Joseph Maynor

What about the videos on cults?

It's a scam. Of course the person scamming you doesn't want you know that.

God is a word. From my perspective this is something that is missed by most. It's also a word that is abused by people trying to manipulate others. When Leo Gura started trading in religious language I knew things were taking a turn for the worse and I tried to keep that from happening but he insisted because he (I think) had a strategy as to what he was doing. God is the perfect unverifiable, unfalsifiable commodity that not only gives a kind of illusory credibility, but plays right into the egos of others as well. If I can convince you that I'm God and can sell you that I can help you become God too with "complete omniscience" -- that sounds like a deal that's too good to be true! Maybe as God I'll sell you a $1,000 step-by-step a course on that. And even if only 100 people buy this course, I can pocket an easy $100,000 just like that! Suddenly, God is not only omniscient, but he's also rich! God wants you to be rich too!

You said it/wrote that though. Be more careful in your word choice.

Impeachment of someone's credibility is not an ad hominem. It's based on consideration of evidence. Let me clarify this a little bit. It could be an ad hominem in the sense that the impaired credibility of someone doesn't disprove their claims of fact. You could still be right in one or more of your claims of fact even though you have poor credibility. So, the point of the ad hominem warning is to make sure we look at the claims made not the person making them. Where credibility comes in is whether the reasonable person decides to consider your claims of fact at all, which is always a choice too. You can't force someone to engage in discourse with you if they determine you're not operating in good faith. Basically the way the ad homimem fallacy works is like this: Let's take a claim of fact X and the person expressing X as Y. Attacking Y's character, motive, etc. doesn't logically disprove X. But even though problems with a witness' credibility doesn't logically disprove X, it still gives a good reason against believing X, especially if X depends on Y's judgment, perception, expertise, etc. -- and especially when other witnesses with higher credibility and better evidence in support of the factual claims in dispute are available for consideration. The claim of an ad hominem fallacy has to be used with caution because logical necessity isn't the only ground for reasonable judgment regarding a proposed factual claim. I'll give another example of why the ad homimem issue is important to understand. Let's say you're lying about a claim of fact Z, you think it's false and you're trying to BS someone by saying Z is true. But let's say Z is actually true, so the liar was mistaken. What the ad hominem fallacy does is remind us to look at Z on its own merit despite problems with the credibility of the person expressing Z. Just because I have evidence that you're lying (let's say I do), that doesn't logically on its own entail that Z is true or false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

@God You're totally gaslighting. You're doing what you're accusing others of doing. This is how gaslighting works.

I've already determined you lack credibility. You're not coming at things in good faith.

That's because he's not a troll. You need to step up your game if you want a reasonable discussion with someone.

@Cupcake I hear your point though, circumstantial evidence has to be considered very carefully by any fact finder within the context that it is situated. This is why circumstantial evidence is very contextual, and to have abstract discussions of circumstantial evidence leaves that context and goes into something else. It's up to the reasonable fact finder to decide when circumstantial evidence is sufficient to prove up a claim of fact. It's very context-dependent. Most evidence in law is circumstantial evidence because people lie by omission and don't want to admit to things outright. I'm sure Dave didn't want to reveal his identity at first, but be did. It is what it is. That was a long, intense discussion where many things were revealed. This is what we look for in circumstantial evidence. Things are revealed in conduct or omissions that add up or constitute evidence for claims of fact. People reveal things inadvertently thinking they're still being clever all the time. Dave opened door/the issue when he said to Rob, "you know me, we've talked." There you have it! Bingo. He was identifying himself without explicitly identifying himself. You have to consider the evidence of the posts carefully to see these things. But this is what a good lawyer does is piece together circumstantial evidence to prove up factual claims to a reasonable fact finder which is usually a jury, but sometimes it's a judge in a court trial (a court trial is a trial without a jury where the judge is sitting as the fact finder). People want to be sneaky, but they leave breadcrumbs and footprints behind that evidence factual claims. I appreciate your willingness to stand up for what you think is right; that's a masculine attainment and don't feel bad or ashamed about having that. Many feminine personalities need to develop that capacity to stick their neck out there and stand up for what they think is worthy of standing up to.

I'm open to this possibility -- but what would constitute evidence for this claim? I'm leery about stories that are told where I can't look at some kind of evidence, for myself, in support. I also think the burden of proof is in the person advancing this claim not the person denying such a claim without any evidence proffered. If I were to advance this kind of claim, I would be looking for some kind of evidence in support that not only could I convince myself with but that I could also convince others with too -- or get them to acquire the evidence for themselves. We might ask a philosophical question: What would evidence for this claim even look like we might wonder? This might be an unfalsifiable claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Refusal/failure to deny when some identifies you like that in that context is also circumstantial evidence that the identity claim is true. I work in the legal field so I do this stuff every day. I think you raise a red herring as to circumstantial evidence because you're taking our particular concrete case and now attempting to make an abstract point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

In law we call this circumstantial evidence. Not all admissible evidence needs to be direct evidence. What circumstantial evidence is, is where the circumstances prove up a claim at issue despite the omission of a confession or direct evidence. People think circumstantial evidence is an evidentiary defense which is false. No -- circumstantial evidence is admissible and gets in front of the jury box as evidencing a claim at issue. Direct evidence might be an admission from him or some other evidence proving the statement is true like documents, photos, video footage, direct sensual testimony from a fact witness, etc.

Lmao is not evidence either. If you look at the context including but not limited to that post it is evidence. You wanted me to do your research for you. It's all in this thread. @Robed Mystic@Adeptus Psychonautica

I appreciate your sensitive response to my post to you. I apologize if I was overly blunt in my tone with you. I have some traumas around things not being stood up against and being told it's wrong to criticize things that should be criticized.

FYI @Robed Mystic@Adeptus Psychonautica

If you think you understand your true nature -- then don't hang up the phone quite yet.

This is exactly what I didn't want this to turn into. Nevermind, I'll start by just PMing him. @Robed Mystic

He did. Look it up. Inappropriate to identify someone? That's an odd thing to me. The fact that we don't identify ourselves in these types of forums is inappropriate in my opinion. I see your point though, but his identity was established in this thread. I know your identity too vis-a-vis your participation on Actualized although I don't know your name. We should all identify ourselves but most don't. Relating without identity is like eating food that is made to taste like food but is generated by artificial flavors and ingredients. If I don't know someone's real name, it's nuts from my perspective to think I'm going to build a human relationship with them. The fact that we hide behind these avatars and conceal ourselves using degrees of manipulation of name and image in our online relating is deeply concerning to me and to the collective.

Regarding his identity, we established that earlier on in this thread. I don't want to derail this thread with this side issue, but he went from super active to not very active at all. I just want to make sure he's ok and am curious as to why the change in activity of posting on both here and on there.

"The answer" or more accurately "an answer" here is going to depend where you are on your path from my perspective. Theory is not a be all end all in spiritual enlightenment work. Theory is a way of thinking differently which can nudge new insights, but it's those transformations that are important -- and those are perceived and felt as a different/new being-in-the-world for you.

@Cupcake @Robed Mystic I don't see Dave on there anymore. I hope he's well. Dave is Robed Mystic on here and Inliytened1 there.

❤️