He had a pretty fucking cool name, though, didn’t he? “Blaise Pascal”! When I was in high school (you nice folks do believe me when I swear I attended high school, don’t you?), I had a friend, a kind of sub-normal IQ, happy-go-lucky punk, who went nuts when I mentioned “Blaise Pascal,” and from then on he would introduce himself as “Blaise” (I think he thought it was spelled “Blaze”) to strangers some times, usually strange girls, because he thought it was such a cool name.
So you think it unreasonable that I be pleased that a person, who takes pleasure in spreading ignorance, on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, has significantly curtailed doing so?
While I think it would be better if Polycarp wised up, shutting up is the next best thing if his arguments are so weak as to be unable to stand up to scrutiny.
I haven’t read the whole thread that SentientMeat’s challenge was cherrypicked from, but I wonder about its relevance. I couldn’t tell you much about cosmology either, other than that astronomers and physicists seem to understand complex stuff way out of my field that they agree resembles a reasonable model for the origins of the universe, and I’ll defer to scientists to fine tune their ideas over time.
What’s the difference between my reliance on scientists and a good Christian’s reliance on the Pope or his minister? Well, as an academic (there I go again) I know that I’ve been put through the same rigorous process to get hired and tenured and promoted (writing a dissertation which impressed people at my first job interview, writing academic papers and then a book and then another book, speaking at conferences by invitation from my peers, being admitted to peer-reviewed societies, etc.) that my colleagues in the sciences have been through. Scientists have real clout with me, even if I can’t understand much of what they’re saying and no spokesman for religion can dispute what scientists say to the satisfaction of other scientists. But scientists can make merciless fun of what religion claims to be true (unless the religious claims are made out to be metaphorical) and no religious spokesman can defend the silly claims that have been demolished.
This is what I find primarily to be despicable about religious claims, btw, that they cling to the literal truth of their superstition for as long and as hard as they have popular support (i.e., of ignorant folks) until scienctific advances demonstrate, even to fairly uneducated folks like me, that no way can this claim be remotely true, and then they get all metaphorical on my ass. Seems to me that non-literalist readers of the Bible shouldn’t have to take their cues from scientists as to what’s actually true in their own holy text and what’s merely metaphorical to have some cred, but that’s sadly not the case.
Another eloquent (if somewhat characteristically impolite) statement. Don’t you gotta love this guy?
I love the smell of disingenuousness in the morning.
Perhaps you should have been. You misunderstand the IPU argument, and one reason you appear to do so is that it is only relevant in one context. Pointing out that it is not a useful argument in other contexts is pointless.
I can understand why you would hesitate to attempt to answer. But leaving that aside, when do you plan on providing the rebuttal to which you refer?
You just don’t get it, I’m afraid. He is pointing out the lameness of the standpoint that one cannot be in a position to know all that the Christian God knows. badchad doesn’t think the standpoint is lame because one can know all that the Christian God knows, he thinks the whole idea of the Christian god is dumbass. In other words, you pointing out that the Christian position just gets “even sillier” when you try to fix it up to avoid the problem badchad points out, is just reinforcing his point.
How many prayers would have to fail before you stopped believing they worked at all?
I disagree, but leaving that aside for the moment, what’s the other part?
The point of the IPU is to provide an example to demonstrate the inconsistency of:
(a) believing in an unfalsifiable god based on faith and believing that you can know some characteristics of that god, while
(b) not believing in, and not believing you can know some characteristics of other unfalsifiable things.
So the example has to:
1/ be such that its presence is unfalsifiable (hence: invisible)
2/ have a random characteristic that cannot be proved or disproved (hence: pink)
3/ be something that religious people will have heard of but agree does not exist (hence: unicorn)
If you can think of an alternate example that has these characteristics but you will not find so sneering, feel free to propose it and I may use it in all these arguments henceforth.
I doubt you’ll be able to, though, because what you will find is that any example that meets the imperatives inherent in illustrating the argument in question, will be sufficiently confronting to you that you will find it sneering.
Some people can be detached enough to understand that the aphorism “one man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh” applies to their own religion. Most are not.
Most analogies and thought experiments in any intellectual debate are not going to be acted out. So what?
“I don’t discuss beliefs online”= “Tomndebb is a hypocritical pussy.”
As Tom likes to say, in his own pretentious manner, Q.E.D.
I thought you agreed with Godzillatemple Perhaps he didn’t ridicule those he disagreed with enough for you. If you really cared about fighting ignorance as you claim to you’d be willing to see the real point he is making and I am now agreeing with. To the extent that he was agreeing with your argument I am as well. I suppose that agreeing would ruin a good portion of your little game of aggrandizing yourself by dishonestly ridiculing others.
Still I think his point is significant which I’d be glad to discuss with you if I thought you could do so honestly. So far you’ve shown you can’t, as demonstrated by your incorrect representation of my view of Jesus here.
Of course you like to stick to your narrow well rehearsed arguments while pretending it’s significant biblical knowledge. You could have politely responded to SM explaining what you did to me here but that would leave you open to his actual point which seemed to be that even as an strong atheist himself he found your argument inappropriate at best and probably intellectually dishonest bullshit.
Interesting bit of gymnastics that is clearly a load of crap. I pointed out your hypocrisy and you did indeed attempt to answer the charges in several posts. Your question to me about divorce was after my initial accusation and your initial defense and probably a lame attempt at changing the direction of the argument to one you felt more confident about. I honestly told you I wasn’t interested in that tangent. I never made a statement about divorce I have to defend but just declined to start the another discussion despite your childish insults. I didn’t begin the discussion only to abandon it when the going got to tough as you did. I asked you to defend a statement you had volunteered. You made an unsuccessful attempt and then gave up. I’m giving you the chance to show everyone what a mush brain I am and prove me wrong. Since you’ve indicated you can do exactly that please go ahead.
How about we finish one discussion before we take off on another. Your time is limited and so is mine.
Another stellar example of your hypocrisy. That’s exactly what you did. I’m sure your lap dog fan in this thread thinks this is a brilliant tactic. I’m also sure almost everybody else sees it for the lame BS it is. Including you.
Then it should be a breeze for you to intimidate me and/or expose my phony beliefs. You have failed to do either. It’s just your ego writing checks your bullshit tactics can’t cash.
I wouldn’t expect you to read the entire thread with your head stuck up badchad’s ass the way it is. That would be asking to much. Just a cursory
reading would give you the relevance which I explained in my response to the not so bad one.
New input refines our beliefs. Doesn’t it work that way for you in non religious subjects?
What annoys me is that strong atheists who are prone to ridiculing beliefs for entertainment live in denial of the fact their tactics and techniques are just a mirror reflection of those they eagerly critisize.
You consider that eloquent? That? PLease don’t read any classic literature. I’m afraid your head might explode.
Whats funny in a sad pathetic way is that here you become exactly the caricature Lord Ashtar presented in his post.
badchad could drop a load in his shorts and, compared to your tactics here, that would be a brilliant tactic, Einstein. Why should any atheist be required to come up with a cosmological treatise? “The scientists have got that one pretty well covered. Buy a book, asshole” would be sufficient.
What, you didn’t think “mush brain” was the mot juste? Well, I can see where maybe YOU wouldn’t. But to everyone else, it’s just perfect. Trust me on this.
As Samuel L. Jackson once said, “English, motherfucker! Do you speak it?”
Really. One would think someone with your claimed credentials would understand the basic building blocks of the sentence, and the definitions of the words within.
Zatafact? Want to tell me what I said that was disingenuous, or are you just going to say “Res ipsa loquitor” and hope the audience will buy it?
Perhaps I should tell you how to conduct your argument, too.
No, I understand it well enough. We’ll come back to all of this in a moment.
The rebuttal? It goes like this: “No, I don’t believe everything that isn’t falsifiable”. A discussion of what I do and don’t believe mostly comes under the heading of “none of your business.”
No, I do get that badchad thinks that the whole idea of the Christian God is dumbass. That, however, doesn’t make believers inconsistent if they argue that they cannot know all that God knows - which he seemed to be trying to argue as a hole in Christian theology.
How many times am I to forgive you if you offend me and say sorry?
You disagree? Then you can explain why we choose childish, silly objects of comparison. Invisible Pink Unicorns. Magic Sky Pixies. Imaginary friends. There may be an epistemological point being made somewhere along the line, but it’s slathered with a big side order of Appeal To Ridicule. The other part? Coming right up.
I understand all that. But the problem with that is I can (and do) say “While accepting that the IPU is non-falsifiable, I decline to believe in it on the grounds that I am quietly confident that you made it up; and you and I both know it.” And unfortunately even if you substitute something that isn’t as deliberately absurd as an invisible pink unicorn, we still have the same stumbling block. It’s very kind of you, however, to assume baldly that the reason I find the IPU argument “sneering” is not because I consider it an ATR but because it “confronts” me. :rolleyes:
Some people can be well-mannered enough not to belly laugh at other people’s religions. Most are, fortunately. I rather pity the minority.
The thought experiment itself is flawed, because all the argification about provability and testability fall by default, and they were supposed to be key to the analogy.
He could drop a load, but that would require you to move your face. Obviously from your question you still missed the point which wasn’t about cosmology at all. I’m not surprised.
Now you’re speaking for everyone else? You might want to review the posts here to check on how many agree with you on any subject. Considering the quality of your posts I can’t see much reason to trust you on anything. Keep honing those insult skills. In time you’ll break into the jr high level.
Oh how I laughed. 
Wow! Talk about your devastating junior high school rankouts! I’ve gotten called incoherent (I think) again for equating Tom’s failure to engage in discussion as an act that only a pussy would do, and for equating sneaking a few of his beliefs into the discussion as an act of hypocrisy.
And gotten called a “motherfucker” in the process. Whoa-oh-oh! This is heady, sophisticated stuff. No wonder Cosmodan finds it so amusing. Here’s another that will have you in stitches: Poopie. Tinkle. Doo-doo.
That’s okay, I wouldn’t expect you to provide a link to the entire thread the discussion took place in.
Oh, yeah: motherfucker! Cockie-doodie!
The title of the thread is right there in my link. It takes a very minor effort on your part to find it. Once again judgeing by the quality of your posts I can see why that wouldn’t appeal to you.
Even without context the meaning is pretty plain to see, although it does require a bit more reading comprehension than you’ve demonstrated. Your lack of comprehension was also the point of E-Sabbath’s post rather than the profanity. Your response shows it was spot on.
Ahem.
As prr has already said in this thread.
Bolding mine.
I think I get why you and badchad would consider him a pussy for not engaging you in your two-man anti-theist campaign, but I fail to see how this makes him a hypocrite.
Oh dear, PRR. I said I was taking a break from the thread – not abdicating altogether. Poor baby.
It seems like only four years ago you were seeking information on where you could get a doctorate in non-fiction writing. You still don’t know that personal pronouns require the possessive form before a gerund, or that it is inappropriate to use the word plus as a substitute for the word and in English, or what the duties of a department head actually are. You confuse beautiful prose written in dialect with poorly written prose with grammatical errors and pronounce both of them eloquent.
I have heard of “peer reviewed” studies, articles, papers, projects, and experiments. What is a “peer reviewed” society? A club that others in the field approve of?
You separate scientists from religious people such as Christians as if they are two distinct groups. Where did you get such a notion?
You probably speak well, but you write as if you don’t understand the difference in a phrase, a clause and a sentence. You can’t even recognize when something is good and when it is not.
Try reading some good contemporary or 20th Century writers. Read someone who wrote short, clear and disciplined sentences. (Clue: Not Emerson.)
As long as you continue to lie about your credentials and to bully me and others with your nasty attacks, I will continue to point out why I believe that you know little about even the basics of language arts.
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson