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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
 Posted - 08/25/2011 : 18:51:40 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Officiant
I am not infallible. |
That an understatement. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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Officiant
Skeptic Friend
166 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 18:58:52 [Permalink]
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Dear Hawks, Dear Hawks, You claim there is a god that controls things. The evidence offered in support of any claim must be adequate to establish the truth of that claim, with these stipulations: the burden of proof for any claim rests on the claimant,
extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and evidence based upon authority and/or testimony is always inadequate for any paranormal claim.
I'm waiting. |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 18:59:11 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Officiant
Dave W., I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. Groucho Marx. Not very original there Dave. Science and logic will compel you and Dawkins to evolve into strong atheists and leave wimpy agnosticism dead and still like a skunk at the side of the road.
I don't know the difference between religion and faith. Please explain it. I do know that metaphysics has nothing to do with real physics or practical reality and science is the only way to obtain knowledge.
I am insulted that you and Kil insist I am lying. I am not infallible. I make mistakes just like you did with your straw man argument compounded by the appeal to ridicule. I don't have to lie to defend strong atheism. There is nothing else. Just your woowoo and a childish dependency on the supernatural as Albert Ellis said
I quoted Dawkins directly from The God Delusion. Please copy and paste these alleged lies.
What do you suppose would be the harm in basing your belief system in practical reality and the best available scientific information we have right now and just ignore Kil and his California woowoo based on dependency in the science of the future?
You skeptics have called me every name in the book. It has been quite vicious just like Muslims reacting to cartoons in Denmark.
I'm sure with the anger expressed you all would gladly have me burnt at the stake as an unbeliever in your precious pseudo intellectual agnosticism. Please reply.
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Already shown. You just choose to ignore tham as well as any other evidence that shows your position's flawed structure.
That's it. I'm through arguing with this atheist fundie.
I'm sure he'll interpret it as some sort of a win instead of declining to argue with a brick wall. The brick wall listens better. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Officiant
Skeptic Friend
166 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 19:04:53 [Permalink]
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| Dear Valiant Dancer, Slither away you loser. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 19:24:32 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Officiant
Dear Hawks, Dear Hawks, You claim there is a god that controls things. The evidence offered in support of any claim must be adequate to establish the truth of that claim, with these stipulations: the burden of proof for any claim rests on the claimant,
extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and evidence based upon authority and/or testimony is always inadequate for any paranormal claim.
I'm waiting.
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Do you really not understand what Hawks is asking of you? You're an idiot if you think Hawks is a believer in any religion, well, you are an idiot for other reasons too...
Hawks is asking you to describe how you can test for that claim. So go ahead, describe the experiment.
My bet is that you are so confused you don't even understand what is being said or asked of you. I'll also wager that you will prove me correct with your next post.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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pnrjulius
New Member
USA
1 Post |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 19:52:49 [Permalink]
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I'm not sure this argument is a productive one. Frankly I'm not sure that we even disagree in any substantive way. Our disagreement may be entirely semantic.
If by "agnostic" we mean someone who actually harbors serious doubts about the existence of God the way I harbor serious doubts about whether or not the Riemann Hypothesis is true, the way I harbor serious doubts about whether or not Obama will be re-elected President in 2012, then that sort of "agnosticism" is plainly indefensible. There's simply too much evidence against the standard "man in the sky", "intervening force", "loving anthropocentrist", "zombie Jew" versions of God that most religious people actually seem to adhere to.
But if by "agnostic" we mean only that there is always some tiny sliver of doubt about any proposition that is not logically provable (and perhaps even then---what if we are mistaken in the proof?), then this is the only respectable position, because the nonexistence of a theistic God is not some a priori logical necessity but an empirically observed fact. Dawkins put it best: There could be a Leprechaun!
There is also a third meaning of "agnostic", which may be closer to Huxley's original intention; this is the position that we cannot answer the question "Does God exist?" because we are not even sure what it means. The God of Abraham? Which version, the Yahweh who flattened Sodom and Gomorrah, or the zombie Jew who delivered the Sermon on the Mount? What about deism? What about pantheism? What about "God is love", whatever that means? And so on? If you can specify what you mean by the phoneme "God", then I can answer as to whether I think that being exists (or probably does not exist, or might exist, or whatever). But if you just make a meaningless noise at me, I can no more answer the question "Does God exist?" than I can answer the question "Do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?"
If that doesn't dissolve the question for you, I'm not really sure what else to say.
Unless of course some of you seriously contend that the zombie Jew is a plausible scientific hypothesis worthy of serious consideration. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 20:40:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Officiant
Dave W., I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. Groucho Marx. Not very original there Dave. |
I never claimed to be original. It's very telling how you find fault with everything.| Science and logic will compel you and Dawkins to evolve into strong atheists and leave wimpy agnosticism dead and still like a skunk at the side of the road. |
So now according to you Dawkins says that agnosticism is erroneous and he himself is a wimpy agnostic.| I don't know the difference between religion and faith. Please explain it. |
Wow. You really don't understand that religion is the set of dogmas and rituals that are built by humans around their faith in deities? That without faith, religion would be harmless dress-up games and social clubs? Faith is the root cause of all the miseries that you attribute to religion, Officiant. Your faith in atheism is the root cause of your own wallowing in ignorance. If you actually had science and logic with which to support your brand of atheism, you wouldn't need faith.| I do know that metaphysics has nothing to do with real physics or practical reality and science is the only way to obtain knowledge. |
The only way? Tell me what scientific experiments you perform (hypothesis testing, etc.) to determine how much money you have in your wallet.I am insulted that you and Kil insist I am lying. I am not infallible. I make mistakes just like you did with your straw man argument compounded by the appeal to ridicule. I don't have to lie to defend strong atheism. There is nothing else. Just your woowoo and a childish dependency on the supernatural as Albert Ellis said
I quoted Dawkins directly from The God Delusion. Please copy and paste these alleged lies. |
Pages 46 and 47:There is nothing wrong with being agnostic in cases where we lack evidence one way or the other. It is the reasonable position... Agnosticism, of a kind, is an appropriate stance on many scientific questions...
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But there is also a deeply inescapable kind of fence-sitting, which I shall call PAP (Permanent Agnosticism in Principle)... The PAP style of agnosticism is appropriate for questions that can never be answered, no matter how much evidence we gather, because the very idea of evidence is not applicable. Now because you quoted the same book, with the correct page numbers, you must have read it. And yet you went ahead and lied, and you said,| Dawkins does not think agnosticism is a reasonable position. |
That's clearly a lie, since you've read the book, and the lie is exposed on the same page that you quoted.
Now if you're going to claim that you made a mistake, and so didn't lie, the only sorts of mistakes you could have made are either not having read those paragraphs (which were right next to the lines you quoted) or you forgot them. Either way, you didn't bother to go back and re-read the book, to make sure that you were accurately presenting Dawkins' argument, did you? No, you boldly trod ahead in blissful ignorance.| What do you suppose would be the harm in basing your belief system in practical reality and the best available scientific information we have right now... |
I already do. It is you who have faith, not I.| ...and just ignore Kil and his California woowoo based on dependency in the science of the future? |
Ah, another insult. For both of us at once. How precocious.| You skeptics have called me every name in the book. |
You started it, bub. It was too late to act the victim after you wrote your OP here.| It has been quite vicious just like Muslims reacting to cartoons in Denmark. |
No, it's been a fair tit-for-tat. You insult us, we insult you back. You get what you give, asshat.| I'm sure with the anger expressed you all would gladly have me burnt at the stake as an unbeliever... |
Not at all. As I said, you're ridiculous, as in "a willing target for ridicule." I'd keep you around just to point at you and laugh some more. Death would put you out of your misery.
Actually, if I had my druthers, I'd have you star in a series of lecture comedy videos, in which you would explain religion, atheism, agnosticism (and other concepts) within say 15 minutes, and Richard Dawkins would smack you in the head with his own book every time you said something monumentally stupid, until you got it right. It's a win-win, because you'd learn something, and the audience would get a lot of entertainment. The series would end when you got through an entire lecture without being walloped. The copies of The God Delusion that Dawkins whacked you with could be sold at auction for big bucks with the proceeds going to support decent education in critical thinking for high-school kids, which you obviously lacked.| ...in your precious pseudo intellectual agnosticism. |
See? You can't stop with the insults, even as you decry them. You're a massive hypocrite.Aw, don't start begging now, sonny. Be a damn man.
You also wrote:The evidence offered in support of any claim must be adequate to establish the truth of that claim, with these stipulations: the burden of proof for any claim rests on the claimant,
extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and evidence based upon authority and/or testimony is always inadequate for any paranormal claim.
I'm waiting. |
Officiant, you have failed to meet any of those stipulations with regard to your claim, "Agnostic atheists are cowardly pseudo-intellectual dilettantes." On our forums, you may not demand of others what you are unwilling to do yourself. We are all waiting for you to provide scientific evidence that "Agnostic atheists are cowardly pseudo-intellectual dilettantes." Please provide references to scholarly articles in high-integrity, peer-reviewed journals supporting the claim, because the idea that you've done the research yourself to establish the truth of it is laughable. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 20:58:39 [Permalink]
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Welcome to the SFN, pnrjulius!Originally posted by pnrjulius
I'm not sure this argument is a productive one. Frankly I'm not sure that we even disagree in any substantive way. Our disagreement may be entirely semantic. |
I'm not sure who you mean by "we" and "our."
Officiant clearly does not (or cannot) distinguish between any sort of differences in meanings of how the word "agnostic" is used, even in context. Thus we see him quoting Dawkins approvingly when Dawkins says that a certain kind of agnosticism is "erroneous," but denying that Dawkins wrote, on the same page, that a different sort of agnosticism is "reasonable." He is utterly blinded by his faith-based atheism to the nuances. To him, if you're not a category-seven atheist, you may as well be singing hallelujahs and making burnt offerings.
So no, it's not a productive argument. Most of us are just poking Officiant with sticks to see if we can figure out how, exactly, he twitches. And the answer so far is that he jumps through the same logical hoops as your run-of-the-mill creationist, just with a different target for his faith. Therefore, we don't expect him to change his mind, and he's clearly incapable of changing ours. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 21:36:31 [Permalink]
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Wow. It's like talking to a brick wall.
I find the idea of all agnostics being cowardly because they supposedly are too attached to the idea that there might be immortality rather amusing, given my own intellectual and emotional journey to my current materialistic atheism. I used to be an agnostic. Existentially, it was the most frightening few years of my life because my worldview contained no certainty about anything. When I became intellectually convinced of an atheistic worldview, I felt relieved. I find the idea of real, final death comforting at times, because let's face it, a lot of life is pain. It also makes my life seem that much more valuable to know that it is temporary. But more than anything, the idea of some weird, unknown afterlife scares the shit out of me! I don't mean hell. The concept of a literal hell such as born-again types believe in is just childish. But just the idea that somehow our memories and self awareness continue on in some unknown way - that's kind of creepy. People find the concept of an afterlife comforting because they avoid thinking about it too hard.
But anyway, based on my own existential journey, I consider agnostics to be quite brave. I have a great deal of respect for them, and in a way I feel it is a bit of a weakness in me that I'm a flat-out strong atheist, not an agnostic atheist. I suspect my position is motivated at least partially by my emotional preference for materialist atheism to be true, and my desire to believe humans have the ability to understand the cosmos in a profound way, and that we are moving closer to a time in the future when we'll have the big-picture puzzle figured out. That would be so neat. Atheism is awesome. People who think it is a dark or depressing worldview are weird to me. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 21:39:40 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Officiant
Dear Hawks, Dear Hawks, You claim there is a god that controls things. The evidence offered in support of any claim must be adequate to establish the truth of that claim, with these stipulations: the burden of proof for any claim rests on the claimant,
extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and evidence based upon authority and/or testimony is always inadequate for any paranormal claim.
I'm waiting.
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We're all waiting for you to grow a brain. This is your claim:| Science can examine anything |
So, go ahead and test that claim by testing the claim that there is a god that controls things. Or admit that my claim is untestable and that you are wrong.
I'll repeat yet again what you said earlier:
| Dude says some of those claims are in principle untestable. This is wishful thinking. Science can examine anything. |
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METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2011 : 22:50:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by pnrjulius
Unless of course some of you seriously contend that the zombie Jew is a plausible scientific hypothesis worthy of serious consideration.
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Have you read this thread? Just curious, because it seems like if you had, then you wouldn't think anyone here would even remotely suggest such a thing.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 08/25/2011 : 22:56:22 [Permalink]
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Officiant:
What do you suppose would be the harm in basing your belief system in practical reality and the best available scientific information we have right now and just ignore Kil and his California woowoo based on dependency in the science of the future? |
Santa Monica, California
...The Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (carousel) is a National Historic Landmark. It sits on the Santa Monica Pier, which was built in 1909. The La Monica Ballroom on the pier was once the largest ballroom in the US, and the source for many New Year's Eve national network broadcasts. The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was an important music venue for several decades and hosted the Academy Awards in the 1960s. McCabe's Guitar Shop is still a leading acoustic performance space, as well as retail outlet. Bergamot Station is a city-owned art gallery compound that includes the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The city is also home to the Santa Monica Heritage Museum.
Santa Monica has three shopping districts, Montana Avenue on the north side of the city, the Downtown District in the city's core, and Main Street on the south end of the city. Each of these districts has its own unique feel and personality. Montana Avenue is a stretch of boutique stores, restaurants, and small offices that generally features more upscale shopping. The Main Street district offers an eclectic mix of clothing, restaurants, and other specialty retail.
The Downtown District is the home of the Third Street Promenade, a major outdoor pedestrian-only shopping district that stretches for three blocks between Wilshire Blvd. and Broadway (not the same Broadway in downtown and south Los Angeles). Third Street is closed to vehicles for those three blocks to allow people to stroll, congregate, shop and enjoy street performers. Santa Monica Place, the indoor mall designed by Frank Gehry, is located at the south end of the Promenade. After a period of redevelopment, the mall reopened in the fall of 2010 as a modern shopping-entertainment complex with more outdoor space.[2]
Santa Monica hosts the annual Santa Monica Film Festival... |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2011 : 05:42:12 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by pnrjulius
I'm not sure this argument is a productive one. Frankly I'm not sure that we even disagree in any substantive way. Our disagreement may be entirely semantic.
If by "agnostic" we mean someone who actually harbors serious doubts about the existence of God the way I harbor serious doubts about whether or not the Riemann Hypothesis is true, the way I harbor serious doubts about whether or not Obama will be re-elected President in 2012, then that sort of "agnosticism" is plainly indefensible. There's simply too much evidence against the standard "man in the sky", "intervening force", "loving anthropocentrist", "zombie Jew" versions of God that most religious people actually seem to adhere to.
But if by "agnostic" we mean only that there is always some tiny sliver of doubt about any proposition that is not logically provable (and perhaps even then---what if we are mistaken in the proof?), then this is the only respectable position, because the nonexistence of a theistic God is not some a priori logical necessity but an empirically observed fact. Dawkins put it best: There could be a Leprechaun!
There is also a third meaning of "agnostic", which may be closer to Huxley's original intention; this is the position that we cannot answer the question "Does God exist?" because we are not even sure what it means. The God of Abraham? Which version, the Yahweh who flattened Sodom and Gomorrah, or the zombie Jew who delivered the Sermon on the Mount? What about deism? What about pantheism? What about "God is love", whatever that means? And so on? If you can specify what you mean by the phoneme "God", then I can answer as to whether I think that being exists (or probably does not exist, or might exist, or whatever). But if you just make a meaningless noise at me, I can no more answer the question "Does God exist?" than I can answer the question "Do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?"
If that doesn't dissolve the question for you, I'm not really sure what else to say.
Unless of course some of you seriously contend that the zombie Jew is a plausible scientific hypothesis worthy of serious consideration.
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The nature of the dispute here has been a severe disagreement with what agnostic means and the two types of agnostics.
Agnosticism, to most of the denizens here, recognizes that there are some claims that are untestable (and, therefore, can be dismissed as opinion being not scientifically backed) either because the claim is so ill defined (does God exist) or we lack the tools to examine the issue (do electrons make noise as they orbit the nucleus of an atom).
These come in two flavors, atheistic agnostics (most of the denizens here) who no not assume the existence of any diety and theistic agnostics who do assume the existence of a diety.
Officiant has inferred a claim that all agnostics must be theistic agnostics. (logical fallacy: Rash Generalization) And insists that anyone who defends agnosticism must be a theistic agnostic.
Officiant's supplied definitiion from Mirriam Webster's was pointed out to mean that an ultimate reality is unknowable. I have repeatedly tried to explain to him that this is true. That science explains the stuff that we see using the best means available currently. As we develop better tools and examine outliers in data, the mechanisms we have defined in scientific study get refined or replaced. (More the former than the latter nowadays) It is why science is a journey and not a destination. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
| Edited by - Valiant Dancer on 08/26/2011 05:46:06 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2011 : 06:36:48 [Permalink]
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| I'm impressed anyone is still engaging this guy. If he isn't a troll as Ebone suggested, he certainly isn't able or willing to comprehend what other people are saying, so arguing with him seems a waste of time. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2011 : 07:32:46 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Officiant
Dear Dr. Mabuse, I read up on logical fallacies as you suggested. From www.nizkor.org The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. |
Exactly like when you tell lies about be being a theist just because I consider myself an agnostic atheist. That's very dishonest of you.
| This is exactly what you did in comparing me to a Christian creationist. |
No it's not. I made an observation about your behaviour on this board, and formulated a theory about why. That's not a Straw-Man. By your own criteria, when Charles Darwin presented the evolution, he was making a Straw-man against the pope. Do you see how ridiculous that is?
| Under appeal to popularity I found this: It is clearly fallacious to accept the approval of the majority as evidence for a claim. You said, "several other members confirmed the observation)." |
Using your logic, If anyone makes a statement and find people who agrees because they made the same observation, it's an appeal to popularity... Then, if I go outside and make the observation that the rain is pouring down, and several other people say they agree with me, then I'm making an appeal to popularity fallacy?
It's not. It's collecting data points do support the claim that it's raining.
Unless of course, you want to dismiss those data points on a one-by-one case of anecdotal evidence. But that's just not reasonable or proper application of critical thinking. Definitely not practical or pragmatic.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Cowardly Agnostics
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