BadChad, a moment of your time, if you can spare it

The BBQ Pit
241

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
Everyone has an agenda, and badchad’s is more blatant than most. And again, he cherry-picks, and he respects some cherry-pickers (fundies) and attacks others (liberals) for the same faults. In other words, he tries to make sure that things fit snugly into his worldview, which is exactly the same thing those he attacks are doing.
[/QUOTE]

Is it bad to be “blatant” (i.e., clear and unequivocal) about one’s agenda? Or just when you disagree with it?

I thought badchad expressed his respect for fundies based on their willingness to take a stand (the Bible is unerring) and try to defend it (which he then swiftly cuts into teeny-weeny pieces), while the liberal Christians are the far more egregious cherry-pickers, since they parse and interpret the literal words in the Bible so they wind up meaning exactly what the cherrypicking literal Christians mean for them to say. That’s basically saying to your debating opponent, “It’s impossible for you win a debate with me, because I’m going to claim that black means white if I want to badly enough.”

242

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
You’ve won the nitpick. Carry on.
[/QUOTE]
You said post, and you meant thread? In great big honking caps? That’s a mighty big nit.

243

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
Is it bad to be “blatant” (i.e., clear and unequivocal) about one’s agenda? Or just when you disagree with it?
[/quote]

Neither. His agenda is just more obvious, his cherry-picking more obvious, his goal more obvious. That makes it easier for the rest of us to identify, just as Fred Phelps’s agenda is easier to identify.

Which is 100% exactly what the fundies do, and exactly what badchad does. Watch a fundie squirm when you ask why only some of the Levitical laws must be followed! If badchad had the slightest bit of intellectual honesty, you could watch him squirm, too. But I haven’t seen evidence of it.

244

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
If badchad had the slightest bit of intellectual honesty, you could watch him squirm, too. But I haven’t seen evidence of it.
[/QUOTE]

Could you specify something that you think badchad should squirm over? Seems to me the bulk of accusations he’s facing concern his bad manners, his remorseless beating-up of poor innocents, etc., not an lack of intellectual honesty. What is he being dishonest about, specifically?

245

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
I thought badchad expressed his respect for fundies based on their willingness to take a stand (the Bible is unerring) and try to defend it (which he then swiftly cuts into teeny-weeny pieces), while the liberal Christians are the far more egregious cherry-pickers, since they parse and interpret the literal words in the Bible so they wind up meaning exactly what the cherrypicking literal Christians mean for them to say. That’s basically saying to your debating opponent, “It’s impossible for you win a debate with me, because I’m going to claim that black means white if I want to badly enough.”
[/QUOTE]

The only quibble I have with this is the implication that moderate to liberal Christians themselves decide what the words “mean,” based upon their own personal wishes, as opposed to thought, prayer, and study as to what it “means”. Take out the weasely motive you attribute to moderate to liberal Christians of arriving at or changing their interpretation based on “what they want badly enough,” then, yes, your objection is pretty much accurate.

You can’t use Biblical literalism to quash a moderate to liberal Christian, because we aren’t Biblical literalists. You have to take our beliefs as you find them, however we arrived at them, and argue with that. If this makes them harder to attack – as it obviously does – too bad. And the frustration of not being able to attack what we actually believe, leads IME to either telling us what we must believe (as BADCHAD does constantly) or to questioning the sincerity of those beliefs (as you implicitly do here). The only thing I find remarkable about it is your complete willingness to believe Christians choose or adjust their theology to win arguments. But I guess since faith is not important to you, it would be easy to assume it’s not important to us. Wrong, but easy.

246

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Because the concept makes no sense.
[/QUOTE]
To you, maybe. You keep missing the point. If God made you, he made you such that certain things make sense. He could just as easily have made you some other way.

But not a concept that is essential to the universe. It is a concept created by humans.

Again you’ve missed the point. I am beginning to suspect this deliberate on your part. If God made humans, whatever morality they have they owe to him.

And if God made humans in a particular way, there is nothing illogical about saying that he could have made them another way, in which 2 + 2 = pie.

Logic is an epistimology, and as such requires a primary axiom for it’s efficacy. Said axiom is not subject to logic. In other words, you cannot use logic to prove that logic is correct. Logic is only correct given a certain set of circumstances.

Our concept of God may be limited by logic, but if he in fact created everything, he created logic, and he could uncreate it.

I am not pretending to know anything at all about God. As far as I know, there is no God, at least no God that I have ever heard described. My statements have been contingent on the premise “If God exists, and is the Creator of Everything.”

Get your facts straight. I am not religious. I have stated clearly in this thread that I am an atheist.

Your insistence that people with religious convictions are insane is one of the reasons that you and your asshole buddy badchad are viewed with such contempt. You arrogantly presume to know what cannot be known. Not only that, but you do so in an insulting and superior manner, with no regard for people’s feelings.

247

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
I have no reason to disbelieve a few posts where he didn’t include chapter and verse because he usually does. If you’re too paranoid to accept that he’s knowlegeable on the subject, that’s your problem…not mine.
[/QUOTE]

Just because he’s able to quote from the Bible doesn’t make him knowledgeable. Nor does it make him smart or intelligent.

Also, assuming that the Bible is supposed to be read literally ignores its history and context. It shows a SEVERE ignorance of the history of the Bible, its teachings and philosophies.
Just because someone is “consistant” doesn’t make them intelligent. I’d rather deal with a so-called cherry picker like Polycarp, who is humble, gracious, and willing to learn, than a “consistant” individual like bad chad, whose mind is made up, and is only here to somehow prove his own pre-conceived notions.

What’s the old saying? “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing?”

That doesn’t describe bad chad. Not by a long shot.

And your own view that he’s somehow correct about the Bible shows your own ignorance, Kalhoun. So somehow you know what it’s all about better than countless scholars in the last couple millenia?

Here’s a fact to chew on-Biblical literalism is pretty much a recent school of thought.

248

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
Could you specify something that you think badchad should squirm over? Seems to me the bulk of accusations he’s facing concern his bad manners, his remorseless beating-up of poor innocents, etc., not an lack of intellectual honesty. What is he being dishonest about, specifically?
[/QUOTE]

Here’s one: If you want to argue against moderate to liberal Christianity, you have to move away from Biblical literalism. You can’t just stop at “the Bible says X and it also says not-X so God is a fiend.” You can’t insist that your opponents read the Bible literally, just because you want them to and want to insist they must, because they don’t. BADCHAD is very good at whacking literalists because (as noted more than once above) he practices the same degree of literalism, just from the other side. But move him away from literalism, remove from him the straw man of Biblical inerrancy to joust at, and he’s got nothin’. Not dishonest, maybe; but certainly squirm-worthy for someone with the self-appointed task of showing God is a lie. I mean, that’s not actually that hard to do when you yourself pick the god.

249

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
To you, maybe. You keep missing the point. If God made you, he made you such that certain things make sense. He could just as easily have made you some other way.
[/quote]
Yeah, by making me crazy. To a sane mind, 2 + 2 cannot be Wednesday.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
But not a concept that is essential to the universe. It is a concept created by humans.
[/quote]
Prove it. We did not make 2 + 2 = 4; we use that relation because it’s useful to use. We discovered it, we didn’t create it.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Again you’ve missed the point. I am beginning to suspect this deliberate on your part. If God made humans, whatever morality they have they owe to him.
[/quote]
And your evidence of that is ?

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
And if God made humans in a particular way, there is nothing illogical about saying that he could have made them another way, in which 2 + 2 = pie.
[/quote]
No, because 2 + 2 cannot equal pie. That’s an insane statement.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Logic is an epistimology, and as such requires a primary axiom for it’s efficacy. Said axiom is not subject to logic. In other words, you cannot use logic to prove that logic is correct. Logic is only correct given a certain set of circumstances.
[/quote]
And within those circumstances it is correct, no matter God’s opinion on the subject.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Our concept of God may be limited by logic, but if he in fact created everything, he created logic, and he could uncreate it.
[/quote]
That is a logical statement; you are judging God by something you say doesn’t apply to him. As well, if you do use logic, God cannot have created everything; he needs some underlying substratum of order, or he’d just vanish or turn into a pumpkin or something. “God can do anything” is, itself, a statement implying an order underlying God.

250

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Yeah, by making me crazy. To a sane mind, 2 + 2 cannot be Wednesday.
[/QUOTE]
Unless it is true by definition.

Prove what? That it is not an essential element of the universe, or that humans created it?

The definition of God, which I have given you numerous times.

It is not insane. It may be incoherent, but not necessarily incoherent, and certainly not insane.

Sure. But those circumstances preclude any investigation into the nature of God.

Unless, of course, God is everything, and everything you see, feel, hear, and touch simply a manifestation of God.

251

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Yeah, by making me crazy. To a sane mind, 2 + 2 cannot be Wednesday.
[/QUOTE]
Unless it is true by definition.

Prove what? That it is not an essential element of the universe, or that humans created it?

The definition of God, which I have given you numerous times.

It is not insane. It may be incoherent, but not necessarily incoherent, and certainly not insane.

Sure. But those circumstances preclude any investigation into the nature of God.

Unless, of course, God is everything, and everything you see, feel, hear, and touch simply a manifestation of God.

252

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Unless it is true by definition.
[/quote]
Which it can’t be, being incoherent.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Prove what? That it is not an essential element of the universe, or that humans created it?
[/quote]
That humans made it, of course. 2 + 2 = 4 is mathematics; it would be true without humans, or a universe, or a God.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
The definition of God, which I have given you numerous times.
[/quote]
Nonsense. For one thing, if God can’t be evil, he’s not omnipotent. For another, having more power doesn’t make God or anyone else moral.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
It is not insane. It may be incoherent, but not necessarily incoherent, and certainly not insane.
[/quote]
Believing it is insane.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Sure. But those circumstances preclude any investigation into the nature of God.
[/quote]
Hardly. Assuming there is a God, there’s no reason he can’t just pop into visibility and let himself be studied in a logical universe ( all of them ).

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Unless, of course, God is everything, and everything you see, feel, hear, and touch simply a manifestation of God.
[/QUOTE]
No; that would help prove my point, given that what I perceive has logic and order to it.

253

[QUOTE=DrDeth]
Dude? Let’s look at that second cite here. I see some good thoughts by Polycarp, tomndebb, and Diogenes the Cynic- this last poster who I think is the best non-beleiver biblical expert we have. All Badchad does there is launch into a hijack attack on Polycarp. :rolleyes: eh. I agree that does show his standard debating style, but ferfuckssake dude- couldn’t you find a cite that supported your side of the debate, not mine?
[/QUOTE]

How’s this for making a point about his stand and making it very clearly?

An exchange with Diogenes:

[QUOTE=Diogenes]
badchad, I’m trying to figure out where you’re coming from. Neither Polycarp nor Meatros have much truck with Biblical inerrancy or literal interpretation of the Bible, yet you seem to have a problem with any interpretation of the Bible.
[/quote]

[QUOTE=badchad]
Fair enough. Here is where I’m coming from. I think that the literal interpretation of the bible, has been attacked very effectivly on this board. Folks like His4ever will never get it but Ben, Darwins Finch and many others do a very very good job on countering the creationist, and others do as well with other literal topics. However the figurative christains in my opinion are every bit as unreasonable as the literalists. All they have done is define their beliefs in such a way that it is no longer subject to scientific scrutany. As Carl Popper would say, if it can’t be tested, it can’t be disproved and as such it’s worthless. Still they want to hold onto their superstitions. However, what do they base their beliefs on? The bible of course, unfortunatly when it comes to credibility they already ate that cake and have nothing to go on, and while Poly wants me to respect his opinion, I don’t think this is a matter where intelligent people can disagree.

I’ve seen Poly say something to the effect of: When interpreting the teachings of Jesus I go on his overall theme and character, if something is said out of character then that is what I don’t believe (paraphrasing on memory correct me if this is wrong.)

This response is a complete crock and I know it. I’ve read the bible. I know that giving your belongings away to follow him is a fairly recurrent theme, yet he won’t do it. I know that hell as eternal punishment was all about Jesus, which if you ask me is by definition unjust and unloving. What’s so god awful bad about disbelief anyway. Yet Jesus talks about hell and who goes there over and over and over in the new testiment. Personally, I prefer the old testiment god, he just smote you then and there, and got it overwith. Nevermind that Jesus is according christianity was god from the beginning (trinity thing), so he was responsible for all the smiting as well.
[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dio]
Yes, interpreting the Bible necessarily requires making choices about what is meant. It may involve taking some parts at face value, taking other parts fuguratively, and even outright discarding some parts as archaic or erroneous. No, it is not always obvious which parts are which. Yes there can be tremendous disagreement on those points, and yes, an interpreter can be wrong. That’s why it’s called interpretation.
[/quote]

[QUOTE=badchad]
I’m saying that this interpretation is not only difficult. I’m saying it’s impossible. The more figurative you get the less you have to go on regarding what was intended. In a different social setting Poly could easily be telling me about the Iliad, how great a book it is and how he loves Zeus and Zeus loves him, though you cannot take it all literal. And no I am not exaggerating to make a point.
[/quote]

<snip>

[QUOTE=Dio]
I understand your frustration with intolerant fundamentalism, believe me (and so do Meatros and Poly), but that’s not who you’re talking to in these threads. Let me tell you, Chad, as one “unbeliever” to another , the Christians here will listen to what you have to say with an open mind, and they are not afraid of debate. But if you’re just going take a lot of snide potshots and you don’t really want a discussion then take it to the pit, not GD.
[/quote]

[QUOTE=badchad]
**I appreciate your comments and hope I have made myself clear. I also know that Meatros and Poly aren’t out bashing gays, teaching creationism in school, or crashing jets into buildings, or robbing my parents of ten percent of their income under the euphamism tithe. Still they are promoting superstition, which makes the above possible. That’s why I think that their beliefs, watered down as they may be, should still be opposed.

And yes I would like to see Poly answer my questions from my earlier post. I don’t think it is my tone that set him back but rather the cognitive dissonance.**
[/quote]

You may not like his style – heck, back then I even asked him to dial it down a notch – but it’s hard to question much of the substance of his posts.

Troll? In a pig’s eye.

254

badchad, Polycarp, everybody else in a foam, God damn it’s the good ole days again.

What’s refreshing is that I have some common ground with Red Shirt. Trihs: catch me up, do you believe in anything other than the material?

255

[QUOTE=RedFury]
Troll? In a pig’s eye.
[/QUOTE]
Seconded.

256

[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
What’s refreshing is that I have some common ground with Red Shirt. Trihs: catch me up, do you believe in anything other than the material?
[/QUOTE]
I believe as well in pure abstracts like mathematics and logic, and in information/patterns in the physical world. I’m not sure if you would consider the latter material; I’ve heard arguments both ways.

257

[QUOTE=Beaucarnea]
FriarTed and other fundamentalists are also pitted for gleefully condemning non-Christians to everlasting torment.
[/QUOTE]

Except that I don’t- I gleefully anticipate a whole heap of embarrassment (which I crudely put as “peeing their pants”) for God/Jesus-haters hopefully followed by a Happy reconciliation. UNLESS the Haters prefer to wallow in themselves, then either they’ll be mercifully allowed to expire, survive eternally in the unescapable Presence of their hated Creator, or allowed to collapse into the Black Hole of their own selves.

Those who prey upon others (murderers, rapists, child abusers, etc.) I suppose could be reconciled. I do prefer to think of them going into whatever Hell is appropriate.

I anticipate the vast majority of decent caring non-C’tians to run happily to Jesus/God when they see Him in true form.

258

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
I believe as well in pure abstracts like mathematics and logic, and in information/patterns in the physical world. I’m not sure if you would consider the latter material; I’ve heard arguments both ways.
[/QUOTE]

As long as you are answering questions, are you comfortable with those of us that are not sure of anything. I have never seen any convincing proof that there is or is not a God/Creator/Og. I find absolute belief of any sort alien to me and my internal logic. I have far more sympathy for an Atheist’s beliefs that any Christian, Jew or Muslim I have ever met. Their logic system is inherently flawed as logic is not the center of their belief as they will admit. I like to keep my mind open.

Jim

259

[QUOTE=RedFury]
but it’s hard to question much of the substance of his posts.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, please. Again, the substance of his posts is that Christians have to agree with him about what they believe and how they believe or he’s going to attack them, and if they agree with him about what they believe and how they believe, he’ll still attack them.

Why go through the stupid hoops? Why the biblical crap at all? Just attack them and pit them and get it over with. That has the added benefit of exposing the rest of us to that much less bible talk, which can only be a plus.

260

[QUOTE=What Exit?]
As long as you are answering questions, are you comfortable with those of us that are not sure of anything.
[/quote]
Much more than I am with someone who is sure of something nonsensical. If nothing else, someone who’s unsure of the truth is rather less likely to use his beliefs to excuse doing something nasty.