Philosophy Group Review - July 5th 2017

I said a week ago that I was going to a philosophy discussion group, it was at a community centre near me. I went, it was a bit long-winded and should have had a coffee before hand. Apart from the length of it, it was reasonable.

I was a sugar-crashing rambling amateur next to people between 55 and 75, many of whom had an academic background. I made a few good points, but we all agreed that experiences don't teach us much.

I should be had said that the group's discussion this evening was meant to be "do religious experiences provide evidence of God?", They changed it to "what can we learn from religious experiences". A pity.

Did they change it due to the possibility that they'd get the wrong audience? If nothing else, someone got my hopes up for a good debate.

As it was the debate was agnostic from the person covering the debate, but we all agreed that experiences are unlikely to result in anything we can be sure of as proof for a higher power.

the troubles started straight away, and WTF is a religious experience?

From the get go these intellectuals in their own right, even if medicated and retired, they seemed not to know what a religious experience was.

Did they mean a brainwashed person was seeing Christ? Well, no. The lecturer seemed to be suggesting that William James was onto something regarding experience but not the religious meaning added after. I guess they meant religious experience is a sense of wonder with a message untouched by ideology. Various argument were based on other definitions.

I was annoyed, I didn't get the chance to correct a few errors over Richard Dawkins that the speaker made. I got to mention a few history stories, which they confused, such as Joan of Arc finding a sword and if the myth holds she claimed it was a gift from God. I had a guy think I was on about King Authur, corrected him though.

There were many things I haven't noted here. It isn't the place for me, I lost confidence a bit. And, I think if anything I should organise my own group. Maybe see about renting a room once a month, invite some friends for a debate. Recorded prehaps.

In any case, I think I was throw by a few things, the group used to be bigger, it used to be more defined, and it wasn't a circle of chairs. I find it better to debate the speaker, share thoughts with 20+ people, instead of 9(not including myself), and have a subject defined enough to discuss.

Not saying the group was horrid, just that I used to enjoy it mopre two years ago. About two years ago I was a regular, now I'm not as headstrong and care about definition not general discussion.

Writting my first book?

[A quick, first draft of an article about writing]

Even though me grammar and speiling aren't not bad, I thought "Why not."

I have published on a few websites my thoughts before, more as a joke or for personal use, I have tried fiction, and as a topic, writing a story about Tibetan spiritual minced with a kind of ghost story, I wrote that while a bit in intoxicated, but I haven't wrote a well thought out book for public sale.  My project started in 2014, writing thoughts as a long winded, and somewhat pointless, philosophy, needless to say, I ended up putting that idea to bed, I had after rounding it down only a small number of pages, I figured that starting over may be for the best.  My next attempt was from the spring of 2015, I used arguments rather than drawn out reasoning, then through second and third draft corrected errors, added facts, and generally steadied up the work to a level that was acceptable, in most cases following edits have been required, and extra pages added. 

By early 2016 I have a great amount of work to use for my book, many points expand into other areas of thought, and a large part of my book is arguing against bad reasoning, as well as checking and double checking what I think I know.  Fact checking has gone up, I'm less impulsive since I started writing, and in many ways more peaceful in terms of my psychological well being, oddly, the liberation of writing seems to offer psychological benefit, and as I use doubt and reason as my way to peel my stresses.  Much of this being the deep marks left in my life due to religion, as well as other paranormal beliefs that we in affect encouraged in my early life, making my focus on magical solutions, how can you cure depression by believing it's something which can be cured by prayer?!
So I dare say I have some biases that will shrine through in my work, not least, the value of rationality above that of mysticism. 



[At this point I thought it best to continue this line of thought in my writings, I will add an update soon.]