Wednesday, 10 May 2006

• What *Isn't* a Metaphysical Scam?

  What *isn’t* a Metaphysical Scam?

  
  

  If its one thing I hate to hear it’s the first knee jerk response from a meta-scammer… “Well that means EVERYTHING is a metaphysical scam!”  As though that could possibly be true.  If there are belief systems that are false and not started by their god, those belief systems will fit a particular mold that can be identified.  Every meta-scammer, I think, must admit this on some level.  Islam?  Mormonism?  Jainism?  Sikhism?  There is a reason they flourish and there is a reason they get away with what they do.  How do you hide a big non-truth and still have a functional world view as drastically different as these?  You stick it in the mold of a metaphysical scam, that’s how.  This can be either intentionally or just as a functional necessity of a developing religious movement or both. 

   

  What happens when we change the parameters?  What is the new shape of confrontation and what does it mean? 

   

  A.  Openable doors, piggy backing, no necessity, high emotional demands…if we want, we can go check up and clear up our ignorance issues…no scam here.  This would maybe be like a puppet show where children are simply in absolute wonder but they are allowed to come and look around and under the stage at the puppeteers.

   

  B.  Closed doors, no piggy backing, no necessity, high emotional demands…that basically means there isn’t any representation in the real world at all…and is just an unconfirmed idea of some kind that is trying to solicit your help on a wild goose chase.  There’s no pretension that its true, its your choice. 

   

  C.  Closed doors, piggy backing, but there is necessity to the important claims, and still high emotional demands…that sounds like someone wanted us to know it happened, but couldn’t inform us in person from the past, but we’d better pay attention and we’ve been given as much information as could be reasonably expected to be given to take us there.  Arguably, things like Biblical prophecy do not fit this category as no source when out of its way to make sure we could know they were really prophets.  We can just “get away” with assuming they were and make every apology and let them slide on every loophole…but not if you are going to demand my emotional bucks. 

   

  D.  Closed doors, piggy backing, no necessity, but no substantial emotional demands…that’s just called un-obligatory fantasy.

   

  E.  Closed doors, piggy backing, no necessity, high emotional demands…but only temporarily…that’s something that only fits the mold in passing, but quickly seeks to step out so that you don’t think you are being taken advantage of.  Like maybe you keep making the same un-confirmable excuse as to why you are late for work, but then you start showing up (maybe with an actual doctor’s note this time) and everything is okay and they don’t have to hire someone else.

   

  F.  Closed doors, piggy backing, no necessity, high emotional demands…but there’s no one pitching it to you personally…that’s just an amoral “didn’t consider you” situation and can’t be considered a scam because there can be no intention to deceive (no matter how innocent).  Likely you will find that there are unsuspicious reasons it “fits the mold” to whatever arbitrary extent.

   

  Everyone follow?  Still sound like arbitrary god hating?  We’ll all learn to be honed confrontationalists yet.  We could probably do another round of multiple combinations, but then it just gets more and more into the realm of obviousness that there’s really no point.  All I’ve done here is broken down the base components of why I think the way I do about confrontation with religions.  I think every criticism of religion as being untrue fits snuggly into the concept in one way or another.  If people weren’t so desperate for the payoff, I think this rationale would be commonplace. 

   

  Ben

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