Karl

Felicia ? Which means 'happy things' apparently. That would definitely be the driver in your life example.

We had, basically a box of cogs and you had a transmission. It's a verb for a noun, but it makes it sound ethereal. Americans really do the auto erotica thing very well. My little Duce coup doesn't translate to Morris minor countryman. You got big block V8 and we got a Rover. We couldn't even get a sexy name for the sexiest car ever produced the E type.

T.V wasn't something with a cathode ray tube. Everything was a bit electrical back then. AC/DC wasn't just a rock band

Why do you think he is a 'fuzzy thinker'. The result of higher prices is less custom. If a business only uses low wage staff due to the price it's products command on the market, then it must either change its market completely ( which isn't plausible), reduce its staff ( which will reduce its service and hence its profit), automate and sack some/all of its employees, or, as has been happening, close up shop and deprive its customers, suppliers, employees and its owners of value. Tragic.

I'm more amazed by the day. The central bank interest apartheid which does nothing for the man in the street, but everything for the carry trade and zombie corporations is regarded as beneficial to consumers. I came across a guy the other day saying fearfully 'they are readying us for an interest rate rise' as if interest rates shouldn't be connected to market forces. Then there is the complete bollox about inflation-which used to be a bad thing, then became a necessary thing and is now a good thing. 'If only we could pay more for our shopping and energy how great the world would be'. It's insanity. I'm not sure if I walk down the street and turn around, that my house won't have turned into a giant beach ball or a portrait of Hendrix.

Employers look at cost and return. They weigh up the risk of taking on a black youth vs a white youth. It's just like anything we buy, price is a determinate. We might like a Ferrari but can only buy a Ford. If we are then forced to pay Ferrari prices anyway, then you aren't going to get many people opting for the ford. Its the reason we like sales. We get a bargain but we might buy something we wouldn't normally have bought. We take a risk because the cost is reduced. Take away the negotiating rights of a black youth and it puts them at a serious disadvantage to their white counterparts. An employer is more likely to take a punt on a young black guy if the price is right. This is only one issue of minimum wages. The rest I have mentioned previously.

The employer isn't. They can choose a white man over a black man. If they value the White man more then that's who will get the job. Regardless of the Governments attempts to destroy freedom and choice by outlawing discrimination, until employers are given a quota of people they are forced to employ, then discrimination still persists. The answer to this by liberals is to force the employer by government edict and so turn a country to communism/facism. As it stands, a minimum wage is a protectionist policy for white males/ females as it stops blacks/youths/low skilled undercutting them. Black, low skilled and youth are synonymous with each other which puts them at a distinct disadvantage. It could be said that minimum wage is actually racist.

I'm sure there is a point to that comment but I'm damned if I have a clue what it is.

That was predictable.

There are plenty of signs the world is ending, the least of them is bananas. Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana.

Came across this the other day: During South Africa’s apartheid era, the secretary of its avowedly racist Building Workers’ Union, Gert Beetge, said, “There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances, I support the rate for the job (minimum wage) as the second-best way of protecting our white artisans.” The South African Economic and Wage Commission of 1925 reported that “while definite exclusion of the Natives from the more remunerative fields of employment by law has not been urged upon us, the same result would follow a certain use of the powers of the Wage Board under the Wage Act of 1925, or of other wage-fixing legislation. The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an occupation or craft so high that no Native would be likely to be employed.”

We were discussing the Tao, so if you meant something else I don't know how I could have known ? I can categorically state I haven't done any of those things, but I certainly used to believe I had. Even my wife, a very down to earth and sceptical person began to believe it. I would ask you if you have ever had your skills scientifically verified under lab conditions ? The usual answer to that is getting on for the one Brian just gave. Science can't know everything or science can be wrong. I can tell you that I believed these things were true, very passionately. As passionately as you do now. I defended them, argued the same arguments. What's more people believed what I said, they began to reinforce my own convictions. It became a self fulfilling feedback loop. I did have people go away 'cured' of various mental and physical ailments. The thing about faith is, that when you no longer believe it's faith, then it becomes totally real for that person and those that surround them. That's the trip. That's why very religious people consider themselves beyond faith. It has become reality for them and faith is for those who are starting to climb the ladder to Gods grace. To suggest it's a delusion is to start a war. The world is full of examples of this today. Jihadhists don't have faith, they have intrinsic knowing, a deep abiding truth and they take it to the point of self sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed for us-how much more knowing can one get than to sacrifice for the sins of humanity ? No doubt I've invited a ton of trouble by saying this as it's often seen as being destructive for the sake of self ego. If I said that this is what I believe then I would be accused of having faith as well. What good does it do to pull someone away from their personal truth ? And Is it my delusion or yours ? How do we know which real is real ? Am I as deluded now as I thought I was ? All those things will form the basis for arguments. In the end it comes down to the one question that philosophers have been asking for thousands of years 'How do I know what is real?'

If it is then there is no science and we can't know anything for certain. That is what you are saying because we have had that conversation.

I used to lie in bed with a little Philips radio tucked under the pillow listening to that song on radio Luxembourg as a young lad. The radio station was so weak that it used to fade in and out with static. It was as if he was talking about the experience I was having.

You know that was based on a line from the song 'man who sold the world' and not a comment ? Oh no, not me, I never lost control, youre face, to face with the ...

I'll play as long as it doesn't get nasty. I'm mindful of your accusation that 'I'm stuck in senses" and I know my posts aren't always very welcome. So you know, let's see how it goes. I've had lots of experience of spiritual pursuits. 8 years worth infact, but that hasn't anything to do with what we are discussing. You are saying you have had experience of the Tao, even though the Tao is supposedly beyond any experience. That's surely a dilemma. So if it wasn't the Tao/because you can't experience the Tao-then it must have been something different to the Tao ? If you indeed did experience the Tao then the books are wrong and you can explain exactly (within reason) what the Tao is. It's colour, shape, smell, sound, texture, location etc then we can all go and marvel at it. Then it wouldn't be faith because more of us would see it and it would be precisely as you described.

If it's based on fact then it's not faith. To the contrary would be like 'that's a circle because it isn't a square' which would be nonsense. If something isn't something, then it can either be nothing or something else. Either way it's only ever useful as part of induction in exceptional circumstances and doesn't prove much of anything at all.

Faith in doubts ? You are scraping a very empty barely with that one I'm afraid.

Yet the child does not have faith in his parents. Up to a certain age he is simply reliant on his parents, once old enough he learns their values and its these values that give him confidence. If values aren't shared, if the parent is abusive and inconsistent, then the child becomes fearful. He does not understand the values, they appear to shift. One day he gets a bike and the next a punch. He can't figure out how this strange world works and so he stops trying. There isn't a 'faith' in science either. It's systematic logic based on sound reason.

I thought he died a long long time ago.

:laugh: Honesty is a virtue. Faith is faith though, so if something cannot be defined then it has either to be accepted on faith, or rejected from lack of evidence.

Sorry dude. :-)

I can't percieve one and I don't know why there needs to be one either. It served the Christian church pretty well for over 2000 years and continues to do so. Taoism looks to me to be a less defined alternative to God. A kind of proto religion maybe ?

The point is that you are talking about faith. Call it divine revelation, a flash of knowing, an inner light, intuition, or whatever, but that is what it is. Aquinas put it very well, he certainly did not say that his faith was absent some form of inner 'knowing', 'feeling'. He had to have had some kind of thought/sensation that made him believe in God, even though he could not directly describe God-just as you are unable to describe the Tao. Im most certainly not a sensualist, empiricist or rationalist. I am not a subjectivist of any kind. Perish the thought. :-)

Experience would indicate that the senses had touched upon it and the consciousness had grasped it. A concept would be formed relating the concept to all other concepts. Therefore it can be defined in terms of those other concepts and therefore explained to others. Experience isn't isolated it has to be linked to existing knowledge or it could not be known at all. In other words 'experience' would be a divine revelation, or feeling that something is true-which is faith.