@Tim: Joe's statement is flawed in two important ways. The first is what I call recursive application. Apply the mindset to itself and look for areas where it seems to contradict itself. To give you an example, if I come to you and say "Don't talk. No one should ever talk" you could easily laugh me off. I'm not obeying my own rule. If I can't obey it, why should you?
The core idea here seems to be Reason. Be reasonable. So in the spirit of his assertion, lets analyze his assertion reasonably.
1) He's telling you not to follow a road and giving you a system of beliefs that represents a road. He doesn't want you to attach to an ideology, but he's feeding you one. Be cool to people. Do what you want to do. Eat healthy, do something that allows you to enjoy your body. If I'm going to do what I want, why do I need a life coach? Who has trouble doing what they want? Nobody. They just make stupid decisions. How do you know the decisions are stupid? Ultimately, they make them unhappy. But if you obey the system presented here, you shouldn't care.
2) He's telling you to be cool to people but he just got done calling my people blind and stupid and suggesting that some of us are icy manipulators.
3) He's subtly suggesting that you should follow reason but he's not seeing that reason got me where I am. Therefore if you swallow his assertion hook line and sinker that religions are founded on 'unreason' without thinking it through, you're violating the entire premise of the system.
The second is more philosophical. The entire argument has a basis in morality or it wouldn't be important. That entire 5 minute clip is a moral argument. He cites a couple great examples, both of which are chilling to me. So chilling, I don't want to repeat them. They make me angry. They are intended to.
Those examples, what those people are doing is wrong ya know? But we have no moral common ground (Joe and I) that is based in reason. The whole system is rooted in an evolutionary mindset which must acknowledge that morality is a series of chemical reactions in your brain which can either be obeyed or not. You get a choice. And nothing happens to you if you choose the wrong path, there is no vengeful god watching you and choosing to punish you. There are presumably a lot of happy dictators in various countries around the world who are obeying the core philosophy here rather well.
I don't want to bore you but that fact must permeate your viewpoint if you're going to be consistent. If you have freedom to live the way you want to, so do I. Which means I don't care if you're not cool if we expand. I'm not asking permission. Traditional BJJ isn't cool if 10th Planet expands. 10th Planet isn't asking permission. 10th planet doesn't care if you don't like it. Whatever belief set we're talking about isn't cool with any religion expanding. We aren't asking. And we're a bit confused about why you care.
I think we can all agree with "be cool to people, eat right, exercise, don't brainwash people." That's pretty basic.
I'm taking a good look at what AJ said, I think this is a sharp point and I want to check it.
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Originally Posted by Tim Elliott
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