Debating debate techniques

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Riiiight. I still maintain that it’s garbage to assert that if we’re sure that the inquisition was caused by faith, that any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith.
[/QUOTE]

Maintain away. I asserted no such thing.

Ah, yes, the argument of “it’s impossible to draw any conclusions whatsoever from incomplete data”. I admit I risk being wrong. I deny that assessment is impossible.

There’s a vast difference between incomplete data and virtually no data. You made plenty of assertions and offered lots of speculative examples but virtually no data. That being the case your speculations are of no more value than mine. I think useless was the word you chose wasn’t it?

I have to support that the inquisition was caused by faith? :dubious:

Whatever arguments you apply, apply them evenly. Since you speculated that acts of charity and compassion might not be faith related simply because they were done by believers I can just as easily speculate that the inquisition was motivated by greed and a lust for power rather than actually motivated by faith. You repeatedly claimed to** know** otherwise and that your examples met the required standards. Since you offered no data it’s obvious they do not. You simply assumed and repeated the meme I am addressing. Repetition and assumption is not evidence and I’m sure you know that.

A+F > A = A < A+F. This is not particularly debatable.

You’ll have to demonstrate that this actually applies to the argument at hand before I consider it at all.

(And incidentally I’ve taken a few years of logic, even though that’s not shown well by my ability to get derailed by people accusing me of fallacies entirely unrelated to my position. I haven’t taken any debate, though. Perhaps that’s my problem?)

A few years? Really?
I haven’t taken any courses on logic and yet I was astute enough to see yours was faulty even though I may have gotten the terms wrong.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
May I suggest that the best way to defeat that point is simply to point out the fallacies inherent in it without trying to battle it with a counter-example?
Plain fact is that the people who insist that faith has been horrible for humanity don’t have evidence to prove it. They’ll haul out anecdotes and try to pretend they serve as proper evidence but they don’t. Then they’ll drag out the same old sameolds but you have (IMHO) to resist debating the anecdotes point by point because it’s like a game of whack-a-mole; every time you smack one down, another one will pop up and the discussion will be endless.

There are several sites that list logical and debating fallacies; it’s easy to teach yourself about them. And avoid them where possible For instance, I doubt that you can ever really win a point by saying something is ‘reasonable’ to conclude, because that which constitutes ‘reasonable’ is really ‘according to you’. Fred Phelps thinks he’s reasonable. So does GeeDubya. See how that’s a problem?

BTW, begbert2, I’m not buying the equation. This isn’t math, it’s social science and people don’t behave according to mathematical rules. It works as a debating proposition only in theory but I believe cosmosdan is talking about actual humans, not theoretical ones.

Theoretical models are great except when they have no application in the real world.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you. Your point is well noted.

Your assessment of my feelings on begbert’s " logical formula" is correct as well.

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Maintain away. I asserted no such thing.
[/QUOTE]
So you don’t assert that “If you’re going to try and assess the value of faith by claiming certain negative actions of the faithful are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here} then to be reasonably fair we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs.”?

Okay. I accept your retraction.

It’s a bit of a shame, though. I sort of liked how you leapt from accepting “certain” negative examples, to a blanket assignment of, well, all their positive actions to faith-based causes. It went well with your frequent and repeated accusations of me having a double standard.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
There’s a vast difference between incomplete data and virtually no data. You made plenty of assertions and offered lots of speculative examples but virtually no data. That being the case your speculations are of no more value than mine. I think useless was the word you chose wasn’t it?
[/QUOTE]
No data? Any excuse in a storm to try to equate your tenuous faith-attributions with my examples, I suppose. I sort of assumed that everyone here was vaguely acquainted with what “the typical examples” actually were. Still, if you really need data, I recommend wiki for a start; it’s at least convenient. You can move on to other sources afterwards at your pleasure.

Here, I’ll even get you started: Inquisition. I’d be interested in hearing how you think a person could be convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church if there was no Roman Catholic Church and no religious dogma to he heretical against. Let me know, mm’kay?

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
You’ll have to demonstrate that this actually applies to the argument at hand before I consider it at all.
[/QUOTE]
You don’t like it brief? Then here is the verbose version. I think it’s fair to say that you asked for it.

A+F > A = A < A+F:

A = a given person’s propensity to do good, absent faith.
F = the additional propensity for that person to do good caused by that person being faithful.
A+F = that given person’s propensity to do good, if they also are faithful.

If the a given person is more likely to do good if they’re faithful than if they’re not, then that person is less likely to do good if they’re not faithful than if they are.

This statement is a tautology: always true. Whether you like it or not. Even in the real world. Even with real people.

We note that this statement is true regardless of the pre-faith level of goodness in the person, and regardless of the amount of additional goodness imbued by faith.

(Though, if in the particular person faith makes them worse, the english statement as written asserts nothing about them at all, since it’s a conditional (an if/then statement). The mathematical version is an equality; it additionally asserts that if faith makes you worse, then you’d be better without it. But since the presumption here is that faith is good, we won’t really need that half of it for the discussion.)

Now. If faith generally has a positive effect on people’s tendencies to do good (which is one interpretation of the statement “faith has positive value”), then generally a given person is better (shorthand for "more likely to do good) if he’s a theist than if he’s not. If this wasn’t the case, then faith wouldn’t generally have positive value, by that interpretation of value. (Which pretty much has to be the interpretation you’re using if your argument for value is based on the donation-rate of theists. Which may apply to cosmosdan)

Now comes the tricky part. You have to consider what sort of people are likely to have faith, and which are likely to be faithless. You have a few options.

1. The people who are naturally good tend to have faith, and the persons who turn their back on faith were less likely to be good to start with. In this case the faithless are really bad; they were worse to start with, and the others have faith making them even better. Sure, the odd atheist might so outshine hs fellows enough to compete with the best of the faithful, but in general, there’s no contest.

2. It’s an even mix; persons of all types are equally likely to take an interest in faith. In this case, the default (pre-faith) quality of people may vary but is on average about the same for theists and atheists. But then, the theists also have faith, which in general makes them better people. The theists don’t have this, and so are left behind. The theists are generally better people than the atheists in this case as well.

3. The naturally better people tend to abstain from faith, leaving the somewhat worse people to fill the balance. In this case which the generally better group is is sort of up in the air. It depends on how powerful a positive influence for good is, and on how much naturally better the faithless are. Whichever is the larger (in general) is in general the better group. In theory this could still be the theists, if the good-making power of faith is enough to make up for their natural shortcomings and eke them out a victory over the atheists. In theory they could be tied (give or take), if the value faith is in even balance with the value of atheism. And, of course, if pious people really are (in general) evil scum, then even with the uplifting power of faith the theists will come out ahead. In general.

(Incidentally 2 is the case that a rational analysis would presume as true, absent further data.)

Note that these three cases are together mutually exclusive and also encompass all possible cases. This is sort of an expanded case of excluded middle: unless there’s some problem with my analysis in one or more of the parts, what these cases demonstrate must stand, invulnerable to a false dillemma or other unrelated fallacies. It’s simply true. Even in the real world. Even with real people.

Note also that only in case three do the atheists even have a change of breaking even, if faith has a positive influence on the people who have it. So, unless people of faith are generally more evil to start with, it must be the case that if faith is a positive influence, then atheists are generally less likely to do good than theists. Period. Q.E.D.

I ask again: So, do you think that persons who take to religion tend to be the evil type?

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
So you don’t assert that “If you’re going to try and assess the value of faith by claiming certain negative actions of the faithful are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here} then to be reasonably fair we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs.”?

Okay. I accept your retraction.

It’s a bit of a shame, though. I sort of liked how you leapt from accepting “certain” negative examples, to a blanket assignment of, well, all their positive actions to faith-based causes. It went well with your frequent and repeated accusations of me having a double standard.
[/QUOTE]

Since my statement was that I asserted no such thing this couldn’t be a retraction could it? I’ll also note that your above statement is not the same as the one I responded to.

No data? Any excuse in a storm to try to equate your tenuous faith-attributions with my examples, I suppose. I sort of assumed that everyone here was vaguely acquainted with what “the typical examples” actually were. Still, if you really need data, I recommend wiki for a start; it’s at least convenient. You can move on to other sources afterwards at your pleasure.

Here, I’ll even get you started: Inquisition. I’d be interested in hearing how you think a person could be convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church if there was no Roman Catholic Church and no religious dogma to he heretical against. Let me know, mm’kay?

I didn’t say there wasn’t any data to make the argument. I said you didn’t offer any all the while criticizing me for having none. The problem I have is that you and others rather casually assume this to a correct position and you, in our exchanges, continue to apply your arguments completely unevenly all the while denying it. You’re doing it again here but I’m sure you can’t see how. I didn’t start this thread to rehash this issue. We don’t accept each others arguments. Life goes on.

You don’t like it brief? Then here is the verbose version. I think it’s fair to say that you asked for it.

A+F > A = A < A+F:

A = a given person’s propensity to do good, absent faith.
F = the additional propensity for that person to do good caused by that person being faithful.
A+F = that given person’s propensity to do good, if they also are faithful.

If the a given person is more likely to do good if they’re faithful than if they’re not, then that person is less likely to do good if they’re not faithful than if they are.

This statement is a tautology: always true. Whether you like it or not. Even in the real world. Even with real people.

We note that this statement is true regardless of the pre-faith level of goodness in the person, and regardless of the amount of additional goodness imbued by faith.

(Though, if in the particular person faith makes them worse, the english statement as written asserts nothing about them at all, since it’s a conditional (an if/then statement). The mathematical version is an equality; it additionally asserts that if faith makes you worse, then you’d be better without it. But since the presumption here is that faith is good, we won’t really need that half of it for the discussion.)

Now. If faith generally has a positive effect on people’s tendencies to do good (which is one interpretation of the statement “faith has positive value”), then generally a given person is better (shorthand for "more likely to do good) if he’s a theist than if he’s not. If this wasn’t the case, then faith wouldn’t generally have positive value, by that interpretation of value. (Which pretty much has to be the interpretation you’re using if your argument for value is based on the donation-rate of theists. Which may apply to cosmosdan)

Now comes the tricky part. You have to consider what sort of people are likely to have faith, and which are likely to be faithless. You have a few options.

1. The people who are naturally good tend to have faith, and the persons who turn their back on faith were less likely to be good to start with. In this case the faithless are really bad; they were worse to start with, and the others have faith making them even better. Sure, the odd atheist might so outshine hs fellows enough to compete with the best of the faithful, but in general, there’s no contest.

2. It’s an even mix; persons of all types are equally likely to take an interest in faith. In this case, the default (pre-faith) quality of people may vary but is on average about the same for theists and atheists. But then, the theists also have faith, which in general makes them better people. The theists don’t have this, and so are left behind. The theists are generally better people than the atheists in this case as well.

3. The naturally better people tend to abstain from faith, leaving the somewhat worse people to fill the balance. In this case which the generally better group is is sort of up in the air. It depends on how powerful a positive influence for good is, and on how much naturally better the faithless are. Whichever is the larger (in general) is in general the better group. In theory this could still be the theists, if the good-making power of faith is enough to make up for their natural shortcomings and eke them out a victory over the atheists. In theory they could be tied (give or take), if the value faith is in even balance with the value of atheism. And, of course, if pious people really are (in general) evil scum, then even with the uplifting power of faith the theists will come out ahead. In general.

(Incidentally 2 is the case that a rational analysis would presume as true, absent further data.)

Note that these three cases are together mutually exclusive and also encompass all possible cases. This is sort of an expanded case of excluded middle: unless there’s some problem with my analysis in one or more of the parts, what these cases demonstrate must stand, invulnerable to a false dillemma or other unrelated fallacies. It’s simply true. Even in the real world. Even with real people.

Note also that only in case three do the atheists even have a change of breaking even, if faith has a positive influence on the people who have it. So, unless people of faith are generally more evil to start with, it must be the case that if faith is a positive influence, then atheists are generally less likely to do good than theists. Period. Q.E.D.

I ask again: So, do you think that persons who take to religion tend to be the evil type?

QG already explained it adequately with far less words and I’ve tried a couple of times as well. Your argument simply doesn’t apply to my statements and it’s certainly not any argument I’ve made or even implied here or in the other thread.
Once again, I did not start this thread to rehash these issues.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to do any studies about the probable effects of faith on charitable giving. Lib supplied a link to one. Feel free to comment on that. You originally brought this up to demonstrate my bias. I’m saying I never made or implied this argument.

[Liberal]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I understand. As I stated in that thread and just restated here. My goal wasn’t to prove anything but merely to counter the meme the keeps rearing it’s ugly inaccurate head and that begbert2 repeated in that thread. Namely that faith has obviously had a cumulative negative effect on mankind and we’d be better off without it. It gets tossed about here and there as if it were fact. It seems obvious to me that with even a little thought and imagination, a little consideration of a fair argument, it is not at all an obvious fact at all and should not be casually tossed out as such by those who claim to value logic and reason above faith.
[/quote]
That’s true. Just enumerate the contributions made by people of faith to government, philosophy, the arts, medicine, and yes, science, through the ages. There are counter-examples, sure, but you’re not saying that every religious person has contributed. And besides, there are plenty of counter-examples for the other side, though they hate to hear them, like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

Thats why it seemed logical to me to limit the argument to a discussion of actual deeds done without any speculation . Are you saying that is indeed the more proper method?

If that’s what the point is about, yes. Hypotheticals are okay, but if one person gets to suppose then so does the other.

I understand. I’m afraid I worded my OP carelessly. The specific item I referred to as as a false dichotomy was this comment by** bert** bolding mine. Which seemed to fit the definition I quoted from Wikki of a false dichotomy. Are you saying it doesn’t?

In a sense, I suppose. If he’s saying it’s either/or, then yes.

IMO he seemed to be saying that since I thought faith = greater charity then I must also think lack of faith = less charity. He seemed to imply that I had to think that since one must mean the other.

If he meant that, then it is a logical fallacy (denial of the antecedent). If A -> B is true, then Not A -> Not B may or may not be true.

He was including all both groups, believers and non believers in the equation while I was not. That seemed to be the option he was missing. That it was possible to consider faith to have a positive effect among the faithful without drawing any conclusion or implying anything about non believers.

I suppose, though even among the faithful, there have been negatives (Northern Ireland, for example). It’s really not so much the faith as the tenets of the faith. An atheist who is loving and kind contributes just as much as a Christian who is the same. While a Christian who is bitter and destructive harms just as much as an atheist who is that way too.

[Shodan]

@Liberal

When people fret over how backward society would be if it were infested with peace and honesty, I argue that for all we know, a libertarian society might be far further along than our present society with things like conquering hunger, disease, and illiteracy. And that’s true; however, it is a hypothetical response to a hypothetical assertion. In other words, it speaks only to a comparison between two hypothetical libertarian societies — one bad and one good. It does not speak to a comparison between the actual society and a hypothetical one.

A comparison between two hypothetical libertarian societies, or two hypothetical societies, one of which is libertarian and the other isn’t? I thought the “further along than our present society” was establishing a comparison between a real and a hypothetical. Is that what you are saying is illegitimate?

IOW, the allegation is that hypothetical society X would be worse than real society Y. And the counter is to say that, no, hsX could be better than rsY. If it were me, I would go on to supply evidence that some real society Z that shared one or more of the relevant characteristics of X is worse than rsY.

Thus, if the argument is that societies with a high proportion of believers have a better track record than those that are officially atheist, then that is evidence that a hypothetical society where faith never existed would be worse off than real society Y where many believe.

Or am I missing your point?

Regards,
Shodan

[Liberal]

[QUOTE=Shodan]
A comparison between two hypothetical libertarian societies, or two hypothetical societies, one of which is libertarian and the other isn’t? I thought the “further along than our present society” was establishing a comparison between a real and a hypothetical. Is that what you are saying is illegitimate?

IOW, the allegation is that hypothetical society X would be worse than real society Y. And the counter is to say that, no, hsX could be better than rsY. If it were me, I would go on to supply evidence that some real society Z that shared one or more of the relevant characteristics of X is worse than rsY.

Thus, if the argument is that societies with a high proportion of believers have a better track record than those that are officially atheist, then that is evidence that a hypothetical society where faith never existed would be worse off than real society Y where many believe.

Or am I missing your point?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know. I’ve often pointed out the weaknesses of the present system — everything from abused children falling through the enormous cracks to outright tyranny and oppression of whole classes of people. People then usually protest that weaknesses in our present system do not translate into strengths of a hypothetical libertarian system, and that’s true, but it isn’t what I argued.

The problem with hypotheticals on this board is that usually one person wants to do all the supposing. He doesn’t want to allow you to suppose things too. So they might posit a mean old man who wants to torture people by denying them water from the lake he owns, but then they don’t want you to posit that there is another old man who owns a lake and is kind. But even when they’re done fairly, hypotheticals don’t mean very much unless they are somehow analogous to the real world. And in that case, the rules of analogics would apply.

With respect to your point, clearly if there is an actual track record, then the data speak for themselves. Like the data I gave Cosmosdan, for instance. It directly contradicts Begbert’s hypothetical musings.

[Shodan]

Thanks for your response.

Regards,
Shodan

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Since my statement was that I asserted no such thing this couldn’t be a retraction could it? I’ll also note that your above statement is not the same as the one I responded to.
[/QUOTE]
If you assert that you never said what you said, you’re either retracting, contradicting yourself, or delusional. I figured that assuming that it was a retraction was the charitable way to approach your comment.

And unless I’m totally misreading the thread, the post of yours I quoted from is indeed the one which my rephrasement of it you asserted you never said. So you must see something wrong with my phrasing. Fair enough; what part of what I said was not unavoidably implied by what you said?

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I didn’t say there wasn’t any data to make the argument. I said you didn’t offer any all the while criticizing me for having none. The problem I have is that you and others rather casually assume this to a correct position and you, in our exchanges, continue to apply your arguments completely unevenly all the while denying it. You’re doing it again here but I’m sure you can’t see how. I didn’t start this thread to rehash this issue. We don’t accept each others arguments. Life goes on.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, the only problem was that I didn’t provide the information? (Though it seemed pretty evident that you’d already heard of the events I’ve cited; but regardless.) Well, that’s corrected now at any rate, at least for the Inquisition. Since the thread in question is dead, long live the thread, I shall not bother citing the other well-known historical events for you.

And yes, yes, I’m being completely uneven by not accepting “all good done by any theist must have been caused by faith” as being as sure as “the inquisition was caused by religion”; it’s clearly unfair to all and I’m just mysteriously unable to detect the problems with my position due to some sort of personal problem. Blah blah, blah.

Yes, life goes on.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
QG already explained it adequately with far less words and I’ve tried a couple of times as well. Your argument simply doesn’t apply to my statements and it’s certainly not any argument I’ve made or even implied here or in the other thread.
[/QUOTE]
All QG said was that my argument doesn’t apply to people because it can be summarized in mathematical symbols. Yes, that’s far fewer words, and yes, that’s very similar to your attempts to rewrite my position. And yes, when you rewrite it as being nothing, it certainly doesn’t apply to your statements, or anything else for that matter.

However the “far more words” argument you dismiss here is the argument I’m actually making. If’n you don’t like that, it’s not my problem.
Oh, and Liberal? It’s not denial of the antecedent because I’m not reaching my conclusion by negating both sides. What I’m doing is noticing that the claim was “faith = greater charity”. Greater charity than what? “Greater” is a comparative term. If he’s claiming that faith is greater, then something must be lesser…whether he likes it or not.

By my read of it, the lesser thing he refers to is the same person or group of people, in the speculative case that they didn’t have faith. Of course he doesn’t want to discuss speculative behaviors, but he refers to them nonetheless (and slights them, even).

It takes an additional argument by cases to demonstrate that this slighting of the speculative atheist-version-of-the-charitable-theist reflects on other atheists not previously involved in the discussion. I provide that argument, and openly admit that it provides an ‘out’. Not a very palatable one though.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Once again, I did not start this thread to rehash these issues.
[/QUOTE]
No, you started this thread to discuss whether my arguments in that thread were any good. Which I have a right to contest, right?

I’ve no particular interest in actually continuing that old debate with you, and I’ve been trying to defending my arguments in their abstract form where possible, but generalizing “Inquisition” to “any old unknown-cause bad thing” is the problem with your analysis of that argument. In cases like that one, it’s quite hard to correctly discuss the argument in the abstract.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’m not saying it’s impossible to do any studies about the probable effects of faith on charitable giving. Lib supplied a link to one. Feel free to comment on that. You originally brought this up to demonstrate my bias. I’m saying I never made or implied this argument.
[/QUOTE]
You don’t have to make the argument; your statement “faith = greater charity” makes the argument for you.

As for your biases; they’re your problem. I don’t care about them. And if you check, I’ve already expressed willingness to abandon this “theists > atheists” tangent entirely, in the old thread. You keep bringing it up. I suppose it bothers you… I’m not sure why.
I didn’t notice anything in Liberal’s pdf about the causes of donation. So it really doesn’t relate to my argument at all. I mean, sure, a really large percentage of donations are done to churches; over half. But a lot of people also go to church weekly. They don’t go to other donation centers weekly. Could there be a correlation? Naah.

Also I didn’t see anything in the PDF which indicates what percentage of those secular-only givers were religious or not. Or what percentage of non-giving households are religious or secular. Which sort of matters, since they’re trying to pretend they’ve shown that theists are clearly more generous than atheists. They haven’t. They’re shown that theists have a tendency to donate to their church as opposed to other outlets. (Big surprise.) There’s simply not enough data to infer anything about atheists, except that they don’t comprise more than 12.5% of the donations, which is also no surprise, given how outnumbered atheists are.

The simple fact is, the data cited in the article indicates nothing about whether atheists are more or less generous than theists, except that it shows a reasonable upper bound on atheist donations as being between 0 and 12%, which plenty large enough of a range given how few atheists there are.

Basically all the assertions in the article about theist’s having been proven as more generous are crap. That doesn’t stop them from asserting them though. No bias there, oh no.

[Liberal]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Oh, and Liberal? It’s not denial of the antecedent because I’m not reaching my conclusion by negating both sides. What I’m doing is noticing that the claim was “faith = greater charity”. Greater charity than what? “Greater” is a comparative term. If he’s claiming that faith is greater, then something must be lesser…whether he likes it or not.
[/quote]
Funnily enough, that’s a concept I was trying to get across to you in the MOP discussion. Supreme is a superlative term. Two -> comparative. Three or more -> superlative. At any rate, as I understand it, Cosmosdan’s point is that the faithful are more charitable than the nonfaithful, and he is right.

I didn’t notice anything in Liberal’s pdf about the causes of donation. So it really doesn’t relate to my argument at all. I mean, sure, a really large percentage of donations are done to churches; over half. But a lot of people also go to church weekly. They don’t go to other donation centers weekly. Could there be a correlation? Naah.

The point of the study is this: one way to determine who gives more is to look at the total amount of money given to secular charities, like the American Heart Association, and so forth — charities that aren’t affiliated with any church, and whom it came from. Then, use that data to determine whether the people who gave to the secular charities also gave to religious charities. As it turns out, a significant majority of people who gave both time and money to secular charities also gave both time and money to religious charities. Thus, those people are identified as religious, and it can be said that people of faith are, in general, more charitable than the nonfaithful, at least in the US.

ETA:

I’m surprised, by the way, that that study does not compel you to change your mind, since it is exactly the sort of empirical evidence that you often ask for. Well, now you have it.

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=Liberal]
Funnily enough, that’s a concept I was trying to get across to you in the MOP discussion. Supreme is a superlative term. Two -> comparative. Three or more -> superlative. At any rate, as I understand it, Cosmosdan’s point is that the faithful are more charitable than the nonfaithful, and he is right.
[/QUOTE]
The problem with the MOP is that, like ‘greater’, ‘supreme’ is an adjective. If you fling it around without an associated descriptive noun, then its meaning is vague or subject to debate. (I interpret it as just meaning “the one in charge”, as in, “Supreme Chancellor Palpatine”) The MOP tries to use it as a goalpost on roller skates; a handy word that means whatever you want it to at any given moment.

(And I really don’t remember fencing with anyone about that sub-point of the MOP specifically, though I’ve occasionally considered doing so (most recently with mswas). My memory must be going.)

And cosmosdan’s particular problem here is that he wants to be able to say that faith makes people into better people without simultaneously saying that persons without faith are lesser people. Basically he wants to have his cake, and eat it too. I don’t envy him that inner conflict.

[QUOTE=Liberal]
The point of the study is this: one way to determine who gives more is to look at the total amount of money given to secular charities, like the American Heart Association, and so forth — charities that aren’t affiliated with any church, and whom it came from. Then, use that data to determine whether the people who gave to the secular charities also gave to religious charities. As it turns out, a significant majority of people who gave both time and money to secular charities also gave both time and money to religious charities. Thus, those people are identified as religious, and it can be said that people of faith are, in general, more charitable than the nonfaithful, at least in the US.
[/QUOTE]
Of course, the huge major problem with this analysis is that nowhere does it actually measure how many theists and atheists are in the playing field, which is crucial to drawing any result beyond “atheists made no more than 12 percent of donations”. Example:

Ten people. 9 theists, 1 atheist.

Two theists contribute $2 each to their church charity, and $0 to secular charity.
Five theists contribute $1 to their church charity, and $1 to a secular charity.
Two theist contribute nothing at church charity, and $2 to a secular charity.
The atheist contributes $2 to a secular charity.

Total contributions: $4 to church only, $10 to both ($5 church, $5 secular), and $6 to secular only.

Or to put it in the spectacularly biased way that pdf put it, 70% of donations are by theists!!! OMGzors!!! Theists are so much more awesomer!!1!!!

Of course in actuality, in my little example 90% of donations are by theists, and even so all the people are equally charitable. Gee, funny how things work out.

“If you torture the data long enough, it will tell you anything you want!” -original source unknown.

[QUOTE=Liberal]
I’m surprised, by the way, that that study does not compel you to change your mind, since it is exactly the sort of empirical evidence that you often ask for. Well, now you have it.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe because it’s skewed, uninformative, lie-about-the-conclusions propaganda crap?

[1010011010]

I think the problem with the whole topic is that the data is hopelessly poisoned.
We can’t go to an alternate universe and swap out a certain pivotal believer with a non-believer and see if the course of history runs differently.

If Stalin was suddenly a believer, I suspect he’d go right on with his purges and pogroms… the only change being that he’d have used something more in keeping with his new beliefs than Communism. If we swap the population of 1930s Germany to mostly atheist, all that changes is the popular propaganda used by the Nazis… the Final Solution proceeds on schedule aimed at the same types of people for different official reasons.

Or does it?

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
If you assert that you never said what you said, you’re either retracting, contradicting yourself, or delusional. I figured that assuming that it was a retraction was the charitable way to approach your comment.
[/QUOTE]

Since admitting you were mistaken seems to be out of the question?

And unless I’m totally misreading the thread, the post of yours I quoted from is indeed the one which my rephrasement of it you asserted you never said. So you must see something wrong with my phrasing. Fair enough; what part of what I said was not unavoidably implied by what you said?

Aren’t you the same guy who was complaining that my rephrasing of your posts was a complete distortion of your meaning? I think that was you alright.
Tell you what. You post my quote that you were rephrasing and right below it the rephrase I objected to and we’ll talk.

Ah, the only problem was that I didn’t provide the information? (Though it seemed pretty evident that you’d already heard of the events I’ve cited; but regardless.) Well, that’s corrected now at any rate, at least for the Inquisition. Since the thread in question is dead, long live the thread, I shall not bother citing the other well-known historical events for you.

What you didn’t provide was a consistent argument provided evenly to both sides.
You changed your standards depending on which side you were discussing. Even now you contradict your own argument from the other thread but you can’t {or won’t} see it.

All QG said was that my argument doesn’t apply to people because it can be summarized in mathematical symbols. Yes, that’s far fewer words, and yes, that’s very similar to your attempts to rewrite my position. And yes, when you rewrite it as being nothing, it certainly doesn’t apply to your statements, or anything else for that matter.

However the “far more words” argument you dismiss here is the argument I’m actually making. If’n you don’t like that, it’s not my problem.

It isn’t that I don’t like it. It just doesn’t apply for reasons already explained to you that you refuse to acknowledge. You seem to think that offering more speculation, formulas, misused terms from your logic classes and longer posts, makes the argument more sound and relevant. It doesn’t.

By my read of it, the lesser thing he refers to is the same person or group of people, in the speculative case that they didn’t have faith. Of course he doesn’t want to discuss speculative behaviors, but he refers to them nonetheless (and slights them, even).

Do I? I’ve tried to stick to the real world actions of a group we know exists , that being believers. Please cite where I’ve mentioned a speculative group or speculative behavior to defend my argument. I may have. Places where I used an example to point out your speculation don’t count.

No, you started this thread to discuss whether my arguments in that thread were any good. Which I have a right to contest, right?

Certainly

You don’t have to make the argument; your statement “faith = greater charity” makes the argument for you.

I understand that you keep insisting that. I remain unconvinced.

Basically all the assertions in the article about theist’s having been proven as more generous are crap. That doesn’t stop them from asserting them though. No bias there, oh no.

Very revealing. This coming from the guy who complained about a lack of data, and got pissed when he was accused of bias.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=begbert2]

And cosmosdan’s particular problem here is that he wants to be able to say that faith makes people into better people without simultaneously saying that persons without faith are lesser people. Basically he wants to have his cake, and eat it too. I don’t envy him that inner conflict.
[/QUOTE]

I have no inner conflict because I understand why this isn’t the argument.
I explained it to Shodan

It is false because it is possible for different things to move different people toward good or bad acts. People are individuals. While faith based beliefs may the thing that moves one group to acts of kindness it may be non religious philosophy that moves a non believer to similar acts. It is not necessary to believe faith is always positive for all people ergo a lack of faith is always bad.

The conflict seems to be between your insistence that this simple statement cannot be true and the fact that it is true.

“If you torture the data long enough, it will tell you anything you want!” -original source unknown.

You’ve certainly convinced me of this.

Maybe because it’s skewed, uninformative, lie-about-the-conclusions propaganda crap?

It must be…it doesn’t agree with you.
Anyone can see from the list of members that belong to Independent Sector how bias they must be compared to say…you.

This is almost funny. You complain when people don’t take your argument seriously then eagerly dismiss this data as propaganda crap. That’s all I need to know.

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
It is the proper one IMO if the discussion isn’t going to degenerate into a meaningless pile of unsubstantiated speculation. If you’re going to try and assess the value of faith by claiming certain negative actions of the faithful are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here} then to be reasonably fair we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs. Their faith instructs them to love thy neighbor or some similar tenet, so their acts of kindness are built upon their foundational belief, and go in the plus column.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=begbert]
Riiiight. I still maintain that it’s garbage to assert that if we’re sure that the inquisition was caused by faith, that any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Maintain away. I asserted no such thing.
[/QUOTE]
. . .

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Since admitting you were mistaken seems to be out of the question?

Aren’t you the same guy who was complaining that my rephrasing of your posts was a complete distortion of your meaning? I think that was you alright.
Tell you what. You post my quote that you were rephrasing and right below it the rephrase I objected to and we’ll talk.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I’m mistaken all the time. For example, I thought you were saying that I had replied to the wrong quote, since you couldn’t possibly be so gauche as to claim that you hadn’t said what you had just said. But look: I’m mistaken again.

And your rephrasing of my posts was a complete distortion of their meaning. (What little meaning you didn’t delete outright.) Of course, for this situation to resemble that one, my interpretation of your statement would have to not be synoymous with what you said. Let’s just see, shall we:

Your statement: "If you’re going to try and assess the value of faith by claiming certain negative actions of the faithful are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here} then to be reasonably fair we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs. "

My interpretation: You assert that “if we’re sure that the inquisition was caused by faith, then any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith.”

My assertion “that the inquisition was caused by faith” is one of those “certain negative actions of the faithful [that] are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here}” that I’m claiming, right?

If “we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs”, then clearly “any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith”, right? Donation is still considered a positive action, isn’t it?

So what part of your statement doesn’t mean mine? Is it that I didn’t list all my typical examples in my statement? Oooh, that does change the meaning, oh so much. :rolleyes:

Sorry, pal. No hypocracy this time. Keep swinging. (If you must.)

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
What you didn’t provide was a consistent argument provided evenly to both sides.
You changed your standards depending on which side you were discussing. Even now you contradict your own argument from the other thread but you can’t {or won’t} see it.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, no. I didn’t assert that if we’re sure that the inquisition was caused by faith, then any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith. Oh, my. I am such a hypocrite. How can I stand it. Oh no. Oh my.

Out of curiousity, where’s this contradiction? Is it a secret?

(No, you don’t have to drudge out something from the old thread and bring it here. We’re perilously close to restarting that whole waste of time again, and really it doesn’t matter anyway. However I do point out that your constant unsupported accusations of error are perilously close to ad hominem, since you persist in not bringing proof, or even half the time stating what you’re talking about.)

It isn’t that I don’t like it. It just doesn’t apply for reasons already explained to you that you refuse to acknowledge. You seem to think that offering more speculation, formulas, misused terms from your logic classes and longer posts, makes the argument more sound and relevant. It doesn’t.

Not if you don’t read them, then no, they don’t.

(Speculation? Where? No, really. Where?)
(It’s the same formula, incidentally. Not too complicated, either. Not too hard to recognize.)
(Misused terms, heh. Right. Suuuure. Sell that baseless ad hominem. Sell it, man! With feeling!)
(Oh, no, longer posts. Not that!)

Of course none of this makes the argument more sound and relevent. The one accusation that’s even true (the increased length) can’t possibly make the argument more sound and relevent, since it was already perfectly sound and relevent already.

Just not as well explained.

Hence the longer post. It lays everything out in complete detail.

Not that I expect you’ll ever read the longer post, but other people might. You never know.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Do I? I’ve tried to stick to the real world actions of a group we know exists , that being believers. Please cite where I’ve mentioned a speculative group or speculative behavior to defend my argument. I may have. Places where I used an example to point out your speculation don’t count.
[/QUOTE]
Oh really? Who, if not their speculated un-theistic selves, is faith supposedly making the faithful have greater generosity than?

If it’s the actual un-speculated atheists, then you really want to have your pie and eat it too. I don’t even have to use the argument by cases; you explicitly are getting all holier-than-thou and anti-atheist.

But maybe it isn’t either of those. Perhaps its…tennis players!

Or…the Monty Python boys! (One of them’s dead; he’s certainly not contributing…)

-Wait, I know: Dead people! Those rotten (literally) dead people, not contributing and all. (Ignoring bequests and whatnot. Ignoring facts is okay, right?)

Come on man, throw me a line here! Is it the shriners? No, wait, they are generous… Dentists?.. Helicopters maybe?..

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I have no inner conflict because I understand why this isn’t the argument.
I explained it to Shodan
The conflict seems to be between your insistence that this simple statement cannot be true and the fact that it is true.
[/QUOTE]
The equality deals with averages, as covered by the phrase “in general”. Outliers are accounted for in the terms used and disprove nothing.

By fricking definition, if you think that faith has on average a positive effect on people (with some, few, exceptions), then you believe that atheists are, on average, worse - a few exceptions notwithstanding.

And, of course, if you don’t think that faith has on average a positive effect on people, then you don’t really believe it has positive value, does it?

Basically, if you argue for the positive value of faith, the fact is that it has to be positive compared to something. Sorry; this is an unavoidable feature of the word “positive”. Deal with it. Or don’t add it to the merry list of things you can’t deal with right now. I don’t care; it’s your mind; your problem.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I understand that you keep insisting that. I remain unconvinced.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I’m done explaining it. The details are in that post that you think is too long. And you know what? If you’re not aware of the inherent holier-than-thou nature of your position, that’s fine with me. People have been in denial about even more obvious things than that and got along just fine.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Very revealing. This coming from the guy who complained about a lack of data, and got pissed when he was accused of bias.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and I’ll even call Hitler a nazi and yet still get annoyed if someone calls me one. Such a hypocrite be I.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
It must be…it doesn’t agree with you.
Anyone can see from the list of members that belong to Independent Sector how bias they must be compared to say…you.

This is almost funny. You complain when people don’t take your argument seriously then eagerly dismiss this data as propaganda crap. That’s all I need to know.
[/QUOTE]
Gee, it couldn’t be because I just stated the problem with its analysis, and then provided a simple example that matched the characteristics of the data in the pdf, while demonstrating an exactly contradictory conclusion to it’s claims, now could it? Naw, of course not. I couldn’t possibly be right. Why, I bet you knew that without even having to read what I wrote.

I mean, why should you read what I write? What possible influence could my arguments have on your determination of what my position is? After all, when it comes to me and what I say, you already know all that you need to know.

Posting to you is a waste of time. There’s no reason to write what won’t even be read.

[Liberal]

[QUOTE=1010011010]
I think the problem with the whole topic is that the data is hopelessly poisoned.
We can’t go to an alternate universe and swap out a certain pivotal believer with a non-believer and see if the course of history runs differently.
[/QUOTE]
That’s exactly right, and is the most astute observation in the thread so far. So what remains is to assess whether, on the whole, the impact of religion has been positive or negative. Certainly, in a political sense, it has been extremely negative. Many of my ancestors and their cousins were massacred and enslaved by Good-Christian-Men. On the other hand, art, literature, science, architecture, — all these, under the influence of the faithful, have produced breathtaking monuments to achievement. When men seek to control other men and plan their lives for them, everything turns to shit whether it’s done by atheists or men of faith.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
. . .

Your statement: "If you’re going to try and assess the value of faith by claiming certain negative actions of the faithful are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here} then to be reasonably fair we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs. "

My interpretation: You assert that “if we’re sure that the inquisition was caused by faith, then any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith.”
[/QUOTE]

Well, I asked for it and I got it.

I’ll admit my mistake. I read your rephrase incorrectly because of it’s exaggerated form.

It doesn’t accurately represent my position but I’ll agree it is a reasonable interpretation of the quote you cited.

Out of curiousity, where’s this contradiction? Is it a secret?

Since you asked. In the other thread you mentioned

. Are the persons of faith who founded organizations responsible for all the good done by organizations they founded?..

in order to allow you to minimize the good done, or not give credit. Yet here

I’d be interested in hearing how you think a person could be convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church if there was no Roman Catholic Church and no religious dogma to he heretical against.

it seems it is merely that an organization is associated with faith that determines that faith “obviously” deserves the negative.
I gave you several examples of what might be realistic underlying motives of the churches most infamous moments. Greed. Lust for power. Personal glorification. Fear. They were IMO at least as realistic as your own speculation about the underlying motives of religious charities, yet you dismissed them and , if I remember correctly, barely addressed them directly.

(No, you don’t have to drudge out something from the old thread and bring it here. We’re perilously close to restarting that whole waste of time again, and really it doesn’t matter anyway. However I do point out that your constant unsupported accusations of error are perilously close to ad hominem, since you persist in not bringing proof, or even half the time stating what you’re talking about.)

You’re right. I’ve stopped being specific because when I was you casually dismissed or ignored my argument.

Not if you don’t read them, then no, they don’t.

FTR, I’ve read your posts. Some sections more than once.

Oh really? Who, if not their speculated un-theistic selves, is faith supposedly making the faithful have greater generosity than?

If it’s the actual un-speculated atheists, then you really want to have your pie and eat it too. I don’t even have to use the argument by cases; you explicitly are getting all holier-than-thou and anti-atheist.

But maybe it isn’t either of those. Perhaps its…tennis players!

Or…the Monty Python boys! (One of them’s dead; he’s certainly not contributing…)

I’m confused. You claimed I was speculating. I asked you to cite where. Can you?

By fricking definition, if you think that faith has on average a positive effect on people (with some, few, exceptions), then you believe that atheists are, on average, worse - a few exceptions notwithstanding.

And, of course, if you don’t think that faith has on average a positive effect on people, then you don’t really believe it has positive value, does it?

I’m baffled as to why you can’t grasp a simple point. Faith and what moves us to do good or evil is subjective for the most part. If I prefer blue I don’t have to think someone is a lessor person because they prefer green. Your definition is incorrect..

Basically, if you argue for the positive value of faith, the fact is that it has to be positive compared to something. Sorry; this is an unavoidable feature of the word “positive”. Deal with it. Or don’t add it to the merry list of things you can’t deal with right now. I don’t care; it’s your mind; your problem.

Sure. What I was trying to compare was the positive actions of the faithful to the negative actions of the faithful to try and see if their real world actions were more positive than negative. Without adding…“and this means you also think X about nonbelievers”

Well, I’m done explaining it.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow

Yes, and I’ll even call Hitler a nazi and yet still get annoyed if someone calls me one. Such a hypocrite be I.

Hey, now there’s a relevant comparison

Gee, it couldn’t be because I just stated the problem with its analysis, and then provided a simple example that matched the characteristics of the data in the pdf, while demonstrating an exactly contradictory conclusion to it’s claims, now could it? Naw, of course not. I couldn’t possibly be right. Why, I bet you knew that without even having to read what I wrote.

I repeat, I read your post. If you had made your analysis without the gratuitous dumping on them it would have been more effective.

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Well, I asked for it and I got it.

I’ll admit my mistake. I read your rephrase incorrectly because of it’s exaggerated form.

It doesn’t accurately represent my position but I’ll agree it is a reasonable interpretation of the quote you cited.
[/QUOTE]
Wow. Kudos on you for admitting an error. It was seriously feeling like you had switched into “I have decided begbert2 is wrong, and therefore all he posts will be filtered through the ‘he is wrong’ filter, reality be hanged” mode.

I mean, it still mostly does seem that way, but this exchange in particular was looking more beyond the pale than usual. Glad to know it was just a misunderstanding gone out of control.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Since you asked. In the other thread you mentioned

in order to allow you to minimize the good done, or not give credit. Yet here

it seems it is merely that an organization is associated with faith that determines that faith “obviously” deserves the negative.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, no. You misinfer my reasoning. Firstly I was previously under the impression that the red cross and AA were originally started by one religion or another, but based on my recent reading it seems they weren’t. (AA is a secular organization which incorporates significant faith-based elements in its program; the Red Cross seems to be entirely secular.) Even if they had been founded by religions, though, the mere fact that an organization was initially started because of faith does not seem reason to impart very much credit to faith for its actions if it breaks off from faith and becomes secular. Some credit, sure, though it seemed likely at the time I wrote that earlier post that had not religion started the organizations, somebody else would have seen the need and taken care of it secularly anyway.

Of course, based on later reading, it seems that’s exactly what happened. Secular organizations filled the needs; religions had nothing to do with it. This simplifies things considerably; for example faith gets no credit at all for the Red Cross’s end of the donation/helping people process. (Whether faith gets credit for the actual acts of donation depends on whether you can establish that faith was what motivated the donation.)

On the other hand we have the acts of priests of the Catholic church acting in the name of the Catholic church on orders from the leadership of the Catholic church to carry out the will of the Catholic church in promoting the Catholic church. Now, to me anyway those acts seem to be tied a leeetle bit more closely to faith than the acts of an organization that -who’d’ve thought it- is entirely secular anyway.

I’d like to thank you for prompting my small foray into researching the origins of the Red Cross and AA; it seems I was giving religion more credit than it deserved. Ignorance fought.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I gave you several examples of what might be realistic underlying motives of the churches most infamous moments. Greed. Lust for power. Personal glorification. Fear. They were IMO at least as realistic as your own speculation about the underlying motives of religious charities, yet you dismissed them and , if I remember correctly, barely addressed them directly.
[/QUOTE]
You need both the car and gasoline to go anywhere. Evil churchmen brought their own gasoline, but without the church acting as a vehicle to allow them to carry out and justify their actions, they wouldn’t have got anywhere. As I’ve pointed out and you’ve ignored, under most circumstances it’s a lot harder to justify and get away with torturing people, murdering people, and starting wars than it is to justify giving to the poor, helping out the sick, and aiding the infirm. Faith is enormously helpful at leveling that playing field, though, and deserves credit for that achievement accordingly.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
You’re right. I’ve stopped being specific because when I was you casually dismissed or ignored my argument.
[/QUOTE]
That’s one way to protect your arguments: hide them!

Seriously. Present your complaints or don’t, but veiled hints as to my supposed misdeeds are ad hominem, nothing more.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
FTR, I’ve read your posts. Some sections more than once.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve had to repeat myself an awful lot, often with only occasional hints that you are comprehending anything I type at all. It’s enough to make a person think they’re not being heard.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’m confused. You claimed I was speculating. I asked you to cite where. Can you?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Sure. What I was trying to compare was the positive actions of the faithful to the negative actions of the faithful to try and see if their real world actions were more positive than negative.
[/QUOTE]
And then you extrapolate from this summation of values that faith makes them better than…what? Having positive value is better than something, right? What might that ‘something’ be?

Based on your argument of summing positive and negative faith-based actions, my rational mind limits the answer to “what they would have been had they not had faith”. There you have your speculation. “Them if they didn’t have faith” don’t actually exist.

Of course, if your answer is something different, then maybe you’re not referring to speculation. Of course, you persist in not admitting what your answer is to the question “What baseline does faith have positive value compared to?” Despite my asking more than once. I wonder why?

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
[/QUOTE]
If you want me to stop talking about it, you have to stop asking me about it. Deal? Okay. Until then:

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’m baffled as to why you can’t grasp a simple point. Faith and what moves us to do good or evil is subjective for the most part. If I prefer blue I don’t have to think someone is a lessor person because they prefer green. Your definition is incorrect..
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I grasp your argument just fine. I’ve been aware of the effect of variances in behavior and in faith’s effects on people since long before the start of this discussion. The thing is, I’m also aware of how those variances relate to the rest of the arguments, both yours and mine, and that once you pull the camera back far enough to talk about “the value of faith” as the sum total of all its effects, you’re far enough out that all the variances are incorporated into the statements already.

The first thing to note is that if everything is subjective “for the most part”, then faith doesn’t have positive value, because subjective assessments don’t have values at a global level. If green is good for me and blue for you, if donation is good for you and burning people is good for me, all subjective and all equal, then there is no assessable value to faith in general at all. Poof - nothing more to debate.

However if you persist in arguing your case, then faith and faith-based acts and decisions must have some kind of objective positive or negative value. Not subjective. And since you’re asserting that faith has a positive value, that means that by your argument that you think faith has more positive effects than bad, right?

Well, all the effects of faith that you’re assessing in your argument occur as changes in behavior of the people having the faith. If based on your assessment faith has positive value, then if that sequence of words has any meaning at all it means that more often than not, and/or more powerfully than not, having and acting on faith makes people act better than they would if they did not have it or act on it. That’s not subjectively better, that’s objectively better. Or you have no argument. (Or even any position, really.)

Now, of course it’s the case that people act differently because of faith; some people restrain lack of normal social awareness thanks to faith, and some other people get faith and go basically nutbar. If your conclusion is correct, though, the nutbars must be the exception to the rule, and the faithful that are bettered must be all the more improved to make up for it. That’s what your conclusion means, right?

So, if you’re arguing anything at all, then you’re arguing that in general, and on average, people with faith are indeed and in fact objectively better than…whatever it was you were comparing them against…what was that again?

Without adding…“and this means you also think X about nonbelievers”

The statement about non-believers can be deduced from the thesis of your argument, without additional help from you. It doesn’t matter how you arrive at the conclusion that faith has positive value; whether you get there by adding up good and bad deeds, or taking God’s word for it, or taking a popular vote or even just guessing; it doesn’t matter. Once you arrive at the conclusion that faith has positive value, that conclusion itself (and an unwillingness to take the “out” I’ve repeatedly mentioned) are all it takes, alone, to recognize the inherent anti-atheism bias of the pro-theism position.

Note that this doesn’t apply to just you; it applies to everyone who thinks that, more often than not, faith is a good influence. There is nothing personal in this.

In fact it goes the other way as well. Those of us who think that reason is more valuable than faith? We pretty much have to have an anti-faith bias as a result. (At least as compared to reason; it might still be superior to, say, a pathologically homicidal approach.) I personally freely admit that I have a higher opinion of folk who act on reason than of folk who act on faith; absent additional specific knowledge of the people involved, I trust the reason people more. It’s a natural consequence of my relative opinions of faith and reason. Unavoidable, even.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Hey, now there’s a relevant comparison
[/QUOTE]
Hey, I worked pretty hard on that comparison, to give you one of those pithy brief one-liners you like. It was tough thinking up a comparison that uniquivocably, unambiguously made my point (except naturally not to you).

The basic point is, I can call Hitler a Nazi, because he was a nazi, and yet not be hypocritical to protest if someone calls me a nazi, since I’m not a nazi.

Y’see, you have come upon this bizarre notion that I’m arguing from bias and presenting unsupported false opinions. Where you got this I don’t know, since we didn’t get me much further than asserting that the inquisition was a faith event and that murder is really bad before the discussion ground to a halt, but you have this preconception nonetheless. Which I suppose is your right; your delusions are your property.

However when I proved that the pdf did not support its claims and instead made skewed (and incidentally anti-atheist) assertions based on, well, nothing, and your only reaction was to slyly accuse me of being a hypocrite, well, we’re outside of your head now. The only way I could be a hypocrite woud be if I, like the pdf, were in fact actually arguing from nothing but sheer bias, distortion of facts, and lies.

In other words this is just another of your damned ad hominems accusing me of this bias you’re halluciating into the arguments of mine you don’t choose to acknowledge. It’s a very old and tired hack by now. You can stop any time.

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I repeat, I read your post. If you had made your analysis without the gratuitous dumping on them it would have been more effective.
[/QUOTE]
So, you’re saying that you did recognize that my argument was correct, and that it did adequetely explain and demonstrate the flaws that made its claims, well, completely unsupported and deliberately misrepresented is the kindest possible way to put it. In other words you knew all along that I was right.

But you thought I wasn’t sufficiently respectful of the liars who cheerfully twist eddata to serve their own bigoted ends. So, you decided to pretend that I didn’t make any argument at all, and that instead I was just flinging the same kind of monkey shit that the PDF does, by slyly (via implication of hypocracy) accusing me of ignoring properly analized data and arguing based on only bias.

Even though you knew, the whole time, that I wasn’t.

Go away, sir.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
It was seriously feeling like you had switched into “I have decided begbert2 is wrong, and therefore all he posts will be filtered through the ‘he is wrong’ filter, reality be hanged” mode.
[/QUOTE]

I know the feeling.

Ah, no. You misinfer my reasoning. Firstly I was previously under the impression that the red cross and AA were originally started by one religion or another, but based on my recent reading it seems they weren’t. (AA is a secular organization which incorporates significant faith-based elements in its program; the Red Cross seems to be entirely secular.) Even if they had been founded by religions, though, the mere fact that an organization was initially started because of faith does not seem reason to impart very much credit to faith for its actions if it breaks off from faith and becomes secular. Some credit, sure, though it seemed likely at the time I wrote that earlier post that had not religion started the organizations, somebody else would have seen the need and taken care of it secularly anyway.

Of course, based on later reading, it seems that’s exactly what happened. Secular organizations filled the needs; religions had nothing to do with it. This simplifies things considerably; for example faith gets no credit at all for the Red Cross’s end of the donation/helping people process. (Whether faith gets credit for the actual acts of donation depends on whether you can establish that faith was what motivated the donation.)

On the other hand we have the acts of priests of the Catholic church acting in the name of the Catholic church on orders from the leadership of the Catholic church to carry out the will of the Catholic church in promoting the Catholic church. Now, to me anyway those acts seem to be tied a leeetle bit more closely to faith than the acts of an organization that -who’d’ve thought it- is entirely secular anyway.

I’d like to thank you for prompting my small foray into researching the origins of the Red Cross and AA; it seems I was giving religion more credit than it deserved. Ignorance fought.

Just when I thought this conversation had been an incredible waste of time IO realized I did learn something about being specific and zeroing in on what the actual subject of the discussion is. I learned it by failing miserably in our exchange but hey, at least I learned something. So thanks for your role in that.

I’m not sure why you focused on the Red Cross and AA. My point was that with very little imagination and thought anyone should realize that there are tens of thousands of examples of charities, homeless shelters, hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, homes for unwed mothers, etc etc. that are established and funded by churches and staffed for the most part by religious volunteers. Over generation after generation this would involve literally millions of people having a very positive effect on millions of others. Deny it or wave it away if you will. All I was saying from the start was that when the more infamous examples of religions faults are trotted out this is completely ignored.
btw Since one of the twelve steps of AA focuses on a higher power and turning their lives over to God, it seems pretty obviously connected to religious faith. Even at that it is only one example among thousands.

You need both the car and gasoline to go anywhere. Evil churchmen brought their own gasoline, but without the church acting as a vehicle to allow them to carry out and justify their actions, they wouldn’t have got anywhere. As I’ve pointed out and you’ve ignored, under most circumstances it’s a lot harder to justify and get away with torturing people, murdering people, and starting wars than it is to justify giving to the poor, helping out the sick, and aiding the infirm. Faith is enormously helpful at leveling that playing field, though, and deserves credit for that achievement accordingly.

I think thats a valid analogy. If the church gets the blame for being the vehicle of this evil and we’re not talking about the possible motives of the individuals then I suppose that means faith gets credit for being the vehicle for tons of positive things they put in motion. The problem is when we go there you want to switch focus and* then* speculate about alternative motives and what might have happened without faith. It’s so inconsistent that the discussion becomes a useless mess. As I said, you can’t seem to apply your own arguments evenly to both sides.

Seriously. Present your complaints or don’t, but veiled hints as to my supposed misdeeds are ad hominem, nothing more.

I agree. Better to just abandon the discussion than continue it without being specific.

I’ve had to repeat myself an awful lot, often with only occasional hints that you are comprehending anything I type at all. It’s enough to make a person think they’re not being heard.

I know the feeling. I’ve repeated myself a bunch as well, pointing out how unevenly you apply your own arguments. I’m pretty sure you still don’t see it.

And then you extrapolate from this summation of values that faith makes them better than…what? Having positive value is better than something, right? What might that ‘something’ be?

Based on your argument of summing positive and negative faith-based actions, my rational mind limits the answer to “what they would have been had they not had faith”. There you have your speculation. “Them if they didn’t have faith” don’t actually exist.

So, you can’t actually find an example of my speculation, so you just insert it from your own imagination. This is what you’ve done all along and it remains incorrect.

Looking specifically at real world actions, no speculation involved, we assign a value to actions. If that value was in ounces then at the end we look to see which side weighs more. There is no need to extrapolate anything. There is nothing implied. Please notice that the speculation you mentioned is yours. It’s unnecessary and unproductive.

Of course, if your answer is something different, then maybe you’re not referring to speculation. Of course, you persist in not admitting what your answer is to the question “What baseline does faith have positive value compared to?” Despite my asking more than once. I wonder why?

I’ve answered several times. I wonder why you’re still wondering. I’m comparing real world faith based positive actions to real world faith based negative actions. Period! I’m not speculating what anybody might have done.* You are*, even though it only distorts the discussion rather than clarifies.

The first thing to note is that if everything is subjective “for the most part”, then faith doesn’t have positive value, because subjective assessments don’t have values at a global level. If green is good for me and blue for you, if donation is good for you and burning people is good for me, all subjective and all equal, then there is no assessable value to faith in general at all. Poof - nothing more to debate.

However if you persist in arguing your case, then faith and faith-based acts and decisions must have some kind of objective positive or negative value. Not subjective. And since you’re asserting that faith has a positive value, that means that by your argument that you think faith has more positive effects than bad, right?

Right. The real implications of real world actions.
You’re saying that If I believe blue moves specific people to do good things that people who prefer green must be less good, and do less good. This is wrong and has been all along. People in one group may be moved by blue to do good while people in a different group may be moved by green to do good. Noting that group A is moved by blue doesn’t imply anything negative or make any assumptions or implications about group B that is moved by green. All the times you’ve argued it has to, because of this formula and this or that rule of logic, were just wrong. So much for all those classes.

So, if you’re arguing anything at all, then you’re arguing that in general, and on average, people with faith are indeed and in fact objectively better than…whatever it was you were comparing them against…what was that again?

It was the thing in your imagination that I’m not actually talking about. I hope you get that now but I’m not optimistic.

The statement about non-believers can be deduced from the thesis of your argument, without additional help from you. It doesn’t matter how you arrive at the conclusion that faith has positive value; whether you get there by adding up good and bad deeds, or taking God’s word for it, or taking a popular vote or even just guessing; it doesn’t matter. Once you arrive at the conclusion that faith has positive value, that conclusion itself (and an unwillingness to take the “out” I’ve repeatedly mentioned) are all it takes, alone, to recognize the inherent anti-atheism bias of the pro-theism position.

Wrong! You inserted that I didn’t. Your deduction is wrong. Your logic is faulty. I’ve explained it several times. Sorry you can’t see it.

Note that this doesn’t apply to just you; it applies to everyone who thinks that, more often than not, faith is a good influence. There is nothing personal in this.

Noted. Nothing personal in my pointing out how incorrect this is either. It is not inescapable. It is not unavoidable. It is not undeniable.

However when I proved that the pdf did not support its claims and instead made skewed (and incidentally anti-atheist) assertions based on, well, nothing, and your only reaction was to slyly accuse me of being a hypocrite, well, we’re outside of your head now. The only way I could be a hypocrite woud be if I, like the pdf, were in fact actually arguing from nothing but sheer bias, distortion of facts, and lies.

So you offer one example and you call that **proof **? Now I’m wondering how you define the word.

So, you’re saying that you did recognize that my argument was correct, and that it did adequetely explain and demonstrate the flaws that made its claims, well, completely unsupported and deliberately misrepresented is the kindest possible way to put it. In other words you knew all along that I was right.

Um…no thats not what I’m saying. You example may be a valid one although I’d hardly call it proof. The findings in the pdf. might be skewed. That would take a serious examination. What I noted is how quickly you went to gratuitous insults and judgment about the charecter and intent of the group that did the study.

But you thought I wasn’t sufficiently respectful of the liars who cheerfully twist eddata to serve their own bigoted ends. So, you decided to pretend that I didn’t make any argument at all, and that instead I was just flinging the same kind of monkey shit that the PDF does, by slyly (via implication of hypocracy) accusing me of ignoring properly analized data and arguing based on only bias.

You, who have complained so often about attacks on you, quickly resorted to charecter attacks rather than simply arguing the data. Here you are doing it again. You don’t offer any evidence of their bias or that they intentionally twisted the data, or of their bigotry. You simply attack them unnecessarily rather than continue to analyze and argue the data. That’s hypocrisy in my book.

Even though you knew, the whole time, that I wasn’t.

To assume your one puny example constitutes proof is delusional.

Go away, sir.

To close to the truth eh?

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

See, this is exactly what you want to avoid; an endless chain of ‘you said bla bla and I dispute that thus’ and the retorts of ‘no, that’s not what I said, but you said bla bla bli’ - and on and on it goes. You get into one of those things and you’ll be there for months if you don’t look out.