Oh, dudes, don’t fight. What each of you said and meant was understandable to me.I was hoping someone would step in here and be the adult. Figured it might be Tee.
I blame Jonathan Haidt. I should probably not read books (kidding).
Lausten, I think it might be prudent for me to tell you a little bit about myself so that you understand a little better where I’m coming from. I am not the “average poster” here. I’m not saying I’m better or worse or somehow special, just that my brain doesn’t work like most people’s brains do, which I will explain as succinctly as possible. To keep this short I’ll just list off some of my attributes, elaborating only when I think it absolutely necessary.
I think very logically. Everyone says that, I actually mean it. I NEED clearly defined words and terms to logically analyze what is being said. If you cannot or will not clearly define words and terms to give them specific, clear, unambiguous meanings that I can logically analyze then what you said is crap. That’s what my brain will conclude.
Philosophy is crap. It’s meaningless garbage. It’s the tarot reading of intellectual endeavors. Philosophy is trying to sound wise by saying nothing at all. It is trying to say something so vague and devoid of actual meaning that those hearing it cannot help but take away some personal meaning from it and think it’s “wise”. I am not claiming that as absolute truth, that is just how I see philosophy. As a result, philosophy doesn’t work on me because it’s ambiguous and my logical brain spits it out. You may recall the thread about some incredibly ambiguous statement having meaning where you got the impression I was arguing semantics. I was not. That was my brain trying to define the words and terms used so that it could analyze the statement. By the end of the conversation I finally realized that it wasn’t saying anything at all, making it impossible to logically analyze.
I have an overly developed sense of honor. Liars disgust me. If I leave a store and find I wasn’t charged for something I MUST go back in and pay for it. The thought of repeating something I heard and believed, but have not verified, only to find out that it is wrong and, because I said it, other people are repeating it as truth literally makes my skin crawl. And I never use the word “literally” in a hyperbolic sense because its very meaning is the opposite of hyperbole. I will never purposely lie to you, argue a point I do not believe or attempt to cover up a falsehood, my own or yours.
I have a very poor memory. And not “normal poor”. I don’t remember my childhood. I dated my wife for 6 months before I could reliably remember her name. I knew her well for 6 months before that. We had 2 daughters. Both of their names start with the same letter as my wife’s name. Because of that, after 27 years together I can only mostly reliably recall my wife’s name on command. If you get rid of all the profile pics, put the same letter in front of everyone’s name and make them all roughly the same length I will not be able to tell people apart. I already can’t remember who said what to me directly.
I hate to argue. Cannot stand it. Lively debate, awesome. Argument, pointless. If you want me to leave and never come back just argue with me every day for a week. Or argue with me every couple of weeks for a couple of months. It becomes a chore to check the posts. I start to dread it. Eventually I’ll just stop doing it. I had considered it with this argument already, I hate arguing so much.
In any serious conversation you can be pretty sure my post is carefully considered and thought out. Since I can’t remember what I said last week the only way to be consistent is to carefully consider and think out everything I post as opinion or fact. In casual conversation I may just “say something”, but if the conversation is deep, I’ve given my statements a lot of thought. Sometimes I’ll type and retype my post over the course of hours. That’s not to say I’m always right, just that I’ve carefully considered my position. It may still be wrong. I will carefully consider your post as well. If I’m not agreeing with you, it’s not because I haven’t seriously considered what you said. In my experience it’s often because I’ve given more consideration to what the poster said than the poster did (mostly with theists), one of us isn’t understanding the other or the argument is about opinion, where there is no right or wrong.
It’s not personal. Facts are facts, opinions are opinions, truth is truth. I’m right, you’re right, doesn’t matter. I only care about right, wrong and opinion, each clearly labeled and accepted for what they are.
I am not the “average poster” here.You might be surprised because we share a lot of traits. Like, a lot of traits. ['All' is a lot, right?]
It’s nice to know someone else out there has problems with remembering names of family members.
I think you are easily, at least, an above average participant, Widdershins.
Yep. Maybe whatever comes after “above average”.
@Sherlock
Regarding your Intelligent Designer:
The fact that you cannot prove that something does not exist, does not mean it does exist. There is no reason to assume existence without evidence. No one has to disprove intelligent design. The burden of proof is on you. Natural causes appear to account for everything and they are natural, observable and measurable. No one needs to leap to a magical Universe creating designer when natural causes account for all you are calling designed. (You do not get imagine possibilities into existence)
Either we evolved like every other animal on this planet earth or your creator (Intelligent Designer) is a dumb as F***.
And what is the probability that an entity that is invisible to all methods of detection decided to construct this little planet and us out of a universe filled with over 2 hundred billion galaxies each populated by between one and two hundred billion stars?
My personal opinion is that if some entity INTENTIONALLY designed this Universe, this planets environment/geography/weather systems and all life forms, then I find it difficult to find this designer intelligent in any way shape or form. Even if some form of creator was actually true, our universe and home planet look more like a mediocre high school student science fair project.
Again, who created the Creator ?
Also, I would like to make a few more recommendations for your show Unbelievable.
Biblical Scholars
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Professor Elaine Pagels
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Professor Hector Avalos
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Professor Joel Baden
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Professor Candida Moss
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Professor John Dominic Crossan
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Professor Mark Goodacre
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Professor Peter Enns
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Professor Robert Cargil
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Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou
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Professor Karen Armstrong
To name just a few…
Just for laughs…my favorite bible verse
Genesis 19:8
See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man by lying with him. Please bring them to me and you may do to them as you wish. Only do nothing to these men for this the reason they have come under my roof.
Absolutely Ridiculous! So, according to the bible rape is OK ?
Men of another era created the Judeo/Christian God and that God’s morality.
Men can also come up with moral standards without necessarily inventing a supreme being to do so.
Religiosity is thus not needed for us to have a humanistic morality. In fact, it could be a hindrance.
@Tim
I concur! You shouldn’t have to appeal to someone two thousand years old to do the right thing. You should do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.
In a secular society, one would think that we could come to a mutual agreement on most, if not all, basic morals and the sub-rules, and ethics of those.
And I suppose, on a crude level we have, but even that seems to me to be eroding recently and as we speak. I fear for the remaining integrity of the basic common moral system that we have held as the American Culture, that guided us for a long time now. A schism seems to me to be in process and I don’t foresee it’s being forestalled indefinitely.
Nevertheless, it will be even more important to honor and hold the moral values that we have.
@holmes
Now, why would a God who chooses to remain hidden punish anyone for not believing he exists? Do you think he expects you to believe in him based on faith? There are thousands of religions and just as many Gods. And millions upon millions of people believe their God is the one true God and they all believe it based on faith. Wouldn’t your God understand this? Wouldn’t he understand that faith is not a pathway to truth but rather gullibility? Why would he remain hidden and expect people to believe in him based on faith?Good questions, reasonable enough but these do not serve as evidence that God does not exist.
Only speaking for myself, but I, like many people, asked myself those questions for many years before I gave up asking … but I didn’t consider the lack of answers as evidence that God DOESN’T exist; rather, I eventually came to the realization I could no longer hold onto my belief in God.
I realize that you probably see no difference between “believing there’s no God” and “Lackimg a belief in God.” But there is, in fact, a difference, and more atheists say the 2nd one describes them.
Tim, thanks for the wonderful compliments. I would like to point out that I am not any smarter than anyone here, though. One of the main reasons I see problems with these arguments that others miss is simply because I took an online course in understanding arguments. I don’t remember much of it now, but it opened my eyes to seeing what someone is actually arguing, which is very often much different than what they are obviously saying. That’s why I’m a stickler for terms. A lot of the words and terms used in pseudoscientific arguments are meant to move the goal posts all over the place.
Take this statement, for example. “UFOs are real!” In this case they are using the term “UFO” when what they really, probably mean is “alien visitation to our planet”. But they didn’t say “alien visitation to our planet”. So you can spend several posts disputing alien visitation to our planet only to find out they think they’re demons from another dimension, or lizard mantis people from the center of the planet. But they are ALSO not actually going to say that! They’re going to be vague about it. They purposely (likely often subconsciously) leave themselves enough wiggle room to wiggle out of any counter argument.
And one of their favorite tactics is to keep you on the defensive. In page after page of the ID thread there is not one single pro ID claim made, ever. It’s page after page of the people NOT making the claim defending evolution. And then there’s the climate change thread. That one is page after page of us defending science. They keep us running in circles defending settled science so that we never actually get to ask them to support their claims or defend their position. What they post doesn’t have to be factual. They don’t care if we shoot it down because they have a LOT more to copy-paste. The goal is not to “win” the argument, their goal is to keep the argument going. Why? Because they haven’t lost as long as the argument is still going. The goal is to keep it going until they get banned; until we force the argument to end, in their minds, without ever being able to refute their claims completely. They often don’t even read the responses. They’re not going to read about how their facts are wrong because that would cause their belief system to collapse. So they skip those parts, ignore all the evidence against them and just copy-paste some more misinformation. So the key is to find a way to force them to address what you say, put the burden of proof back onto them and don’t get sucked into chasing your tail for them. ESPECIALLY don’t get caught up in defending science you don’t understand. The scientists who understand the science tell you want is and is not scientifically valid. That is true whether you understand it or not, whether you can defend it or not and whether you can convince someone of its validity or not. You are not qualified to hold an opinion on or to defend any given science you are not trained in and pushers of pseudoscience just LOVE to get you defending it. It’s never ending. Instead you simply defer to the experts (easier said than done, even for me sometimes). It is THEY who decide what the science says. You may be accused of the “appeal to authority” fallacy, but it is not a fallacy to accept expert opinion on a subject beyond your understanding, it should be the norm.
I was not ranking your intellectual quotient, but rather your participant quotient. You are a nice addition to the forums, imo.
Isn’t that what you must agree to if you’re an atheist?Atheism doesn't require anyone to agree with anything, but yes, a naturalistic approach to biology would lead to this conclusion.
@Sherlock
A possibility needs to be demonstrated. You do not get to claim something because it cannot be proved impossible. If that is your standard then blue universe creating bunnies (Carrots Be Unto Him) are every bit as possible as an Intelligent Designer. All you are doing is presenting a god of the gaps fallacy.
There is no reason at all to assume Intelligent design. Indeed, the fallacy begins with the idea of “Creation”. There is only…we don’t know.
The existence of god is an unfalsifiable claim. Hence, I demand proof before I am able to believe. Your Forged Bible is hardly evidence btw. Curious, have you ever studied Zoroster, Ahuru Mazda and Hare Krishna? All have similar stories, including virgin births ?
Again, who created the creator??
@holmes
The odd thing is that many militant atheists refuse to describe themselves as agnostic and instead redefined atheism to mean the same thing as agnosticism.Then they're using the terms incorrectly. Atheism and agnosticism aren't synonyms. But they aren't antonyms, either. The words simply apply to two different things.
Atheism is about belief or, specifically, what one don't believe.Agnosticism is about knowledge or, specifically, about what it is impossible to know.
(You know that adding an “a” to the beginning of a word means “without,” right? That’s how you can know that the words apply to different things.)
As a writer, I keep saying, “words mean things:” Words do have objective meanings. But that doesn’t mean folks don’t use them incorrectly much of the time. I admit that I do, too, sometimes, especially when I’m writing or speaking casually. (I mentioned to you recently that my I’d used the term “hard atheist” incorrectly, and I provided an explanation for you.)
Since atheism isn’t a religion, “we” have no governing board to enforce correct uses of terms. We No leader, no dogma, and no way to choose who speaks in behalf of all atheists. Therefore, a lot of nonbelievers don’t use accurate terminology, and there’s not a lot “we” can do about that.
However, there is correct terminology – not according to some nonexistent “Atheist Board of Review,” but according to the study of fields like philosophy, religion and sociology, according to Merriam Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica.
Here is the chart again.
All rather odd.I agree that it's odd you never seem to recall things we've explained to you.
So lacking a belief in X is not the same as asserting X is false.In that case lacking a belief in X is not the same as asserting X is false or X is true it therefore equates to simple “I don’t know” which is better described as agnosticism surely?
The odd thing is that many militant atheists refuse to describe themselves as agnostic and instead redefined atheism to mean the same thing as agnosticism.
All rather odd.
I have seen this as a point of confusion over and over again and it all stems from a simple misunderstanding on both sides. It helps to understand that there are really 2 basic types of atheists, not just one. The simple definition of an atheist is one who does not believe in any gods, and that covers all atheists pretty well, but it does suggest that no atheist holds any beliefs concerning gods, which is not true.
You see, an atheist can either lack belief (I do not believe any gods exist) or an atheist can hold a theistically opposing believe (I believe that no gods exist). The first is a lack of belief and is not opposing theism, it is simply not agreeing with it. The second is actually a belief in direct opposition to theism.
How this differs from agnosticism is that agnostics simply do not give an answer as to what they believe. When asked if they believe in the existence of any gods their response is that it is unknowable. They are essentially undecided (or they want to end the conversation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses at their door, don’t want to be rude and have not year realized that telling a Jehovah’s Witness “I haven’t made up my mind” is like telling them, “Come on in! I would LOVE to hear about your religion for hours and hours at a time in the months and years to come! And do please show me repeatedly in the Bible how you are right and everyone else is wrong!”)
So it’s not just belief on one side and lack of belief on the other. Both sides can hold beliefs and, in fact, I hold the belief that no gods are real. I am not saying I simply don’t believe that gods exist, I am saying that I believe that no gods exist. But I am open to the possibility that I might be wrong (NO, JW! Bible quotes don’t “prove” anything! That’s a bad JW!)
I was thinking about you yesterday. I had three Jehova Witness’s knock on my door. We had a nice 45 minute chat ? They all left with headaches and sore fingers. That’s right, they were all fact checking me on their smart phones. HA!! One said, you’ve really got me thinking.
Upon there departure I asked them how they would feel if Athiests, Hindu’s, Buddhist’s or Muslims went door to door. Astonishing, they said that never crossed their minds ?
One said, you’ve really got me thinking.Watch out! It's a trick! Jehovah's Witnesses cannot discuss their religion with you until they have undergone training which includes psychological trickery to make them more effective at both converting people not prepared for it and fending off their own conversions. The words "You've really got me thinking", I have heard that exact same phrase myself. Maybe it's just a coincidence or maybe it's part of their training to use that exact line to lull you into believing you're having an intellectual discourse with someone who isn't considering a damn thing you say.
I’ve always wanted to answer the door naked, invite them in and tell them I’m really anxious to talk to them about that part in the Bible where Lot slept with his daughters; that I have lots and lots of thoughts about that bit to share.
Upon there departure I asked them how they would feel if Athiests, Hindu’s, Buddhist’s or Muslims went door to door. Astonishing, they said that never crossed their mindsYes!!