Dan Rowden's Birth

[Dan Rowden]

Once upon a time
Lived a man never born
He grew to his prime
And his body grew worn
But just ask and he'd swear
To any who'd care
That you just couldn't tell
When his mum's birth canal
Ejected him out
Except that "Somewhere about
A time roughly known
She emitted a groan
And you somehow emerged
All causes converged"
This description he failed
Because it entailed
An exact form of knowing
Which he claimed had no showing
But how he explains
To those who have brains
How he got here at all
In the absence of birth
Will fully enthrall
And cause us much mirth.

That's as cute as hell, but does not address the challenge. You can't do it, either, can you?

[guest_of_logic]

Birth is a process that occurs over time. There's no single "exact" time of birth, although you could probably get very close to one if you take it as the moment that the entire body of the baby fully emerges from the birth canal. As for an "exact" place - a baby's body is not a mathematical point, so again perfect exactitude is impossible, but one can specify it within a few tens of centimetres, assuming that the mother's body isn't in motion during the event.

To say that lack of exactitude entails that birth didn't happen is just absurd, and your challenge is really meaningless.

As mikiel has pointed out, the air was thick with irony when you wrote "seriously".

Damn, and I originally wrote that I wasn't going to get involved in this argument...

[Dan Rowden]

Then you concede "defeat" and accept what I argued.

[guest_of_logic]

No, because what you argued is that you weren't born, which - as I wrote above - is absurd. I don't know how you got "concede defeat" out of my post.

[Dan Rowden]

Show me where/when I was born. I mean, seriously, do it definitively or accept that I'm correct in my ultimate point, which was there there is no place I was born other than the innumerable arbitrary designations one can assign.

That's my challenge. Can you answer it?

[guest_of_logic]

To say that lack of exactitude entails that birth didn't happen is just absurd, and your challenge is really meaningless.

That's my answer. Can you deal with it?

[Alex Jacob]

There can be no definite point of banning, banning is really a continuous process that has no precise point. It has been going on for a long time, maybe for ever, nor will it ever end. Like 'becoming', one is always being banned. I don't think any of this really requires explanation, it is self-evident.

[mikiel]

I am entirely weary of your accusatory nonsense, Sir. Either prove to my satisfaction that I was born at some objective time and place, or I will ban you.

You want to stay? Meet the challenge.

Btw, so we're clear - you have a single post within which to meet this challenge.

I was ready to leave anyway, as this forum is a farce, and you are a deluded, power mad tyrant. "Prove to your satisfaction" indeed! Someone who claims they were never born, by any *reasonable standard* is indeed deluded.

David banned Samadhi on equally tyrannical and arbitrary grounds, because he constantly disagreed with the *doctrines* put forth dogmatically by you three. ("Judging Others" thread, pg 18.) And I too have consistently shared here the classical version of enlightenment which transcends reason and logic. Why you have not previously banned me as a heretic I do not know, as you are clearly intolerant of views of enlightenment which diverge from your own very narrow dogma.

"Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment...
- Truth, Courage, Honesty,..."
What an obvious farce!

So, clearly there is nothing I can possibly say here to "prove" to a deluded fool that he was indeed actually born....
on account of I don't have a clue to when and where it occurred.

But I will, for the record state the obvious:
Every human being who has ever lived, is now living or who will live has been or will be born, tho the exact times and places are not universal knowledge known to everyone else.

I was born on June 9, 1945 in the wee hours of the morning. Pinning down the exact nano-second would of course be arbitrary. Does the birth of the head count, or is it the instant the feet pass into sight?

I was born in a makeshift hospital in a garage outside of Ridgecrest CA. Exact address or gps site of the b irthplace and birthing bed unknown and unknowable.
So not only do I fail Dan's ridiculous challenge, I can not even give a precise objective account of my own time and place of birth.

This will be obvious grounds for being banned (in the mind of someone as deranged as Dan.)
BTW, how is that lack of absolute precision on "time and place"... which is obviously impossible supports his or anyone's ridiculous claim *that they were not born at all?* Yes, quite rhetorical.

Truth is these three clowns are intimidated by my 178 and 174 IQ scores, my 99the percentile on the GRE, and my firsthand account of permanent transcendence of ego (tho I still use its tools).... and my 22yr career as a psychotherapist... calling them crazy... and my founding of an intentional community based on True Enlightenment and harmony with the Earth and each other.

You who follow this trio and exalt them into the position of "wise men" are as deluded as they. You deserve each other.

Good bye.

(Let the bashing begin. I see Carl is already leading the mob.
It's *radical honesty*, Carl. You stick to to being a modest good little boy like your mama said. Enlightenment sometimes cuts with a sharp knife.)

[Carl G]

Truth is these three clowns are intimidated by my 178 and 174 IQ scores, my 99the percentile on the GRE, and my firsthand account of permanent transcendence of ego (tho I still use its tools).... and my 22yr career as a psychotherapist... calling them crazy... and my founding of an intentional community based on True Enlightenment and harmony with the Earth and each other.

Ugh, not again, but you left out the 10,000 hours of meditation.

Once more evidence that high IQ does not necessarily indicate intelligence and that spiritual revelation does not necessarily confer enlightenment. Also, that illustration that trotting out one's credentials over and over does not necessarily strengthen or even lend credence to one's spiritual case.

mikiel, your months of posting have featured your ego arguing you are ego-free, and your aggression promoting harmony; what surrealist theater it has been.

Good luck in your future endeavors.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

guest_of_logic, it's not as automatically absurd as you are making it out to be.

If it was not worth any discussion, philosophic positions like Presentism would not exist.

[Dan Rowden]

To say that lack of exactitude entails that birth didn't happen is just absurd, and your challenge is really meaningless.

That's my answer. Can you deal with it?

Certainly. I see failure all the time. Can you deal with your failure? I posted a very specific challenge that you have not met, yet you call what I asserted absurd and meaningless. You haven't even addressed the point that there are innumerable points at which one might arbitrarily assert that "birth" took place. What makes yours more meaningful than someone who asserts it to have been 9 months previous? Why do you assert that which you have simply invented to be real or meaningful?

A bit from Poison for the Heart on this issue:

Did we begin ?

A scientist said recently that the soul comes into existence when the mother accepts the child. A Tibetan lama has said that the life essence passes from the father into the mother, before conception. Personally, I believe it all begins with the sparkle in someone's eye.

So when does life begin? Who is right and who is wrong?

The whole question of a woman's right to abort a pregnancy, and whether it constitutes murder, revolves around the problem of when life actually begins: that is, the definition of life. Does it begin at conception, or at birth, or at some time between conception and birth, or even before conception? Is it possible that some of us never actually meet the criteria for "life"? Then again, are we assuming too much in supposing that life can come into existence at all!

Most of us believe in our self-existence and therefore that our life must have begun at some point in time; and this point in time is the whole point! For despite our frantic efforts to ascertain the exact moment of our grand coming into existence, we are doomed to failure as is the cat who tries to catch his own tail.

To believe one's life began at birth is satisfying enough for a child, but as our knowledge grows it fails to satisfy. Many a scientist finds the moment of conception a satisfying place to make a beginning. They say that conception represents the "complete genetic complement," and a new existence. But upon analysis we find that conception is not an event, but a process - a process in which nothing whatsoever can ever come into existence. And what is more, nothing becomes "complete" as nothing was lacking in the first place. Conception results in a genetic code inside a cell, a set of instructions, nothing more - which is no more "life" than a blueprint for a house is the actual house.

If anything at all comes into existence at conception it is our labels, or words we use as tools to provide us with handles for grappling with an elusive reality.

What does this leave us? A world without beginnings! The extinction of the spark of life! This seems a heartless prospect. This knowledge of beginnings is not spiritual, and may leave your heart ashen; but mark my words: it is the highest of all! I beg you consider that Nature is not entirely undeserving of respect.

Yes, respect for Nature is something we know little of. And it saddens me to have to say that we people . . . are believers in magic! The demon of superstition abounds within our hearts and minds. We have presupposed that a "self", some abstract phenomena we have never satisfactorily defined, does exist and has come into existence. Then we clever people amuse ourselves conjuring up events of "creation" to explain it all, wrongly and unnecessarily piling rubbish on top of what already exists in all its perfection.

The belief that life is created at conception, or at any point in time for that matter, is just as deluded and as wretched as the Christian belief in creation. It is a belief that something can be created out of nothing. Such thinking is positively hateful of reason and is typical of the scoundrels we humans are. We are not slow to disparage others when they throw reason to the winds. And we heap scorn upon those unfortunate fundamentalist religionists, when all the time, we, hypocrites to the core, harbour the deepest evil - blind faith in self-existence.

Life can never come into existence. There is just change here, and no matter how much you might like to have been "born", it is simply not a real possibility. No matter your love of life, reality remains.

Know that any boundary line you draw to designate a "beginning" will by necessity be totally arbitrary. Nonetheless such boundaries must be made-up for practical purposes, there being no demarcations in reality. The crucial thing to remember while we go about our business is that all boundaries are drawn by the imagination, and are therefore illusory. I bid you never forget this truth!

Can we avoid these illusions? No, for we have evolved within Nature in such a way that our senses and concepts provide us with boundaries, with illusions, which we must accept if we are to survive. However, we must not be ruled by these marvelous appearances, but put them firmly under our control. If we concretely defined life as existing at conception, then to halt the growth of the resultant chemical grouping would literally be murder! If we let words control our lives in this way we will be perpetually faced with such ludicrous and perplexing problems.

We ourselves define what is to be "life" and "death". They do not exist of their own account, so we must devise them for communicating and living. Such concepts should be used as tools to make life easy. It is madness to let them dictate to us, and to let them confound our spirits with unending confusion. We ourselves must choose definitions of life in line with the requirements of the survival of our species, and the advancement of wisdom. We could choose "life" to mean any number of things. In an underpopulated world life could begin at conception, making abortion illegal, while in an overpopulated world life might begin at birth.

The essential thing is that there are no ultimate values given to us. We alone are the creators of values. Do not shirk your responsibility! Learn to be a creator! To fail here is to personally condemn humankind to death.

Can religion help us live up to such a responsibility, and to live more harmoniously with reality? Hardly! The religions of today are symptomatic of the anti-thought pervasive through all society. They are the perfect crystallization of all I deplore. They express a pitiful fear of personal responsibility, a fear of freedom, and are kept alive through a psychology of self-grasping and the desire for permanence and predictability. Religion is the most active of movements to fight against the terrifying chaos of Nature. Its method is to package everything into neat little bundles, suitable for displaying on a mantlepiece. Religion is a sorry statement that we humans prefer to find happiness in belief rather than through reason.

So I implore you to use your brains, and have faith in your own ability to reason. Yes, I hear your doubts all too clearly: you regard reason a dubious master. But hear me out! If you use reason without fear or concession, how can it possibly lead you astray? So I say, respect your mind, love reason, be an example!

[Shahrazad]

Dan,

I would agree with your claim if it was that you never came into existence, or never had a real beginning. However, your birth, which is just your coming out of your mother's womb and ceasing to be fed through the umbilical cord, did occur, though it is really more a process than an instant event, as it took time to unfold.

My proof that your birth occurred is that you are alive now. Just don't ask me to give you the time and day, as I was not there.

One question nobody has asked so far is, what if the umbilical cord was not cut right away? Would that mean you were not born yet? Astrologists count the moment of your first breath as the exact time of birth, so by that criterion, you are not alive until your cord is completely cut.

[Dan Rowden]

I am entirely weary of your accusatory nonsense, Sir. Either prove to my satisfaction that I was born at some objective time and place, or I will ban you.

You want to stay? Meet the challenge.

Btw, so we're clear - you have a single post within which to meet this challenge.

I was ready to leave anyway, as this forum is a farce, and you are a deluded, power mad tyrant. "Prove to your satisfaction" indeed! Someone who claims they were never born, by any *reasonable standard* is indeed deluded.

I had/have a very reasonable standard. Your suggestion I don't is offensive, especially given the fact that you can't refute my position. The best you and quest_for_logic can come up with is to give examples of arbitrary moments, which is exactly what I said is all that is available to us. I mean, can either of you actually read?

David banned Samadhi on equally tyrannical and arbitrary grounds, because he constantly disagreed with the *doctrines* put forth dogmatically by you three.

I could have banned you a hundred times before now. You are too much of a narcissist to even appreciate the level of patience I've afforded you. Your constant abuse is inexcusable, given that you never back it up with anything substantive (your simple Vedic scripts don't qualify). I gave you a chance to do so here, and you didn't even try to meet the challenge, despite the ease of doing so that you implied.

And I too have consistently shared here the classical version of enlightenment which transcends reason and logic.

Doh. For what reason have you ever thought that was an informative thing to say? It's breathtakingly obvious that enlightenment is not a state of reason or logic. No-one here has ever, ever, ever asserted it was. You are just too full of yourself to notice what anyone else actually argues. You hold this place in contempt, and constantly splash your bile about - for no good reason. I have had, Sir, quite enough of it.

Why you have not previously banned me as a heretic I do not know, as you are clearly intolerant of views of enlightenment which diverge from your own very narrow dogma.

No, I'm intolerant of narcissists who don't give a crap what other people actually say. Over the years we've had myriad divergences of views regarding enlightenment from myriad persons. To assert that we show intolerance towards "heresy" is a libel I will not abide.

"Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment...
- Truth, Courage, Honesty,..."
What an obvious farce!

The only farce is that I put up with your bull for this long. I apologise to everyone for having done so.

So, clearly there is nothing I can possibly say here to "prove" to a deluded fool that he was indeed actually born....on account of I don't have a clue to when and where it occurred.

That's because it never objectively occurred! Beginnings are merely arbitrary points we pluck out of a continuum.

But I will, for the record state the obvious:
Every human being who has ever lived, is now living or who will live has been or will be born, tho the exact times and places are not universal knowledge known to everyone else.

Yes they are, because we're the ones who determine such a thing. It can't be other than something known to us.

I was born on June 9, 1945 in the wee hours of the morning. Pinning down the exact nano-second would of course be arbitrary. Does the birth of the head count, or is it the instant the feet pass into sight?

Um, duh, but that's my exact point! Man, oh, man.

I was born in a makeshift hospital in a garage outside of Ridgecrest CA. Exact address or gps site of the b irthplace and birthing bed unknown and unknowable.

Your psychological need to insert irrelevant personal data into every other post is something that ought to concern you.

So not only do I fail Dan's ridiculous challenge, I can not even give a precise objective account of my own time and place of birth.

And there's a reason for that. That reason is my point and the basis of my challenge. All you had to do was acknowledge that point. Instead, by mocking my own point, you painted yourself into a corner from which you could not possibly escape.

This will be obvious grounds for being banned (in the mind of someone as deranged as Dan.)

The truth is my stated basis for banning you is/was unfair. The further truth is I want to ban you because I'm no longer willing to put up with your continuous character assassinations and libels. i.e. I'm banning you for being a troll.

BTW, how is that lack of absolute precision on "time and place"... which is obviously impossible supports his or anyone's ridiculous claim *that they were not born at all?* Yes, quite rhetorical.

Any beginning is a product of an arbitrary carving up of a continuum. i.e. it's a product of the dualism of consciousness, not something intrinsic to reality.

Truth is these three clowns are intimidated by my 178 and 174 IQ scores, my 99the percentile on the GRE, and my firsthand account of permanent transcendence of ego (tho I still use its tools).... and my 22yr career as a psychotherapist... calling them crazy... and my founding of an intentional community based on True Enlightenment and harmony with the Earth and each other.

Physician, heal thyself.

You who follow this trio and exalt them into the position of "wise men" are as deluded as they. You deserve each other.

Good bye.

Good night and good luck.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan,

I would agree with your claim if it was that you never came into existence, or never had a real beginning. However, your birth, which is just your coming out of your mother's womb and ceasing to be fed through the umbilical cord, did occur, though it is really more a process than an instant event, as it took time to unfold.

Yes, such things are processes that themselves have no true beginning. But this raises another interesting issue: when that bag of blood and guts and bone (sometimes lovingly referred to here as a "sprog") popped out onto the table - was I there? Did "I" exist at that time? Certainly not from my perspective. I actually prefer - I think it was Maestro's view on this (pardon if I'm wrong, I can't be bothered going back to find it) - that I was "born" the first time a sense of self occurred.

My proof that your birth occurred is that you are alive now. Just don't ask me to give you the time and day, as I was not there.

That I'm alive now proves that I evolved, but it doesn't prove I was born (other than where "born" indicates some arbitrary point a person determines). What we mean by "born" and what it indicates is more or less the issue here.

One question nobody has asked so far is, what if the umbilical cord was not cut right away? Would that mean you were not born yet?

Good question: yet another factor in the innumerable factors we have to consider when constructing our determination of when "birth" takes place.

Astrologists count the moment of your first breath as the exact time of birth, so by that criterion, you are not alive until your cord is completely cut.

Yes, but this is really the point: how many times were we born? The only answers I'm prepared to accept are "none" or "innumerable".

[guest_of_logic]

guest_of_logic, it's not as automatically absurd as you are making it out to be.

If it was not worth any discussion, philosophic positions like Presentism would not exist.

Trevor, I've not come across presentism before, but from what I read on that page, it seems that Dan's birth would exist as a "logical construct" (whatever that's supposed to mean). Whether that supports the claim that Dan Rowden was not born I can only guess. In any case, it's not the argument that Dan has been using. I'm willing to entertain different arguments - such as "I cannot remember my birth and the only information that I have about it is secondhand, so for all I know I was actually delivered by a stork" - but (a) such arguments are not definitive and don't justify the categorical claim "Dan Rowden was not born", and (b) Dan has been making a very different argument.

I see failure all the time. Can you deal with your failure? I posted a very specific challenge that you have not met, yet you call what I asserted absurd and meaningless.

Dan, it would be a failure if I accepted that your challenge had any relevance, but I don't. Your argument, which runs something like "inexactitude implies inexistence", is completely bogus. Your challenge is an attempt to demonstrate the first part of the argument: inexactitude. Since I don't accept the argument, my "failure" to meet your challenge is irrelevant.

The number pi, being irrational, cannot be expressed exactly - does this mean that pi does not exist?

You haven't even addressed the point that there are innumerable points at which one might arbitrarily assert that "birth" took place. What makes yours more meaningful than someone who asserts it to have been 9 months previous?

Common usage of the term "birth" makes it more meaningful. The more appropriate term for "9 months previous" is "conception".

Why do you assert that which you have simply invented to be real or meaningful?

I didn't invent the conventional meaning of the term "birth".

A bit from Poison for the Heart on this issue:

Amongst a lot of other stuff, that extract simply makes the same argument that you're making and does so no more persuasively.

[Dan Rowden]

I see failure all the time. Can you deal with your failure? I posted a very specific challenge that you have not met, yet you call what I asserted absurd and meaningless.

Dan, it would be a failure if I accepted that your challenge had any relevance, but I don't.

I love the way you dismiss as relevant that which you don't comprehend. It may seem reasonable from your side, but from mine its hilarious.

Your argument, which runs something like "inexactitude implies inexistence", is completely bogus.

See, here's the proof that you don't comprehend my argument at all. It has exactly nothing to do with inexactitude in measurements. It's about the fact that you cannot get beginnings from a causal continuum other than by way of arbitrary designations, which, by their nature, are multitudinous (there are as many as there are minds to conceive of them). i.e. they are not intrinsic to that continuum (but are to a dualistic mind).

The number pi, being irrational, cannot be expressed exactly - does this mean that pi does not exist?

That analogy is beyond lame.

You haven't even addressed the point that there are innumerable points at which one might arbitrarily assert that "birth" took place. What makes yours more meaningful than someone who asserts it to have been 9 months previous?

Common usage of the term "birth" makes it more meaningful. The more appropriate term for "9 months previous" is "conception".

Now you're making appeals to common usage? That noise you hear is Jesus, weeping.

Why do you assert that which you have simply invented to be real or meaningful?

I didn't invent the conventional meaning of the term "birth".

Man, you really want a piece of my Zen stick, dontcha?

[guest_of_logic]

I love the way you dismiss as relevant that which you don't comprehend.

Well I can't say that I love the way that you characterise me as uncomprehending. It's a pretty simple case that you're making, I'd have to be a complete dolt not to get it.

Your argument, which runs something like "inexactitude implies inexistence", is completely bogus.

See, here's the proof that you don't comprehend my argument at all. It has exactly nothing to do with inexactitude in measurements.

That looks like a strawman to me. Where in what you quoted do I mention measurements?

It's about the fact that you cannot get beginnings from a causal continuum other than by way of arbitrary designations, which, by their nature, are multitudinous (there are as many as there are minds to conceive of them). i.e. they are not intrinsic to that continuum (but are to a dualistic mind).

Yeah, I get it. I got it when you first presented the argument, I got it when you quoted Poison For The Heart at me, and I get it now. It's just a non-starter of an argument. Birth is a process with fuzzy boundaries. Does that stop us from referring to it meaningfully? No, it doesn't.

Now you're making appeals to common usage?

Yeah, I am. If we all want to understand one another, then we all have to use words in the same way as each other.

[Dan Rowden]

I love the way you dismiss as relevant that which you don't comprehend.

Well I can't say that I love the way that you characterise me as uncomprehending. It's a pretty simple case that you're making, I'd have to be a complete dolt not to get it.

Resist....resist.....resist.......

Your argument, which runs something like "inexactitude implies inexistence", is completely bogus.

See, here's the proof that you don't comprehend my argument at all. It has exactly nothing to do with inexactitude in measurements.

That looks like a strawman to me. Where in what you quoted do I mention measurements?

You had previously stated, outlining your argument:

Birth is a process that occurs over time. There's no single "exact" time of birth, although you could probably get very close to one if you take it as the moment that the entire body of the baby fully emerges from the birth canal. As for an "exact" place - a baby's body is not a mathematical point, so again perfect exactitude is impossible, but one can specify it within a few tens of centimetres, assuming that the mother's body isn't in motion during the event.

To say that lack of exactitude entails that birth didn't happen is just absurd, and your challenge is really meaningless.

It's about the fact that you cannot get beginnings from a causal continuum other than by way of arbitrary designations, which, by their nature, are multitudinous (there are as many as there are minds to conceive of them). i.e. they are not intrinsic to that continuum (but are to a dualistic mind).

Yeah, I get it. I got it when you first presented the argument, I got it when you quoted Poison For The Heart at me, and I get it now. It's just a non-starter of an argument. Birth is a process with fuzzy boundaries. Does that stop us from referring to it meaningfully? No, it doesn't.

ARRRGGGGG!!!!! Jesus is begging for mercy! His tear ducts can only handle so much. What the hell is a "fuzzy" boundary? How do define a continuum and what boundaries exist intrinsically in such a thing? I'm telling you the only ones that can exist are those we arbitrarily impose on it (and they are not really fuzzy). And speaking of actual strawmen: I never implied our arbitrary designations are not meaningful or that we can't speak meaningfully about them. It's obvious that what we create is meaningful and that we can speak about our creations meaningfully. I'm saying that "birth" is a conceptual creation and nothing more. Just as a "set" or "empirical model" is. These things do not exist outside of our arbitrary concepts/creations/designations.

I can't state this any other way. So, if you don't see my point then that's how it has to be.

P.S. you unwittingly supported my argument when you said:

Birth is a process that occurs over time. There's no single "exact" time of birth[...]

That's right, there is no time of birth other than the one we arbitrarily designate, which can be almost anything we want.

[guest_of_logic]

Your argument, which runs something like "inexactitude implies inexistence", is completely bogus.

See, here's the proof that you don't comprehend my argument at all. It has exactly nothing to do with inexactitude in measurements.

That looks like a strawman to me. Where in what you quoted do I mention measurements?

You had previously stated, outlining your argument

Speaking of failed challenges, where is your answer to my question? You wrote "here's proof that {I} don't comprehend {your} argument at all" (my emphasis). Where exactly is that proof, in what you quoted?

As for what you subsequently quoted, that was a response to your challenge. The extent that it represented inexactitude as a function of measurement is the extent to which your challenge did same.

What the hell is a "fuzzy" boundary?

It means that it's inexact. Get over it.

[Blair]

How doe's one get over an "inexact" boundary exactly?

[Dan Rowden]

Speaking of failed challenges, where is your answer to my question? You wrote "here's proof that {I} don't comprehend {your} argument at all" (my emphasis). Where exactly is that proof, in what you quoted?

As for what you subsequently quoted, that was a response to your challenge. The extent that it represented inexactitude as a function of measurement is the extent to which your challenge did same.

My challenge is not, was not, and never will be about inexactitude of measurement; that you keep raising this red herring shows that you don't understand my point. It's about the simple, nay, remedial point that beginnings cannot intrinsically exist in a continuum. I don't give a rat's patoot about measurements. They are as arbitrary as beginnings.

Do you agree or not that beginnings only exist because we invent them?

[guest_of_logic]

My challenge is not, was not, and never will be about inexactitude of measurement; that you keep raising this red herring shows that you don't understand my point.

I don't keep on raising it: you do. Let's review your challenge and my answer. Your wrote: "Show me where/when I was born. I mean, seriously, do it definitively". I responded with "Birth is a process that occurs over time. There's no single "exact" time of birth, although you could probably get very close to one if you take it as the moment that the entire body of the baby fully emerges from the birth canal. As for an "exact" place - a baby's body is not a mathematical point, so again perfect exactitude is impossible, but one can specify it within a few tens of centimetres, assuming that the mother's body isn't in motion during the event." My response dealt directly with your challenge. I don't see how I could have dealt with it in any other way. How else can I show you "definitively" "where/when" you were born without specifying an exact time and place?

Do you agree or not that beginnings only exist because we invent them?

As I keep on telling you, your argument is bogus, so it really doesn't matter whether or not I agree with its premises or supporting tenets.

Birth is a process whose boundaries are to some extent arbitrary or inexact. That doesn't stop us from referring to it meaningfully.

How doe's one get over an "inexact" boundary exactly?

By taking a really, extra, super big jump, just to be sure.

[Dan Rowden]

Do you agree or not that beginnings only exist because we invent them?

As I keep on telling you, your argument is bogus, so it really doesn't matter whether or not I agree with its premises or supporting tenets.

You can only sensibly claim my challenge and point is bogus if you can logically show that one must have been intrinsically "born" at some point. This isn't about measurement and the natural limits thereof. Just present the logical argument that it must have been so. Are you aware you haven't done anything remotely like that yet? Saying "it must have been so" doesn't cut it.

Birth is a process whose boundaries are to some extent arbitrary or inexact.

What boundaries?!!! Do you mean the ones we arbitrarily assign or the ones that exist in some objective state of things? How does this statement address my point in any way? And now they're to "some extent" arbitrary? To what extent?

That doesn't stop us from referring to it meaningfully.

I have no idea why you repeated this needless point.

To labour the point: "born" is - in and of itself, by definition, inherently, etc etc etc etc - an arbitrary designation. It is in its entirety a product of the dualism of consciousness. "Born" is nothing more than a description of an experience that is necessarily arbitrary like any experience that must neglect and exclude that which is causally connected to it (like all empirical models).

[guest_of_logic]

Dan, I have a challenge for you. Answer "yes" or "no" to the following question: did you, to the best of your knowledge, some time ago pass from your mother's womb through her birth canal and into the outside world?

[Dan Rowden]

Dan, I have a challenge for you. Answer "yes" or "no" to the following question: did you, to the best of your knowledge, some time ago pass from your mother's womb through her birth canal and into the outside world?

No. But apparently a sprog people called "Dan" did. I wasn't there at the time.

It this when you want to say I was born? Cool. No argument.