So you think someone saying they don’t know is wrong? That it is somehow improper to say that the hole in the fence was not caused by a unicorn, but that I don’t know what caused it?
You must think Harris has the creationist mindset that disproving evolution proves that Genesis is true. Give him some credit. Saying that there is no evidence that the Christian view of the afterlife is correct does not automatically provide him with a correct theory.
Really, I wonder why a man of pseudotriton ruber ruber’s intellectual accomplishments has nothing better to do than wander around being badchad’s claque.
Funny, FWIW, I got my sister and niece, who are both intelligent people, well versed in debate, religion included, to read the last several pages of this thread. I made no comment either way except to say "What do you all think about this discourse in this thread? They don’t know I am a member of the board, and while aware of the SD through the columns, have only a passing familiarity with the boards, although they both are well familiar with message boards and the back and forth involved therein.
They both said “Well,that chad dude is a bit over bearing, but he totally blew that tom dude away, tom can’t seem to make any ground against that chad guy, chad is point by point refuting everything tom is saying, tom’s responses are weak”
Well, you all will say “so fucking what” I know, but it’s interesting how some non partial observers take this when they don’t know one person is a seemingly infallible respected mod/member and the other is a “troll”.
I don’t have a dog in this hunt but I agree with them. I have been on this board long enough to know that some members are untouchable argument-wise, even if you know in your heart they should be called on something.
I don’t really care, but some of you should ball up and admit it. Now give me shit.
I agree that Tom’s arguments toward the end of this thread seem weak and appear to be trying to shift the burden of proof (appear to, even if not).
But I don’t think the conflict is even about theology or religion, and hasn’t been for quite a while.
As AHunter3 says, maybe people not already aligned with badchad’s views on religion would be convinced by him if he simply changed his approach. That’s what it is all about and that’s why this is badchad vs Tom and not [any number of other atheists] vs Tom.
badchad certainly isn’t alone on the SDMB in his views, so it can’t really be his actual views that keep causing these drawn-out conflicts.
I have intellectual accomplishments? Why, thank you for your validation.
As to why I have nothing better to do, try reading some of my 2,000-odd non-**badchad-**related posts and you’ll see that I occasionally address other issues here. Simply, he’s bothered to reseach some stuff that I’ve delved into in the past but am too lazy to track again, or he’s dug up stuff I never knew, and he expresses my feelings on the subject of religion a little more articulately and patiently than I feel equipped to do.
I’m gladly spending some of the capital I’ve accrued over the years, if I’ve accrued any with certain posters, in showing my support for him, especially to people who accuse him of incoherence or illogic or unbridled ranting. If my support has caused even one poster to think, “Hmmm, this PRR dude who’s seemed like a reasonably intelligent guy seems to think that badchad’s got something going here–maybe I should think about his posts a little further,” then it’s fine with me to have lost the respect of other Dopers, who want to sneer at me, or label me incoherent or an abuser of punctuation or any of that stuff. That’s what capital is for, to spend. Tom, whom I’d admired for years, has squandered all of his capital with me, and that seems to be fine with him. He’s been exposed, to my mind, as a blatently biased religious hypocrite who clearly has a dog in the fight’s he’s supposedly moderating evenhandedly, and I’m glad to have him so exposed. Similarly, if I’ve gotten certain posters to leave off thinking well of me, if they ever had, and who mark me now as an incoherent, fanatical atheist who prizes rudeness and illogic, well, that’s just too bad for me. I stand by everything I’ve written in these threads, including my admiration for badchad. If I had some point to make in this ongoing debate that I felt was better expressed than he’s expressed it, I would put it out here, but I have not, so all I can give is my reiterated support.
Plus of course my services as a spectator of the playground fight that Tom and others insist they’re too mature to engage in (while they’re being pounded into mush, and flailing blindly at badchad.)
Just out of interest (really), can you cite an example of something you think badchad expressed particularly eloquently?
So, now you’ve taken up outright lying?
At no point have I claimed that I was “too mature” to engage in a discussion of religion. I have only pointed out that it has been my years-long practice to refrain from discussions of belief and that badchad’s tantrums that I will not change that practice just so that he can hurl his sophistry against me has provided me no reason to change that practice.
I do not consider discussions of belief to be immature and I have seen no evidence that badchad has “pounded me into mush.” Mostly I see him flailing away and missing the point of my comments while trying to use insult to make me participate in a discussion in which he already knows I do not choose to engage. (If it makes him feel superior that he cannot get me to change my posting habits, that only reflect on his maturity.)
**pseudotriton ruber ruber ** - I think you may have spent whatever meager capital you had back in thread where you got your ass handed to you on the subject of scansion.
Mangetout. you make a good point in that it has become “Tom the Noble vs Chad the Bad” where it wouldn’t matter what the subject was. Sad for chad.
I think if chad moderated his tone a bit (as he somewhat did in the last couple pages), he would be a force to be reckoned with. I could tell from some of the later posts that some people wanted to excoriate him, but couldn’t on the argument, so were reduced to basically saying "Well, well, uh…you suck!
Probably. I’ll look through his posts of the last few weeks to find an especially eloquent point of his, if you like, but my point in the sentence above was to indicate my relative lack of eloquence on the subject of religion, no doubt due to my jaw-dropping astonishment that people (who claim not to be lying through their teeth) actually believe in some of the primitive, superstitious, childish nonsense they profess, and have the balls to display openly on the Straight Dope, which is nominally dedicated to fighting ignorance. This outrage is a real disadvantage in formulating an argument, but badchad, unlike me, seems to shoulder this burden very well.
Well, karma’s a bitch. 
In all his rantings in GD and the Pit in either of his two appearances on the board, I have never attacked him. On a couple of occasions I pointed out errors of fact in his posts and was content to let him spar with anyone else who chose to engage him.
Similarly, I do not post anything that has given him the opportunity to challenge me, since I restrict my comments on religion to statements of fact.
He was the one who insisted on making a personal attack on me for doing my job.
Sad for chad, indeed.
Well, apparently, he has “made” you “engage” and participate in the discussion, without any flailing on his part lately and I can’t really see a “tantrum” on chad’s part either.
For that matter, Tom, the above quote seems more like a tantrum from you, calm and collected as yiu usually are.
Well, you’ve made your own claims for intellectual accomplishments, and I’m neither in a position to refute them nor of a mind to wish to, so the validation’s not hard.
But as to the rest - I think you’ve been not so much spending as squandering in this thread, and I speak as one who saw you (erroneously) Pitted a few months back and thought “WTF? What’s pseudotriton ever done wrong?”. I had you pegged for mild-mannered, thoughtful and generally much nicer natured than me, even if that’s not setting the bar particularly high. That was before you started stamping around and shouting and generally carrying on like the snot-nosed kid who follows the playground bully around the school sneering at everyone he’s picking on and inciting him to greater deeds of villainy and thuggery. What capital you’ve managed to leave yourself, time will tell.
And really, banging on about your
isn’t enhancing your stock any.
For me you hit the nadir as far as argument went when you averred that to claim even that God exists should be treated as an “extraordinary” claim requiring “extraordinary” evidence on pain of being laughed to scorn.
I’m willing to engage badchad as a poster; I simply decline to participate in his jihad against belief. I would agree that his tone has calmed down, recently, although I do not see where his recent sarcasm is much different than my recent sarcasm. With prr, it is simply wearisome to have him whine the same unsubstantiated complaints over and over.
Well, to me as an atheist, claiming that “God” exists IS an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. Not that I would laugh you to scorn.
er, the first sentence should be in quotes.
thanks, tom, that was quick!
The last sentence makes all the difference in the world to some of us.
Read post #407 sometime, Tom, wherein you compare badchad to:
‘a nine-year-old who blusters to his playgound buddies that he “challenged” an adult who “refused” to fight him’
That’s your metaphor, not his, with him taking the part of a schoolyard bully (to your mind) and you assuming the role of the mature adult who’s grown way past schoolyard fighting.
Or is my “outright lie” the semantic distinction between the words “mature” and “adult”? You need to devise some strategem here, Tom, to defend yourself against your own words again.
I am not sure what you mean by that, but what I mean is, while I am not a believer, I can still respect people who believe.