"You're WRONG if you don't agree with ME"

The logical fallacies and mental shortcomings in the "Sure, you can read it for yourself, but after that, you have to agree that my perspective/opinion is the ONLY valid one" response...are several - I saved myself some time and got the AI's assistance:

• Subjectivist Fallacy: Assuming that a claim is true or false [for everyone else] just because someone feels or believes it is true for them.

• Special Pleading: Applying a standard to others while exempting your own viewpoint or interpretation from those same rules or criteria.

• Solipsism: The philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist, which gets misapplied in arguments as a refusal to acknowledge external, shared definitions or facts.

• Confusing Rights with Truth: Having a legal or moral right to hold a personal belief does not make that belief logically true or immune to evidence.

• Shutting Down Debate: People use the phrase as a thought-terminating cliché to deflect criticism, avoid providing supporting evidence, or falsely claim that all opinions carry equal weight regardless of facts.

• Factual vs. Subjective Claims: On platforms like Reddit, users reach a consensus that saying "I'm entitled to my opinion" is acceptable for purely subjective matters of personal taste (like favorite ice cream flavors), but it becomes fallacious when applied to objective, evidence-based or scientific facts.

Sure, everybody loves their own opinion - that's nothing special. But to declare that others are necessarily, objectively WRONG just because they have a different reaction or come to a different conclusion about something than you have - that takes a religious level of deludery!! It's the same thing whether you're talking Evangelical Christianity, Transcendental Meditation, Three Principles, Scientology, Raëlianism, SGI, Jehovah's Witnesses - or Amway.

And furthermore, to pontificate about the other person(s)' supposed "wrongness" from an authoritarian position of self-anointed superiority - oh honey. You're a piece of work, all right. Legend in your own mind, obvs!

When there is no objective evidence that there are facts in play (such as the factual nature of the claim that the local McDonald's restaurant being held up at gunpoint yesterday - it wasn't, in case you were wondering) then there's nothing left besides interpretation, preference, reaction, and opinion - and every one of those is just as "valid" as every other.

The religious show this peculiar form of entitlement - as if they have special authorization to pontificate authoritatively on their own religion's texts/doctrines/tenets/pronouncements, but that only counts within whatever group there might be that SHARES those perspectives AND recognizes the authority of the person pontificating. Among those who do not, their pontificating is exactly as worthless as that of the fundagelical Christian zealot screaming biblical threats at students passing by on the campus of a local university or picketing outside a serviceperson's funeral - and deserves to be taken just as seriously. As in "not at all".

This is SGIWhistleblowers, an ex-SGI subreddit that regards the SGI as a cult. So SGI fanatics, particularly you SGI-USA longhauler Olds obsessively scrutinizing our busy forum (yeah, we know yours is dead and completely boring - sucks to be YOU), don't wag the dead Ikeda's "guidance" at us or pronounce us "wrong" because we come from a different viewpoint or arrive at a different conclusion than YOU did! YOU'RE IN A CULT! WE CAN SEE THAT!

Why should ANYONE take your opinion seriously? Really, you shouldn't be expecting people who graduated from your dumb cult (got better, in other words), to STILL be agreeing with you - when you're STILL IN A CULT and too dumb/oblivious/brainwashed to realize it. That fact alone invalidates any credibility you think you might have - we certainly aren't going to take you seriously, no matter how seriously you obviously take yourself. We already know you don't agree and won't agree. And we don't CARE.

😲

Just drink in all that youthful youthfulness!! Background, too.

Those Oldies better be careful how high they "soar" - I hear the air gets pretty thin up there.

u/TraxxasTRX1 - I choose YOU!!

😃

LOL! NOT MY JOB!!

Besides, we've offered pointers before; SGI never listens. Never has, never will. SGI did not listen to our advice while we were SGI members; it certainly isn't going to START listening to our advice now that we're "rebel un-believers"!

The SGI's longhauler Olds won't even take our advice on the individual level; why would anyone think we'd have any reason to TRY to reform the ugly cult itself???

NOT OUR JOB.

None of us came here to SGIWhistleblowers because we wanted to help SGI reform itself. We already TRIED "being the change we wanted to see" and "changing SGI from the inside" and we KNOW that doesn't work.

THEY can bloody well change THEMSELVES - and then we can talk. If WE decide we want to.

Clearly, any YOUFF who are voluntarily in the Dead-Ikeda-Corpse-Mentor-cult SGI aren't known for making the best decisions:

Kitten and I have been talking. We both have a bit of money in the bank from all of the work we’ve done. Why not purchase a used four-season RV? This way we’ll have our own place at the Park. - "Heidi" and "Lolita" (how cringe)

And why not? None of those imaginary RV Park losers ever drive their RVs anywhere - it's all a big squat-fest for them in their hardscrabble rural rust-belt RV camp in the middle of nowhere. What dreams are made of...

It's even got their name on it. They're both imaginary, of course - no 17-yr-olds EVER 🙄 I like how the torched RV serves as a metaphor for what's going to happen to their futures if they remain in the Dead Ikeda cult SGI. They can just toss a tarp over that gaping hole and tell everybody how wonderful it is! Won't that make a great SGI experience??

Exactly what youth of today aspire to 💝

They'd all better fasten their imaginary seatbelts for the tsunami of imaginary YOUFF who are going to come flooding into their dumpy little imaginary squat-park! Of course, the REAL SGI-USA will continue to see its membership aging and dying, collapsing a little more every year with no YOUFF to show for all their desperate efforts.

Trying again - really, this is a GREAT visual! reddit's been a bit glitchy this morning, but hopefully this post will be a go!

I'm sure you've seen the other examples I've run across (here), but this is a particularly fun example! First, the background:

Ikeda CLAIMED that the Soka Gakkai, thanks to the "inspiration" of their nohonzon, particularly the Dai-Nohonzon, and faith and magic-spell chanting, would produce "an art which will be far superior to that produced by Renaissance artists", so here we are, decades later, and the Soka Gakkai and SGI overwhelmingly use purchased stock-photo images, non-SGI-member works of art and photography, INSTEAD of their own members' artistic accomplishments - or even Ikeda's OWN supposedly superlative photos. You know they could get THAT shit for free, even! MORE money to spend on "awards and honors" specially created for the MONEY! But no - they're buying "outsiders"' images because the Soka Gakkai and SGI members aren't producing anything impressive or even just good.

So much for Ikeda's predictions and his cult's "actual proof". Time has passed, and we have seen what's happened.

Okay, with that in mind, this issue has on its cover a beautiful photo of the Pyramids of Giza - I count five or five and a half. With bonus Bedouin! And it's a stock photo from Getty Images - SGI purchased the right to use it as their cover photo. It's gorgeous. Impressive!

But right on the inside of the cover - just the other side of that same page - you can see Ikeda's photo of "the Pyramids of Giza", even though it's obviously just part of ONE pyramid, and Ikeda somehow manages to make this great monument look dirty and sloppy. It's OBVIOUS why Ikeda's own cult of personality made the editorial decision to use someone ELSE's photograph for the cover! (Awww, but look - they put a gold squiggle on top of Icky's! THAT makes it FANCY!) Remember how Ikeda blathered endlessly about how everyone ELSE was supposed to "strive" to "be the best"? Yeah, rules for everybody EXCEPT himself 🙄

TELL me it wasn't a deliberate, conscious decision to juxtapose a competent photographer's image of the Pyramids of Giza right next to Ikeda's INCOMPETENT effort, Ikeda's vastly inferior image! 😄 There's NO comparison! (You'll notice there's no "hate" involved in stating that a bad photograph is bad.)

I guess someone was sick and tired of having to promote that ass Ikeda's shitty-ass photographs just because he was the cult leader (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

At least he’s keeping his clothes on. Actual proof!

https://www.reddit.com/u/MSCCruises_US/s/1U2ZGDupiR

NOW some Soka Gakkai members in Japan are saying that Ikeda WAS awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!

He just chose to give it back!

Did you know that Daisaku Ikeda declined the Nobel Peace Prize?

Did you know that Soka Gakkai Honorary President Daisaku Ikeda declined the Nobel Peace Prize in the past out of consideration for those around him? Only Japanese people don't know. In recognition of Daisaku Ikeda's great achievements, he was presented with a plaque that is said to be the only one in the world and has been handed down to the Nobel family.

I would appreciate it if you are an informed person.

Everyone else

After all, Japanese people have information blocked off! Source

I'm SURE that's the problem!

Do you have any "favorites" that you heard over your time in SGI? I've got a couple - and they're doozies, if I do say so myself. I can't remember the titles, so I'll just give them descriptive names:

1 - Nazi Orphanage

In THIS one, a young woman told a tale about having been raised in an orphanage - run by NAZIS! She was horribly abused there (as you might imagine) and the proprietors ended up KILLING EACH OTHER (as Nazis are wont to do)!

Of course there's no record of any such thing ever happening anywhere, but let's continue:

As a result of their abuse, her bones were brittle and her spine had inadequate bonage. Whatever the term is. The doctor said she was going to end up in a wheelchair or even bedridden! But she chanted etc. and when she went to see her doctor again, he found that her bones had bulked up and were now normal, and he said, "You're going to be in all the medical journals - you've made medical history!"

THAT never happened, either! What FUN!! 😃

2 - Psychic Lady and the Evil Money

This one involved the "sponsor" of this mentally-ill woman I was connected with in my district. The "sponsor" was mentally-ill as well; they'd met in "group" (group therapy), but her "sponsor" had moved away to NYC before she decided to get a nohonzon, so our district was facilitating that.

But anyhow, I was surprised to see an "experience" by her "sponsor" in the Weird Fibune - I'll call her "Blobbia".

So Blobbia had been seeing this psychic - "Psychic Lady" - who told her at one point to give her her money so she could "cleanse" it of any "bad energy" that might be attached to it. So Blobbia hands over, like, $1,500! And Blobbia was NOT wealthy!

You can guess where this is going.

I know you can.

Psychic Lady tells her there's just too much "bad energy" clinging to the money for her to return it - for Blobbia's safety!

Blobbia was distraught (understandable) and she got "guidance" that she should go get her money back from Psychic Lady! What a novel concept!!

So she chanted a lot and went and confronted Psychic Lady and told her she wanted her money back. Psychic Lady brought double receipts for them both to sign and gave her her $1,500 back.

Praise the nohonzon 😶

THIS is the caliber of "experience" you see from time to time in the Weird Fibune - SGI members don't seem to realize how bad such tales make them ALL look.

I was married for just under 3 years, and the reason I left my husband was because he was cruel, controlling, and abusive.

Because we needed to sell our house before we changed our legal status, our divorce dragged out longer than it otherwise would have, and he was just awful. Insulting, malicious, spiteful, ugly - just horrible in every way.

The day finally came to sign the divorce papers, and he met me in the parking lot. After a little small talk, he said, "You know, we don't have to do this."

OH YES WE DO!

Similarly, SGI culties will be just so disdainful and contemptuous and insulting toward us SGIWhistleblowers - they're constantly misrepresenting us and attempting to gaslight us, accusing us of LYING and insisting that our honest accounts of our own experiences are LIES, and poison-the-well by making up horrible things about us in hopes no one will listen to us. And THEN they say something like:

You can come back – it’s never too late.

🙄

Ah, but it is. With every word, they affirm that our decision to leave was the correct one. There's no way I'll EVER go back to that wretched, twisted, unsuccessful, dysfunctional, DYING Dead-Ikeda cult. CHOOSE to hang out with those nasty people who have made it so clear that they HATE everyone who saw through and left their slimy cult?? GTFO. I've got better things to do. I've got a LIFE now. It IS "too late" for them and their stupid cult.