Top 10 movies, revision 5
Seriously, what can you do after this? This should have been a series finale or something.
Amelie
Whisper of the Heart
Fight Club
Run Lola Run
Sin City
Love Actually
House Season 6 Episode 1
Pulp Fiction
The Prestige
Hairspray
( personal )
Amelie
Whisper of the Heart
Fight Club
Run Lola Run
Sin City
Love Actually
House Season 6 Episode 1
Pulp Fiction
The Prestige
Hairspray
( personal )
That's neither here nor there. My real problem was your implication that your decisions based on your hypothetical mentor would be more valid than the decisions I've made based on my mentors. I think you ignored my point that regardless of how influential one's early environment is, it's not the only or even the strongest factor in one's decisions later in life. In fact, it's often trivial.
And I think you can agree that it depends on the person. For one person, the fact that they were born into poverty might be all they need to stay there their entire lives. Another person might not think twice about the fact that they were born in poverty, go on to corner the oil market in the United States, and become the richest man in the history of the world.
My point is that you don't know how much weight I personally give (consciously or subconsciously) my birth environment when I make decisions. That's why I found it patronizing: you claim to know me better than I can possibly know myself.
Moving on to foundations, I pictured them as being the sum total of your life experiences, beliefs, opinions, etc. With that definition, you see how you actually have built your life on a foundation for the last 25 years. Do you think it's been a perfect foundation? The best-possible foundation? A foundation with zero room for improvement?
You use the phrase "good enough" when you refer to your moral basis. Good enough is good enough for mortality, but not eternity. Actually, it's a pretty poor basis for anything. No one should be so complacent that they don't think they couldn't improve their life, including any "religious" person.
It seems like you're like me in that you like knowledge. You like learning things. I bet you get a sense of satisfaction out of discovering something new, or putting a puzzle piece into place, or making something work that didn't before. For me, even discussing (arguing?) things like this are interesting because I come out having learned something from the person across the table.
And if that's really true, then I can guarantee you that Mormonism will make you even happier than you already are because it's dripping with juicy knowledge, mostly of Really Important variety. Trust me, I'm on the inside, I can tell you with 100% surety because I've experienced it.
Think back to your progression of learning math. Do you remember how beautiful and complete it seemed when you hit geometry, trigonometry and calculus and it all just fell into place and everything fit together and made sense? That pales in comparison to the beauty of eternal truth as you learn it and start to put it together. Religion is just science, and it all fits together just as perfectly. I wish I could show it to you.
Do you really need Nolan? What do you hope to hear from him? You already know that Mormonism is important or you wouldn't be interested in it, much less in finding a Nolan to help you with it. Drawing that to its logical conclusion, are you really going to wait around for Nolan before you start researching something so important? You don't need a teacher in the room before you flip open your books. Besides, you have your own reasons for being in that classroom. You don't really need the teacher to tell you why he's there.
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I've used a wrong word there. It's more of whom I feel I resonate with. I don't consider people that are different from me stupid, but the causes that drive their actions are less likely to drive mine because they are different from me.
My point is that you don't know how much weight I personally give (consciously or subconsciously) my birth environment when I make decisions.
I don't know about you personally, but I am pretty sure statistically a person is way more likely to follow their parents. How do you know you can claim that your decisions are your own, whatever that means, as opposed to be subconsciously instilled by your environment? I can't. I am not religious because I was raised that way. I don't see why that's wrong though.
Another person might not think twice about the fact that they were born in poverty, go on to corner the oil market in the United States, and become the richest man in the history of the world.
How many people born in poverty remained in poverty as compared to those who didn't? And that's even when there's a good claim that most people agree on that being rich is DEFINITELY better than being poor -- no such good claim for religion vs. non-religion
No one should be so complacent that they don't think they couldn't improve their life
What do you mean by "improve"?
That pales in comparison to the beauty of eternal truth as you learn it and start to put it together. Religion is just science, and it all fits together just as perfectly.
E=MC^2 fits together perfectly. An all-mighty entity that creates a "Son" and gives him a human form, and has a human form itself, and for some reason chooses some people to be prophets, and cares for people believing in itself makes no sense to me, sorry. WHY would it do all that???
I can buy God creating a universe. I don't buy why it would care that you can't eat milk and meat together. Or not drink coffee. Didn't you just create a freaking universe??? Isn't it kind of different scale?
What do you hope to hear from him?
Again, I want to hear why someone like me would want to be religious, and how am I supposed to make religion work together with Occam's razor.
or you wouldn't be interested in it
I am interested in it because I love my girlfriend and I want to find a way for both of us to be happy without sacrificing our beliefs.
Researching? I am researching. I've been forced to research for 6 years. Didn't quite work.
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