Sorry, not ignorant, I know religion all too well and have seen what it does to people. No, you have not. You have seen what it does to SOME people. If you actually knew religion well, you would know that its positive effects far outweigh its negative ones.
so by your logic i'm not an adult? Sigh. No, in fact, that was YOUR logic. You were the one who made this a matter of age. I turned YOUR logic around on you.
geez, your statements are completely vacuous. Geez, you didn't even attempt to back up any of your arguments after I completely shot down your few lame attempts.
The reason why is obvious: you can't. But that is not surprising: you said things that make absolutely no logical sense (belief is irrational; belief is irrational is self-evident; it is impossible to know that we know anything; that all introductory philosophy courses teach such nonsense; etc.) and then cited a scientist with no serious standing in the philosophical community, who has been ridiculed by people of all stripes as ignorant of how to "do" good philosophy, as your expert (without actually providing any of his arguments anyway).
I hope you learned your lesson: next time, know what you are talking about when you make sweeping assertions to strangers, or you just might end up looking like an idiot.
who are you? juvenile? stop telling me to back things up.
Shrug. An adult wouldn't need to be told to back things up.
you are not the keeper of proper argumentation
And you are not the keeper of "philosophical soundness." Yet your language was no more less assertive than mine, so you're being a hypocrite by complaining about me doing no more than what you did.
what i'm saying is a self-evident truth
No, in fact, it is not. You are, actually, you are contradicting yourself: you said that religious belief does not match up against philosophical standards, which means that it is not self-evident, but, rather, demonstrable.
you cannot prove the existence of god
Straw man logical fallacy: I never said I could.
and as such believing in something you cannot have evidence for or even argue logically is ILLOGICAL
Now you are committing several logical fallacies here. The first is the "shifting the goalposts" fallacy, by changing from talking about "proof" to "evidence." They are two very different things. If I concede I cannot prove the existence of God, that does not imply there is no evidence for it (and, in fact, there is) or that it cannot be argued logically (and, in fact, I can).
You are also -- again -- committing the equivocation fallacy by treating knowledge and belief as the same thing. They are not.
So your entire argument there is fallacious.
you cannot argue for the existence of a god logically without making unverifiable claims
False.
there is a HUGE amount of documented thinking about this subject
All of it incorrect.
you can pick up any given richard dawkins book to see how somebody who's actually intelligent would approach the subject.
Yes, I could. He is an extremely poor thinker on the subject. He doesn't know even basic fundamentals about religion and barely understands the basics of philosophy. He is a scientist, not a philosopher.
you talk about me acting like i have a 'higher level of understanding' than you, but i really don't know where this is coming from
That's stupid of you to say. How about the several times you talked about how you thought I need to read to understand what you were saying, and that you didn't want to explain principles to me, as though I needed it? That is precisely what you did.
unless you're willing to argue that pascal's wager is some deep and meaningful insight into the religious mind, i really don't have anything else to add the the conversation
So you won't back up any of your claims? I mean, I know you tried, citing the appeal to authority, but I blew that out of the water, so you're left with nothing right now. Not a single thing to back up your claims, except assertion (which, interestingly, is precisely what you attack religious belief for!).
i cited dawkins, because i think he's the leading authority (at least in presence) on opening up the fallacious nature of religion
It's telling that you think so. Real philosophers -- on all sides of the issue -- are embarassed by Dawkins' hamhanded attempts to attack religious belief.
if you don't want to read what dawkins has to say, you surely don't want to read what i have to say
Nope, unacceptable. That's a dishonest copout. You back up your claim. If you want to cite Dawkins, fine, but point to a specific argument he makes, don't just handwave at his book. Back it up. Back it up. Back it up. Again, feel free to consider me the juvenile, but the adult doesn't need to be told this basic concept.
you keep demanding i 'back up' my 'claim'
Yes, and I will continue to, as long as you refuse to.
but it's not 'my' claim
Please do not lie, it is unbecoming. You made the claim over and over, many times, and even repeated t
you say i'm wrong..., but offer no evidence or argument to the contrary. that sounds sort of like uh, something...i can't really think of what it's called. i heard about it a long time ago on a coke commercial. relugia?? that's not right. religation?????? RELIGIOINZZZ!!!!111 i am so clever! Nope. You're the one who is talking about being rational. About philosophical soundness. About standards. About logic. Well, one of those commonly accepted standards of logic is that the person making the allegations has the burden of proof. I don't need to provide an argument why you're wrong, until you actually back up your claim to begin with, because it is exceedingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, to prove a negative.
And in this case, it holds: it is not possible for me to prove that religious belief is not irrational, that it commits no logical fallacies. The only rational course of action to push this discussion forward is for you to make your argument, and for me to show you where your argument is incorrect.
like i said before, i don't want to get into a conversation about the basics of the philosophical or scientific methods. I couldn't care less. Back up your claim, that's all.
i'm trying to construct an argument based on logic. Then present the logic. You've not done so, you've merely offered assertions.
an appeal to authority isn't a logical fallacy? the idea that a god none of us can possibly prove the existence of dictates to them how to regulate the activities of men on earth? come on, that one is on the FIRST PAGE of the bible. No, you're way off base on multiple levels. I am not going to go through it all, though, because, as I noted before, you are once again conflating "knowledge" with "belief." If I said, "we absolutely know as a matter of hard fact that the Christianity is true because the Bible said so," that is a logical fallacy. But merely saying I believe it to be true because the Bible said so, there's nothing fallacious about that at all. There is no such thing as a logically fallacious belief, except that belief which can be proven false with logic.
It's really funny to me that you were acting in your posts as though you have some higher level of understanding than me, and yet you get this fundamental thing wrong.
You also don't even really understand the appeal to authority fallacy anyway, except on a shallow level. The fallacy is only holding when the authority is actually capable of error; you'd have to establish that the authority in question is capable of error, even if the fallacy DID apply (which as proven above, it doesn't).
And you also don't understand the Bible, because the Bible doesn't say "believe the Bible because the Bible says so." It goes far deeper than that, first nurturing a belief in God from sources entirely external to the Bible: general revelation of nature, and special revelation in the human mind. The Bible really represents a logical dissertation: X is true, and Y follows from X, an Z from Y. Not "believe Z because I said so."
And further, how would this apply to MY religious belief? Let's assume the incorrect: that the the Bible commits the appeal to authority fallacy. Fine. Now what's that got to do with me? It is not fallacious for me to be a Christian while not accepting that fallacy. You were talking about religious belief, not the Bible specifically.
Again, you're just way off base here. You really don't understand what you're talking about.
i guess it's kind of obvious that i'm not refusing to back anything up. Well, you finally attempted to back it up. And you failed miserably. Care to try again?
i don't think integrity demands anything from me. i don't have to back up anything i say Yes, if you choose to be dishonest, you don't have to back up the claims you make.
i suppose i'll go ahead and fulfill godwin's law here just to point at that the little slashdot next to your name sure does remind me a lot of a swastika arm band. Wow. That's the most irrational thing I've seen yet in this discussion.
you call kayditty a liar Yes. That's because kayditty vehemently asserted that they never said something they, in fact, said quite clearly and plainly. You don't get much more obvious a lie than that.
but since when is an observation an attack? Since when did I say it was? You're confused.
you really are a troll Shrug. No moreso than you, and FAR LESS than kayditty, who EVEN ADMITTED that their purpose was to troll people with religious beliefs. And then got pissy when I called them on it.
That you are defending kayditty, who by any standard was lying and trolling, is odd. It's not like it makes you look good, or backs up the impression that you are trying to create that you are rational.
i'm not saying believing in science is true and believing in religion is not. That's good. It wasn't clear around the middle of your post there.
i'm saying believing in anything is philosophically unsound. OK. But you're wrong.
i don't believe that believing in things is philosophically unsound Yes, you do. You are convinced of it. Therefore, you believe it. There's no difference. If you are convinced of it, you believe it.
religion gives us the refinement and precision of logical fallacies crafted to appear logically sound Except that, in fact, none of them are logical fallacies. You keep stating this, but it is blatantly false.
i think all of this stuff is pretty obvious. That is because you are an extremely poor thinker.
i really don't want to have a conversation with you about it anymore. What a shock: you refuse to back anything you said up. You are simply incapable of providing an actual example of such a logical fallacy that you speak of, and so you walk away.
Fine, you don't want to have a conversation. But integrity demands you back up your unsolicited and repeated claim, and you've not done it.
I haven't once attacked your faith to this point. You're a liar. I already quoted you doing that. You said religious belief is irrational.
Why do you deny what you did? Why are you lying?
Your faith is that you know what my intentions are. No, it's not.
And your belief is that I'm not worthy of your time No, it's not.
You are the worst troll ever No, sorry, you win that award. Your very first post to me was a troll, and I quoted you from another comment admitting that you were trolling, and I caught you on it immediately. Hard to imagine a worse trolling job than that.
Do you HONESTLY think you've "got me trapped" I didn't trap you, you trapped yourself. I simply saw the comment where you admitted what you were doing, and linked to it. I don't claim to have done anything great. You're just really terrible.
Can I get an answer to my original question now? I don't know what you think has changed. Your only interest is to ridicule me, as you stated initially, and you've only proven that more with each post. There's no reason why I would bother answering your question, because your intent is not have a discussion about whatever beliefs I may have, but merely to ridicule.
Maybe I got lazy, but what the hell is YOUR excuse? Wow. You think I need an excuse to respond to you? And you call me insecure?!
religious people DON'T have any good, rational arguments for things they believe.
Only if ALL belief in EVERYTHING -- including science, and including the belief that all belief is irrational -- is irrational, which is, itself, irrational.
that's a pillar of philosophical significance that is demonstrated in introductory philosophy courses across this planet.
Utterly false. Even if you believe that all belief is irrational, it doesn't make it true that introductory philosophy courses teach the same thing. They don't. What they do teach is that our faculties are limited, and that there are relatively few things we can know, but that's not the same as saying belief is irrational.
we are not capable of knowing that we know anything
That's simply not true, as Descartes demonstrated. Cogito ergo sum, and all. Further, we know quite well that 2+2=4, and we know we know it. It is not possible that I do not exist (well, from my perspective anyway; for you, it is only not possible that YOU don't exist), and it is further not possible that 2+2 does not equal 4.
there are a host of actual reasons that theology is not philosophical
No, in fact, there are zero. Not a single one exists. But now you are crossing your streams. Above you appeared to be saying that religion is just like everything else, that we can't know it because we can't know anything. Now you appear to be saying it is somehow unique. That's false.
we cannot consider belief in religion itself philosophically sound because the very act of 'belief' is irrational on a philosophical level
No, it is not. Part of the problem is that you clearly do not understand what belief is. The act of believing in a religious idea is not philosophically different from the act of believing that if you drop a ball, it will be pulled toward the greater mass of the planet below. The act of believing is merely the end of the process of being convinced that something is true. That is it, and nothing more or less. A belief in God at the philosophical level is no different from a belief in gravity. It's only the methods used to be so convinced that are different, but they are not different by as much as most people think, because they have the same basic root.
The only reason we believe in gravity is because we believe in a purely philosophical idea that we popularly refer to as the scientific method. We didn't believe in the scientific method because of any scientific evidence (obviously). We believed it in because we thought about it, and it seemed to make sense, and then we saw how it was applied in our life, and that it worked, and so we quite rationally came to believe in the scientific method, and therefore in science conducted under that method. And it is the exact same process that leads some people to believe in God. Belief is not irrational, belief in God is not irrational, and the process of believing in God is no different from the process of believing in anything else.
And of course, none of this is any different from believing that our ability to "know" is severely limited, which is all you've based this on. You say "don't respond with 'but you believe what you said,'" but you are stating as fundamental ideas things that cannot be believed any more than the things you say can't be believed. If you don't want people to use an argument against you, you can't merely dismiss it by calling it "passe," you have to actually frame what you say so that it is not subject to that argument.
Now, you could believe, as Lawrence Livermore did, that since we cannot prove most things exist (he wasn't so foolish as to say we can't prove anything, because he had read Descartes), he therefore should not believe in anything, and only practically believe in things he could sense at the moment. So the bottom of his desk didn't exist unless he put his hand under there and felt it.
Oh, please. You think I didn't know... You think I care? You lied. You said you never did something that in that post you, in fact, did. QED.
I really don't give a shit about appeasing the sensibilities of some stupid holier-than-thou asshole who thinks he can just dismiss me out of hand because I'm not good enough for real argument. Now you are continuing to lie. I never stated, nor implied, that I am holier than anyone, including you. And I never dismissed you, out of hand or otherwise: I simply said I wouldn't have the discussion you wanted to have, in this context, because you clearly wanted only to attack my beliefs rather than have a real discussion. I only called you stupid when you pretended -- as you are doing now -- to have not said something that you said.
I didn't lie. Yes, you did. You said "religious people don't have any good, rational arguments for the things they believe." So when you laterclaimed you "never said [religion is irrational]," that was a lie. You lied.
I just said I never claimed to have said that there's no rationality to religious arguments or whatever. No. You said "never said [religion is irrational]." And that was a lie.
That you read into what you want I read what you actually wrote. Silly me!
I think it's pretty obvious what I intended. Yes, me too: you intended to lie to me, so you could get me to talk about religious belief, so you could attempt to ridicule me for it. It is entirely obvious that this was your intent, from your other post, since that is what you said your intent was.
I don't usually expect NORMAL people to go around reading every discussion I've ever had before dignifying a question I ask them, in all sincerity, with a response. Stop being retarded, please. It was a comment from THE EXACT SAME DISCUSSION.
Besides that: so what if I did lie? It has nothing to do with my question or my post. It has everything to do with whether I want to spend time casting pearls before swine. You quite obviously were not interested in having a discussion with me, only in ridiculing religious belief.
I never said I don't think religious belief is irrational You're lying again.
So maybe I do happen to think it irrational. Does that preclude me from being deserving of your grace or whatever the fuck? Nope. It is not that you think religion is irrational, it is your hostility, and your STATED INTENT to ridicule people of religious faith.
Seriously; I just want to know how you argue that. Yes, so you can ridicule me.
Jerk. No pearls for you, swine.
If I say to someone, "you're a fucked-up little man,"... If you said it while looking at the mirror, it would be a good sign of recognition. Damn, I knew you were following me!
*sigh* I'm tired. Have a good night Wow you're stupid and/or dishonest. If you bothered to quote what I actually wrote in the last post, you would see that I was saying that this is not MERELY what you said; not that you didn't use those words, but -- in my own words, that you ignored -- that you did not "just mean a right to clean air and water, and you never limited it to just those two things."
If I say to someone, "you're a fucked-up little man," and he hits me, and when telling the cops about it later I say "I called him a man and he hit me," that's called lying by omission. It's what you're doing when you describe your position in the previous discussion as being about air and water.
And then you link to a comment and resulting discussion proving that I am right.
Thanks, I guess.
And you've still never come up with a single example of me putting government over the rights of individuals (even though you provided examples where YOU do that), nor any of your other false claims: that I belong to a cult (by any pejorative sense of the word), that my religion engages in idol worship or demagoguery or is a for-profit business, that I am a businessperson, that I would call for Christ's death, that I have plastic statues(?), that I ever claimed I have a right to pollute your air or water, that I actually DO pollute, that I am scared to enter "the 'hood," that I need -- or have -- walls to exclude anyone.
I am sure there are other allegations you've made about me you can't back up. I don't think there are any you CAN back up.
I state that we have a right to uncontaminated air and water, and to protect that right by whatever means necessary. No, you didn't. You in fact spoke of "right of access to natural resources or the resources themselves from destruction." That does not just mean a right to clean air and water, and you never limited it to just those two things, and my comments therefore cannot honestly be limited to that context after the fact.
Not that it changes anything, though, since I never said that it is OK for people to destroy natural resources, nor that it is wrong for government to be used to prevent their destruction. I only stated the fact that you were being stupid.
You call it... an infringement of your individual right to do what you please No, I did not. I said it was, in YOUR words, "the power of the state over that of the individual." Which, of course, is precisely what it is. That's the doublespeak. You were attacking me for putting "the power of the state over that of the individual," and then your chosen example of this -- which in fact had nothing to do with me anyway -- showed YOU putting "the power of the state over that of the individual."
A reasonable person would see it for what it is. A claim that your "rights" are more valid than that of others. I never made such a claim, and you cannot possibly quote me doing so. It never had anything to do with me at all, so how I could have made a claim about my rights makes no sense.
You want the state to protect your personal profit at the expense of others. You're lying again. I get no profit from pollution. I am not polluting anything. And I am not the one trying to marshall the government against the individual, you are. There's your doublespeak again.
You have been given every right to sicken us with your effluence. Shrug. I've never actually done it, so I don't know what you're babbling about.
Yeah, I can see why you're scared to enter the 'hood. Not that I can tell what this has to do with anything, but when I actually lived in "the 'hood" for several months I was... what? Running scared all the time?
Is that shovel getting heavy? You've dug your hole so deeply... it's quite impressive, really.
See, we don't need to build walls around us to exclude people that disagree, the way you do. What walls do I need? None actually exist, so if I need them, please tell me what they are so I can build them, quick!!
Moving it elsewhere is dishonest. Oh, that's rich! Shrug. I don't expect you to understand, or even care about honesty even if you did understand. Sure, you're not as dishonest as WillAffleckUW -- almost everything he says about everything is a lie -- but, well, you're still pretty bad.
It doesn't belong here. Eh, part of you problem, I guess The subject here is Christmas and lights. No, for two reasons. First, this discussion has become broader: it includes discussion of religion and society, and your allegation about me being "phony... when it comes to the subject of religion" is related to that topic. Second, regardless of subject, when someone makes a personal allegation, I, as a rule, will discuss that allegation where it was made. Because that is honest: it allows the evidence -- or in this case, utter lack of it -- to accompany the allegation. This is why newspapers in general try to put corrections near the same place where the mistake was made, for example. Moving it elsewhere is dishonest.
Of you utterly failing to provide any examples to back up your claims, yes. Not gonna do it here. You won't back up your claims where you made them? Typical dishonesty.
You don't see the Yule culture in Christmas? Borrowing traditions is not the same as demonstrating an existing culture. So, no.
What people currently care about is the only basis for "reason for the season"? No. The reason why people celebrate is the basis for "reason for the season." Which is, of course, the birth of Christ.
Our last discussion provides plenty of examples... Of you utterly failing to provide any examples to back up your claims, yes.
But you being such a material girl proves that you are as phony as a three dollar bill when it comes to the subject of religion. Here we go again! Example?
Does it come naturally? No. Unlike you, I have to work at it pretty hard. What also comes hard to you is coming up with examples that demonstrate your allegations.
I don't believe I have ever called for the death of anyone, other than mass murderers. And very selective(discriminating?) you are in that department! And you better stay that way if you don't want to be placed under arrest. What a shock! A completely nonsensical post by iminplaya!
I wonder how hard you have to work to produce such meaningless posts. Does it come naturally?
Ah. The all-too-common situation. A misguidedly egotistical person finds it hard to believe that anybody could actually understand what they're saying and disagree with it. Hm. Yes, when you say that I did something that I in fact did not say, then yes, I find it hard to believe you could understand what I am saying. You actually proved you did not understand what I was saying. It's a fact... unless you were misrepresenting yourself.
Pudge, I understood what you initially wrote. No, in fact, you did not. You said I claimed I could hurt him. I didn't. Therefore, you did not understand what I wrote. QED.
As I'm sure you'd agree ("This should not be hard for you to understand") your initial "I could hurt you" was not anything that was particularly hard to grasp. Apparently, to you, it was, because I never made a claim that I could hurt him, and you incorrectly said that I did.
No matter how popular it is, your religion is still a cult It depends on what you mean. By the most popular definition -- a religion with extreme beliefs that involves secluding adherents, brainwashing, and other manner of exceptionally odd behavior -- absoultely not. That's stupid, and makes no sense whatsoever. By the definition of "cult" that means, simply, "a child religion that differs significantly enough from the parent religion that adherents to the parent religion consider the child religion incompatible," then yes, Christianity is a cult of Judaism.
with its idol worship, demagoguery Not in my religion, no on both counts. Shrug.
It's a for profit business. Not my religion, no. Shrug.
And being the great, discriminating business person you are, you would be amongst the first to call for Christ's death if he was here today. Not only false, but you have absolutely no evidence backing up this claim. I don't believe I have ever called for the death of anyone, other than mass murderers. Once again, you are a liar. Not that this is new, or surprising.
You and your little plastic statues... What does my bust of Tchaikovsky have to do with anything? You are seriously confused.
Would you care to put your claim on the line? As I've said from the beginning, I never made any claim. You're confused. Look at the context, if you wish to be informed. He said people shouldn't talk to him LIKE they could hurt him. So that is what I did. I did not actually claim I could hurt him, I only talked to him like I could. This should not be hard for you to understand.
If you really believe this to be true Assuming the antecedent of "this" is the claim I never made, I never gave any thought as to whether it is true, and I won't. I couldn't care less whether it's true, because it is irrelevant to anything I said or did.
mail ten letters containing nothing but the following to local judges and other public officials:
-The phrase "I could hurt you" -Your full name and address If any of them said "fuck you if you think you can talk to me like you could hurt me," then perhaps I would.
Good luck with that. Good luck finding a public official who would say that.
To be honest, I'm not even sure what you're arguing about at this point. Yes, I know you're not.
Are you arguing that "I will hurt you" and "I could hurt you" mean different things in a grammatical sense? Well, no, they mean different things PERIOD. There's no need to qualify it.
My only real point is that they generally convey the same meaning No, they do not.
Me: It is entirely impossible to imply something without intending to do it. You: False. My apologies. I meant to say "possible" there, not "impossible." No, I knew what you *meant* -- as it was clearly implied by the context -- and I was speaking to that. Maybe this will help you understand implications and intent a little better?
"Entertainment and intellectual stimulation" != "attempting highten your self-esteem" Correct.
Please, enough of the lawyerly redefining of every "is" in your original reply. I redefined nothing. You're confused.
We got the message. Some people did, yes. You? Obviously not.
Nothing in any of this childish tit-for-tat is brings any light to the subject of this thread. Now will you stop please? You first.
Which is also, in part, what I am saying to Zed. He says, stupidly, that the "best part" about ripping on people is that he is legally allowed to do so, and their only recourse is to write about it. And then he says he would fight them if they wanted to, which shows there are, in fact, other recourses available. Without wanting to support either side of this battling, I have to somewhat disagree with you here. If I didn't happen to totally misunderstand what he wrote, the fighting possibility seemed more like a possible recourse with his agreement of such. That's beside the point. Either a fight is a potential recourse, or it is not. If it is, then he was changing what he said previously.
But whatever, I don't care that much. I am still not sure who is more deranged, Zed Shaw or Uwe Boll. Or who has the sillier name, for that matter!
Slashdot Mirror
The reason why is obvious: you can't. But that is not surprising: you said things that make absolutely no logical sense (belief is irrational; belief is irrational is self-evident; it is impossible to know that we know anything; that all introductory philosophy courses teach such nonsense; etc.) and then cited a scientist with no serious standing in the philosophical community, who has been ridiculed by people of all stripes as ignorant of how to "do" good philosophy, as your expert (without actually providing any of his arguments anyway).
I hope you learned your lesson: next time, know what you are talking about when you make sweeping assertions to strangers, or you just might end up looking like an idiot.
who are you? juvenile? stop telling me to back things up.
Shrug. An adult wouldn't need to be told to back things up.
you are not the keeper of proper argumentation
And you are not the keeper of "philosophical soundness." Yet your language was no more less assertive than mine, so you're being a hypocrite by complaining about me doing no more than what you did.
what i'm saying is a self-evident truth
No, in fact, it is not. You are, actually, you are contradicting yourself: you said that religious belief does not match up against philosophical standards, which means that it is not self-evident, but, rather, demonstrable.
you cannot prove the existence of god
Straw man logical fallacy: I never said I could.
and as such believing in something you cannot have evidence for or even argue logically is ILLOGICAL
Now you are committing several logical fallacies here. The first is the "shifting the goalposts" fallacy, by changing from talking about "proof" to "evidence." They are two very different things. If I concede I cannot prove the existence of God, that does not imply there is no evidence for it (and, in fact, there is) or that it cannot be argued logically (and, in fact, I can).
You are also -- again -- committing the equivocation fallacy by treating knowledge and belief as the same thing. They are not.
So your entire argument there is fallacious.
you cannot argue for the existence of a god logically without making unverifiable claims
False.
there is a HUGE amount of documented thinking about this subject
All of it incorrect.
you can pick up any given richard dawkins book to see how somebody who's actually intelligent would approach the subject.
Yes, I could. He is an extremely poor thinker on the subject. He doesn't know even basic fundamentals about religion and barely understands the basics of philosophy. He is a scientist, not a philosopher.
you talk about me acting like i have a 'higher level of understanding' than you, but i really don't know where this is coming from
That's stupid of you to say. How about the several times you talked about how you thought I need to read to understand what you were saying, and that you didn't want to explain principles to me, as though I needed it? That is precisely what you did.
unless you're willing to argue that pascal's wager is some deep and meaningful insight into the religious mind, i really don't have anything else to add the the conversation
So you won't back up any of your claims? I mean, I know you tried, citing the appeal to authority, but I blew that out of the water, so you're left with nothing right now. Not a single thing to back up your claims, except assertion (which, interestingly, is precisely what you attack religious belief for!).
i cited dawkins, because i think he's the leading authority (at least in presence) on opening up the fallacious nature of religion
It's telling that you think so. Real philosophers -- on all sides of the issue -- are embarassed by Dawkins' hamhanded attempts to attack religious belief.
if you don't want to read what dawkins has to say, you surely don't want to read what i have to say
Nope, unacceptable. That's a dishonest copout. You back up your claim. If you want to cite Dawkins, fine, but point to a specific argument he makes, don't just handwave at his book. Back it up. Back it up. Back it up. Again, feel free to consider me the juvenile, but the adult doesn't need to be told this basic concept.
you keep demanding i 'back up' my 'claim'
Yes, and I will continue to, as long as you refuse to.
but it's not 'my' claim
Please do not lie, it is unbecoming. You made the claim over and over, many times, and even repeated t
And in this case, it holds: it is not possible for me to prove that religious belief is not irrational, that it commits no logical fallacies. The only rational course of action to push this discussion forward is for you to make your argument, and for me to show you where your argument is incorrect. like i said before, i don't want to get into a conversation about the basics of the philosophical or scientific methods. I couldn't care less. Back up your claim, that's all. i'm trying to construct an argument based on logic. Then present the logic. You've not done so, you've merely offered assertions. an appeal to authority isn't a logical fallacy? the idea that a god none of us can possibly prove the existence of dictates to them how to regulate the activities of men on earth? come on, that one is on the FIRST PAGE of the bible. No, you're way off base on multiple levels. I am not going to go through it all, though, because, as I noted before, you are once again conflating "knowledge" with "belief." If I said, "we absolutely know as a matter of hard fact that the Christianity is true because the Bible said so," that is a logical fallacy. But merely saying I believe it to be true because the Bible said so, there's nothing fallacious about that at all. There is no such thing as a logically fallacious belief, except that belief which can be proven false with logic.
It's really funny to me that you were acting in your posts as though you have some higher level of understanding than me, and yet you get this fundamental thing wrong.
You also don't even really understand the appeal to authority fallacy anyway, except on a shallow level. The fallacy is only holding when the authority is actually capable of error; you'd have to establish that the authority in question is capable of error, even if the fallacy DID apply (which as proven above, it doesn't).
And you also don't understand the Bible, because the Bible doesn't say "believe the Bible because the Bible says so." It goes far deeper than that, first nurturing a belief in God from sources entirely external to the Bible: general revelation of nature, and special revelation in the human mind. The Bible really represents a logical dissertation: X is true, and Y follows from X, an Z from Y. Not "believe Z because I said so."
And further, how would this apply to MY religious belief? Let's assume the incorrect: that the the Bible commits the appeal to authority fallacy. Fine. Now what's that got to do with me? It is not fallacious for me to be a Christian while not accepting that fallacy. You were talking about religious belief, not the Bible specifically.
Again, you're just way off base here. You really don't understand what you're talking about. i guess it's kind of obvious that i'm not refusing to back anything up. Well, you finally attempted to back it up. And you failed miserably. Care to try again? i don't think integrity demands anything from me. i don't have to back up anything i say Yes, if you choose to be dishonest, you don't have to back up the claims you make.
That you are defending kayditty, who by any standard was lying and trolling, is odd. It's not like it makes you look good, or backs up the impression that you are trying to create that you are rational.
Fine, you don't want to have a conversation. But integrity demands you back up your unsolicited and repeated claim, and you've not done it.
Why do you deny what you did? Why are you lying? Your faith is that you know what my intentions are. No, it's not. And your belief is that I'm not worthy of your time No, it's not. You are the worst troll ever No, sorry, you win that award. Your very first post to me was a troll, and I quoted you from another comment admitting that you were trolling, and I caught you on it immediately. Hard to imagine a worse trolling job than that. Do you HONESTLY think you've "got me trapped" I didn't trap you, you trapped yourself. I simply saw the comment where you admitted what you were doing, and linked to it. I don't claim to have done anything great. You're just really terrible. Can I get an answer to my original question now? I don't know what you think has changed. Your only interest is to ridicule me, as you stated initially, and you've only proven that more with each post. There's no reason why I would bother answering your question, because your intent is not have a discussion about whatever beliefs I may have, but merely to ridicule. Maybe I got lazy, but what the hell is YOUR excuse? Wow. You think I need an excuse to respond to you? And you call me insecure?!
religious people DON'T have any good, rational arguments for things they believe.
Only if ALL belief in EVERYTHING -- including science, and including the belief that all belief is irrational -- is irrational, which is, itself, irrational.
that's a pillar of philosophical significance that is demonstrated in introductory philosophy courses across this planet.
Utterly false. Even if you believe that all belief is irrational, it doesn't make it true that introductory philosophy courses teach the same thing. They don't. What they do teach is that our faculties are limited, and that there are relatively few things we can know, but that's not the same as saying belief is irrational.
we are not capable of knowing that we know anything
That's simply not true, as Descartes demonstrated. Cogito ergo sum, and all. Further, we know quite well that 2+2=4, and we know we know it. It is not possible that I do not exist (well, from my perspective anyway; for you, it is only not possible that YOU don't exist), and it is further not possible that 2+2 does not equal 4.
there are a host of actual reasons that theology is not philosophical
No, in fact, there are zero. Not a single one exists. But now you are crossing your streams. Above you appeared to be saying that religion is just like everything else, that we can't know it because we can't know anything. Now you appear to be saying it is somehow unique. That's false.
we cannot consider belief in religion itself philosophically sound because the very act of 'belief' is irrational on a philosophical level
No, it is not. Part of the problem is that you clearly do not understand what belief is. The act of believing in a religious idea is not philosophically different from the act of believing that if you drop a ball, it will be pulled toward the greater mass of the planet below. The act of believing is merely the end of the process of being convinced that something is true. That is it, and nothing more or less. A belief in God at the philosophical level is no different from a belief in gravity. It's only the methods used to be so convinced that are different, but they are not different by as much as most people think, because they have the same basic root.
The only reason we believe in gravity is because we believe in a purely philosophical idea that we popularly refer to as the scientific method. We didn't believe in the scientific method because of any scientific evidence (obviously). We believed it in because we thought about it, and it seemed to make sense, and then we saw how it was applied in our life, and that it worked, and so we quite rationally came to believe in the scientific method, and therefore in science conducted under that method. And it is the exact same process that leads some people to believe in God. Belief is not irrational, belief in God is not irrational, and the process of believing in God is no different from the process of believing in anything else.
And of course, none of this is any different from believing that our ability to "know" is severely limited, which is all you've based this on. You say "don't respond with 'but you believe what you said,'" but you are stating as fundamental ideas things that cannot be believed any more than the things you say can't be believed. If you don't want people to use an argument against you, you can't merely dismiss it by calling it "passe," you have to actually frame what you say so that it is not subject to that argument.
Now, you could believe, as Lawrence Livermore did, that since we cannot prove most things exist (he wasn't so foolish as to say we can't prove anything, because he had read Descartes), he therefore should not believe in anything, and only practically believe in things he could sense at the moment. So the bottom of his desk didn't exist unless he put his hand under there and felt it.
You could think, of course, that you ca
*sigh* I'm tired. Have a good night Wow you're stupid and/or dishonest. If you bothered to quote what I actually wrote in the last post, you would see that I was saying that this is not MERELY what you said; not that you didn't use those words, but -- in my own words, that you ignored -- that you did not "just mean a right to clean air and water, and you never limited it to just those two things."
If I say to someone, "you're a fucked-up little man," and he hits me, and when telling the cops about it later I say "I called him a man and he hit me," that's called lying by omission. It's what you're doing when you describe your position in the previous discussion as being about air and water.
And then you link to a comment and resulting discussion proving that I am right.
Thanks, I guess.
And you've still never come up with a single example of me putting government over the rights of individuals (even though you provided examples where YOU do that), nor any of your other false claims: that I belong to a cult (by any pejorative sense of the word), that my religion engages in idol worship or demagoguery or is a for-profit business, that I am a businessperson, that I would call for Christ's death, that I have plastic statues(?), that I ever claimed I have a right to pollute your air or water, that I actually DO pollute, that I am scared to enter "the 'hood," that I need -- or have -- walls to exclude anyone.
I am sure there are other allegations you've made about me you can't back up. I don't think there are any you CAN back up.
No examples. Anywhere. None.
You're a liar.
Not that it changes anything, though, since I never said that it is OK for people to destroy natural resources, nor that it is wrong for government to be used to prevent their destruction. I only stated the fact that you were being stupid. You call it
Is that shovel getting heavy? You've dug your hole so deeply
Which is, of course, par for the course for you.
Shrug. I keep things where they start, where they therefore belong. No amount of taunting can get me to change that.
I wonder what makes you afraid to keep it where it belongs.
Ha, awesome, and you even lied about me in that other discussion. You're a riot.
I wonder how hard you have to work to produce such meaningless posts. Does it come naturally?
Shrug.
-The phrase "I could hurt you"
-Your full name and address If any of them said "fuck you if you think you can talk to me like you could hurt me," then perhaps I would. Good luck with that. Good luck finding a public official who would say that. To be honest, I'm not even sure what you're arguing about at this point. Yes, I know you're not. Are you arguing that "I will hurt you" and "I could hurt you" mean different things in a grammatical sense? Well, no, they mean different things PERIOD. There's no need to qualify it. My only real point is that they generally convey the same meaning No, they do not. Me: It is entirely impossible to imply something without intending to do it. You: False. My apologies. I meant to say "possible" there, not "impossible." No, I knew what you *meant* -- as it was clearly implied by the context -- and I was speaking to that. Maybe this will help you understand implications and intent a little better?
But whatever, I don't care that much. I am still not sure who is more deranged, Zed Shaw or Uwe Boll. Or who has the sillier name, for that matter!