jones, and readers of my blog can easily see that I do not sound anything like him. As I've known for years, my parents don't often have any clue as to what I am actually claiming.
3). Someone I have known for years totally straw manned something I said around the beginning of this summer about the behaviors of some complementarians, misrepresenting what I said by acting as if I was speaking about the tenets of complementarianism itself. Then I got accused of committing the fallacy of composition and straw manning complementarians (which I did not do in either case), all just before this person straw manned rationalism while talking to me. As I said before, damn this nonsense.
Being misrepresented can be very frustrating, and having to point out and refute straw man arguments against my worldview on a regular basis can be quite annoying. I truly consider anyone who does not live for both truth and reason an enemy of mine, and I do not just mean in a detached sense. I truly hate many such people already, and I could easily learn to hate the rest of them if I got to know them better [2]. A life lived for truth and reason is not something without a great possibility for deep frustration, sadness, and anger. And when people in general consistently refuse to live for truth and reason and continue to both misunderstand and misrepresent my worldview, my fury arises.
[1]. Yes, absolutely certainty is inescapably possible, depending on the type of claim being made. Logic and certain experiences enable absolute certainty about some things. It is objectively impossible for sound deductive reasoning or certain infallible experiences to not be true.
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-nature-of-absolute-certainty.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-problem-of-criterion-reflection-on.html
C. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/06/first-principles.html
D. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-error-of-presuppositions.html
[2]. No, the Bible never says to not have enemies, only to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). No, hating someone does not logically exclude loving them, and even the Christian God hates certain people (https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/does-god-hate.html). Please don't straw man my worldview by not doing exactly what I expressed frustration about in the first paragraph above--misunderstanding and misrepresenting my claims.
No comments:
Post a Comment