Tomndebb you are a hypocritical pussy.

The BBQ Pit
701

Ack! I’m crushed by the force of your logic and rhetoric. Excuse me while I pick up my battered and bruised self and endeavour to carry on.

Bite me. Or, more formally, I do not understand why you should think that non-falsifiability should be sufficient grounds for believing in something; and I do not think that you have made out an adequate case that it is.

Do you believe a hot investment opportunity from a known financial expert? Do you believe an offer to smuggle $AU150,000,000 out of Nigeria? But they’re both moneymaking opportunities! Isn’t it inconsistent to believe one and not the other? Then it’s not inconsistent to be selective over unfalsifiable propositions either.

I’m sorry if arguing with me is proving to be something less than the quick knock-down you were hoping for owing to the self-evident superiority of your intellectual position, but try and deal with it, okay? Here’s what got me on this track in the first place:

In response to which I naturally enquired if it made more sense to assume that if God does exist, we would fully understand His will - because wittering on about “blaming their puny brains, that can not understand god’s will” does rather seem to propose that it’s more reasonable to suppose we could. I’ve no idea what you thought I was arguing upthread - perhaps you’d care to enlighten the audience?

Sorry, I must’ve been going too fast for you. This was in answer to how many unanswered prayers it would take for me to lose my faith. I’m to forgive my brother and my equal seventy times seven, if he asks for it; how much the readier should I be to “forgive” God for not answering a prayer of mine, supposing that I were such that He needed to be forgiven by me!

Oh, so I’m “whining” about contentiousness and deliberate ridicule? Is this like you “whining” about how arguing with me is like trying to nail jelly to a wall? Funny how once you label something as “whining” you don’t have to deal with it, isn’t it? Dude, if that’s the best you can do you might as well leave the field to badchad and pseudotriton.

I’ve explained to you the philosophical inadequacy of the IPU argument as I see it. I don’t have to come up with a non-offensive version of the IPU in order to call the IPUers for their deliberate rudeness. They’re separate issues. But if you’re going to call me disingenuous, what do you say about people who appeal to ridicule and yet deny that they’re doing so?

(I liked badchad’s response: “Christianity is ridiculous”. I’ll make a note in the rulebook: “Appeal To Ridicule is not a fallacy if the person doing the ridiculing thinks that the object of ridicule is indeed ridiculous”. That’ll fly.)

At which point the prof trying to teach you Logic 101 red-pencils your homework and throws the board rubber at you. Let me explain it more patiently: it is entirely appropriate for me to reject a non-falsifiable thing if I do know that someone made it up. Demonstrating that this statement and your last quoted sentence are not logically equivalent is left as an exercise for the student.

It’s highly telling that every time you’re having trouble keeping up with the argument you act as though it were my fault and toss around terms like “handwaving” and “gibberish”. It’s highly telling that you think you can not only provide your side of the argument but judge who’s winning. I’ll repeat what I was trying to say slowly and clearly and see if the penny drops:

If the IPU argument is supposed to be making some point about provability and testability, it fails because the object being introduced as a comparator - the Invisible Pink Unicorn - is already known by both participants not to exist. It is foolish to ask “Why do you believe in one thing but not the other?” when “the other” is acknowledged to be imaginary.

702

There was no logic or rhetoric on this point in my last post. I pointed out your disingenuousness previously. There was no need to go on doing so, no matter how flatly you denied reality

WTF are you talking about? I have never proposed that. Do you accidentally or deliberately misunderstand what others are saying to you? Going by the fact that you misunderstand in direct proportion to the difficulty you are having in dealing with an argument, I’m going for the latter.

You were arguing precisely this. Right up till the post where you realised that your argument was crap resulting from you misunderstanding what badchad was meaning, at which point you went off on some other tangent. When I called you on that, you come right back full circle. Should I now post what I said in post #624 again, so you can go off your your same tangent, so I can point out you’re going off on a tangent, so you can post the same crap you just posted again?

So what’s your answer to the question? I’ll give you a hint: asking me a question (which is what you’ve done twice now) is a different thing to answering my question.

Oh but you do. You see, you say that the IPUers are being deliberately rude, but if you can’t come up with an example to illustrate the IPU argument that is not offensive to you, then it would appear that you are just (of necessity) offended by the whole argument, and that your opponents have no option but to be perceived by you as rude if they want to use the argument ie they are not being deliberately rude at all. So can you or can you not come up with a counter example? Yes or no? If yes, what is it?

And if you do not know they made it up, and it’s non-falsifiable? Then what?

[By the way, that is not a statement, it is a question, and it is not a logical equivalent to your statement, and I never said it was. Just in case some terminally thick person were to misread it otherwise.]

So you are unable to think about the theoretical possibility raised by the IPU because you just can’t see past the fact that in the particular example given, you happen to know it’s just an example. That’s just a limit on your imagination, not the argument itself.

703

No, you didn’t point out my disingenuousness, you said without explanation that I was disingenuous. It’s the difference between calling you a big fat liar and pointing out your big fat lie.

Fascinating. First of all you call me inconsistent for believing some non-falsifiable positions but not others, and then you claim you weren’t suggesting I ought to take non-falsifiability as a basis for belief. As to determining that I’m having difficulty in dealing with an argument, you must have been taking telepathy lessons from badchad.

Sorry, I’ve dug out post #624 and found it something less than the model of enlightenment you presumably thought I’d find it, so perhaps you can explain to me what tangent it is that I’ve gone off on. (I’ve also seen badchad’s explanation of his point, which amounts to “When Christians argue that they can’t know everything God knows, they’re just making excuses”.)

Heh. Some time I must explain to you the concept of a “rhetorical question”. When I’m done with that, I’ll move on to punctuation. Do you notice that my last quoted sentence above doesn’t end with a wiggly thing like this one does? That means that it wasn’t a question, even a rhetorical one.

No, I’m not offended by the whole argument, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve calmly and rationally come up with objections to it other than that it’s rude. I’m sorry if you can’t come up with an argument that doesn’t make my beliefs appear not only mistaken but childish and silly, but it’s not my responsibility to teach you good manners, and that doesn’t void my right to object to bad ones.

Should any terminally thick persons happen along, I’ll be sure to tell them; although, being terminally thick, they probably won’t understand me. You may have noticed a few words I’ve typed earlier in this thread on the topic of believing Christ’s resurrection while disbelieving YEC. They may give you an idea on how I choose between unfalsifiables.

So you are unable to believe in God because you just can’t see past the fact that you happen to know His existence can’t be proved. That’s just a limit on your imagination, not the concept itself.

But if you’d like to come up with a variant of the IPU argument that doesn’t entail believing in something we both know you just made up, we might get somewhere.

704

I love you, too, Marty.

Thanks for validating my frustration with the challengers of credentials. The only way to make that stick would be some internal evidence from my own posts–if I’d described myself in one post as a high school instructor for thirty years, and as a College dean for thirty years in another, and as being only forty years old in yet another thread, that would be evidence that I was lying about something. But to lamp on a supposed error in punctuation, much less a reluctance to engage in a hijack about Emerson with some hostile old bitch with fewer brains than teeth and fewer teeth than tits, as proof positive that I couldn’t possibly be a former copyeditor, or current English professor, says far more profoundly damaging things about the accuser than the accused. I appreciate the knowledge that at least someone here sympathizes with my frustration.

I’ll try to refocus on Polycarp’s question later today.

705

Personally I don’t believe any non-falsifiable positions on the basis of faith. I certainly was not suggesting that you should believe all of them.

A rhetorical question is not an answer. It’s a question. So is your answer is “more than 490”? Or have you still not answered the question? It seems that you prefer to bandy about with repartee, your position being so pissweak you can’t speak plainly.

But you can’t come up with an example to illustrate the argument that isn’t offensive to you can you? I’ve asked you several times and you just keep ducking the challenge. Put up or shut up.

No I didn’t notice. Give me the short version. If it isn’t, since the whole IPU argument is about faith based belief in non-falsifiables, what you are about to say will likely be irrelevant. But surprise me.

I have no difficulty at all in accepting, for the sake of the argument, an example positing a god, if that’s what the person I am debating asks me to do. It doesn’t mean I am actually being asked to believe in the god. It’s just a means of illustrating a point. But there’s always someone who just can’t think in the hypothetical.

You really don’t understand the argument at all, do you? No one who did would say something so idiotic.

706

Just for the record, my personal stance is that you can believe what you choose, including a stance of “no beliefs” (not technically an accurate way to describe standard Materialism, because it contains the a priori, though reasonable, assumption that nothing exists but what can be detected by the senses amplified by specialized instruments, but a good shorthand for it). The one condition I personally impose when involved in a debate is that you must have some reasonable grounds for your beliefs that is not completely circular in nature.

I do not like people taking the stance that they are the Sole Purveyor of Truth, and that anyone who disagrees with them is ipso facto addled and delusional. And I hold this view whether it’s a fundamentalist or an Evangelical Atheist who is the SPoT.

To answer PRR’s comments earlier, yes, I can get snarky in threads that upset and anger me. It’s a character flaw I’m working on. I’ve never done the supercilious “Oh, I’ll pray for you” at an atheist (or anyone else, in that tone), but I believe I once did indicate publicly, on this board, my intent to pray for an atheist. It was a personal friend and GD sparring partner who was undergoing some personal problems, and my response was intended and taken as, “I know you don’t think prayer does any good, but I disagree at least in some occasions, and it’s what I’ve got to give by way of help, so I will.” And the gesture was appreciated as a sign of good will and friendship. That in my mind is the non-tacky way to use it, if you do it at all.

I do have to say that getting a more emotionally-uninvolved view of badchad’s stance from this thread, I still don’t like his methods, but I’m now much clearer on what motivated his stance.

And yes, I am not blameless in some of the stances I’ve taken and the comments I’ve made. That does not, however, justify stalking and trolling – nothing does. And that is the point I’ll end my involvement with this discussion, unless something absolutely calls for an answer from me.

707

Is it even possible for anyone to come up with a list of all the non-falsifiable positions which they hold, much less enumerate the basis for those beliefs? Absent that, how would you actually go about proving your quoted claim? Induction?
I think NOT. :dubious:

708

No, you were just calling me inconsistent for believing some but not others. Not the same thing at all.

A rhetorical question is not an answer? :dubious:

Yeah, I have answered the question. I don’t keep score on prayers answered vs. not answered vs. answered in ways I either haven’t seen yet or don’t understand.

No.

Okay. I notice that you’re happy to send me trawling through several pages of this trainwreck for a post that you consider particularly relevant, but you can’t be arsed to make the same effort yourself. That seems fair.

Briefly then, neither YEC nor the Resurrection would be inconsistent with what we view as God’s ability, but while the Resurrection fits rationally into a doctrine of incarnation and salvation, for God to create a universe 6000 years ago but make it look to later generations as though it were thousands of millions of years old would look rather like dicking around on his part.

So what am I being asked to do hypothetically? Accept the possible existence of an Invisible Pink Unicorn that you did not just imagine for the sake of the argument?

Uh-huh. What’s not to understand? “There is no more proof of the existence of God than there is of an invisible pink unicorn in my garage. Therefore it’s obviously silly to believe in God but dismiss the IPU as fantasy.” Have I missed something?

709

I already answered this, but maybe you missed it the first time:

Six billion divergent viewpoints and counting…no wonder why genocide looked so appealing for some who didn’t /couldn’t respect the viewpoints of others.

710

I love self-referential examples.

If one has a Ph.D. in writing and were elected by some seventy of his peers to be head of a university English department, it would be expected that he would have mastery over the mechanics of punctuation and grammar taught in elementary and high school. Yet in the sentence above, you use a dash where a period belongs. You have strung together two sentences. At the very least, a semicolon would be used.

– HARBRACE COLLEGE HANDBOOK, p.171.

I’ve fully admittted that my thinking is often unclear. I’ve explained that in many threads. When I could no longer concentrate, I took early retirement. And I make mistakes all the time when I’m posting. But as mushy as my brain is, I don’t have to bullshit about Emerson and run away when nailed on it. And I do know the basics of the structure of our language. You don’t.

You have no credibility.

badchad, is this the best you can do as your most out-spoken defender? He’s not very persuasive and works at cross-purposes. That’s something to consider for another time at least.

711

What if the erroneous belief were benign? Let’s say that my sister believes that a little muse sits on her shoulder and directs her thinking and actions. My sister is very kind and compassionate without being preachy or intrusive.

You and I figure that she’s wrong but harmless. Should we try to change her beliefs? Other than for her peculiar beliefs, her life is “normal.” She’s productive and isn’t a burden on society.

If your answer is yes, tell me why. What makes her beliefs our business as long as they are not harmful?

712

Oh, good grief. This reads as a haughty correction by a dried up old school marm. This is a message board. What is submitted here are points of view, not homework awaiting your pretentious review. I would venture a guess that most members do not have the time for careful analysis and essay, and those members prefer to express themselves concisely and quickly and without the aspiration of garnering a gold star from Zoe.

The point of this discussion is the defense or offense of badchad’s style of debate, and here is another vote in his favor. The man has a qualified history on both sides of the coin, and intimidating knowledge of a cryptic book. badchad’s complaint of evasion is valid. Futile, but valid.

badchad, I would prefer it if you would let those who wish to enter the fray and withdraw from the fray do so unmolested. But please continue to participate, as I have learned quite a bit from your contributions, and appreciate your meticulous consideration of each point you address. I find your posts to be thorough and precise.

Debate is often messy, and religious debate can get downright ugly. I doubt either extremist can tie up their respective point of view with a pretty bow, and I for one certainly don’t enter controversial threads expecting tact. Our moderators have the unenviable task of policing these discussions, and thus far have shown tolerance of both kinds of radical. Be glad that we have an environment that allows for a wide range of opinions and styles, and that we have a forum to debate religion that will not disintegrate to political unrest, torture, or terrorism. The day that either badchad or Bibleman declares a holy war is the day that this debate should be squelched and the instigators banned.

Until then, carry on men. There are issues and questions still unresolved.

713

I would suggest that one not be inconsistent and that one therefore believe none, not all.

It’s not impossible. But your rhetorical question was not an answer to my question.

My question, just in case you’ve forgotten (deliberately or otherwise) is “How many prayers would have to fail before you stopped believing they worked at all.” Saying you don’t keep score is not an answer. So you still haven’t answered the question. What’s your answer? I would accept a number, or a percentage, or perhaps an acknowledgement that you are unable to say.

Or more probably you’ll just say you refuse to answer. After all, that’s what you’ve done when I’ve asked other hard questions.

It’s not possible to think of an example to illustrate the IPU argument without offending you. Therefore, there is no basis for your suggestion that persons who use examples such as the IPU are trying to offend or be contentious or to ridicule, it is just inherent in the argument that sensitive religious people are going to be offended. You’ve pretty much waived your ability to argue to the contrary.

So what you are saying is that you reject belief in a faith based non-falsifiable happening because it is not consistent with other faith based non-falsifiable beliefs you have. Is that a fair summary?

Almost. You are being asked to consider why you don’t reject the existence of some faith based non-falsifiable phenomena when you do reject the existence of other non falsifiable phenomena. As an example you are being asked to consider an IPU, a critter that you would I’m sure reject the existence of, even if (for the sake of the hypothetical) you imagine that you don’t know that I just made it up.

In my post #624 I described the characteristics that an example had to have to illustrate an IPU argument, one of which was:

In your post #631 you said in response to this:

And yet in your post #703 you say:

Which doesn’t make sense, since the very essence of the example is to be an illustration of something you don’t believe in, and to ask why you don’t believe in it, but do believe in other faith based non-falsifiable phenomena.

[And again, just in case one of those terminally thick people is reading this, I am not suggesting that you should believe in *all * faith based non-falsifiable phenomena, I’m suggesting you should believe in none]

714

<snip>

Very good! You are in touch with reality.

Now. Point out a message board.

<snip>

Battin’ a thousand! Go ahead and get it out of your system. I could walk on that bottom lip.

“Most members” haven’t a thing to worry about. Only pseudo professors. And “most members” haven’t resorted to pooping in posts to annoy other posters.

So much for conciseness and quickness.

Voice in a box: beaucoo is intimidated! beaucoo is intimdated!

It doesn’t take extra time for a professor of English with a Ph.D. in “writing” to write with clarity. Nor does it require “careful analysis and essay” to put a period instead of a dash.

Badchad said that this discussion is about Tom. You say it’s about badchad’s style of debate and I say it’s ultimately about integrity. How peculiar.

Voice in a box: hello, Darkness, my old friend…

715

I wasn’t asking what you suggested one believed, but trying to establish whether you were or were not calling me inconsistent for believing some non-falsifiables but not all. You don’t have to believe all non-falsifiable propositions; but the opposite of “believing all” is “not (believing all)”, not “(not-believing) all”. Logic 101 again, my friend.

I think it gave you the information you were after. It also, as a bonus, gave you the excuse to be pissy, so you should be rejoicing.

And my answer is: mu. Prayer is the Christian’s air; it’s not an Acme catalogue complete with pre-paid order form. I’m at liberty to ask God for anything or bring him anything that’s on my mind. I don’t expect to get everything I ask. I view badchad’s continued intransigence with the same equanimity as I viewed my mother’s death from cancer, or, for that matter, considerably more.

It is to laugh.

Rubbish. I said that it was not my responsibility to think of a less offensive version of the IPU argument, not that I was unable to do so. It’s not inherent in the argument: “<Entity> is no more or less disprovable than God”. It’s inherent in the point-and-laugh implication of Invisible Pink Unicorn, Magic Sky Pixie, Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so on. The argument would be logically equivalent and less insulting if you said “invisible African elephant”, “invisible Emperor penguin”, “invisible grizzly bear”, but it’s telling that you haven’t even considered comparing belief in God with belief in something that isn’t childish and silly.

In a sense, yes. As long as I’m letting in faith-based beliefs, I think I’ve the right to weigh them according to consistency and reasonableness.

But it seems that I have two reasons for rejecting it - knowing that you just made it up (which you are asking me to ignore) and the deliberate absurdity of the construct - before we get anywhere near a like-with-like comparison with belief in God.

Your quotes do not indicate why my argument does not make sense. The essense of the example is to be an illustration of something I don’t believe in, and to ask why I don’t believe in it. Very well, I have given you an unshakably sound reason for not believing in the Invisible Pink Unicorn. I’m sorry that you can’t generalise from that to automatic disbelief in all unprovable propositions, but the fault is in the IPU argument, not me. I admit I may have set you a hard task in requiring you to present me with an entity that we do not both know is made up, but I don’t see why I’m required to show that such is possible.

I know that; but it’s a very elementary logic error to argue that, since you cannot believe in all faith-based phenomena, you must therefore believe in none.

716

Oh, my dear sweet non-existent Lord! What a useless, addle-brained, supercilious, officious dried-up old cunt you are, if I’m not being too insulting to other dried-up old cunts by including you in their number.

I used a fucking dash where you would prefer a period? Shoot me now. I allowed authors to use dashes to separate sentences when I edited copy, and I let students do it now, as long as their meaning is clear. There are issues far worthier of my attention than perfectly clear overuse of dashes,-- and I might have edited that one out (or the one in this sentence) if I were reading proof for publication, which I’m not, nor is anyone else on the SD. But even your inanely cherrypicked authority (I’d ask you to look at the 13th edition of Chicago, sections 5.84-5.88, for some examples of acceptable use of the dash, to learn more, as if you’re capable of learning) allows such a dash:

“A dash is used … to set off an introductory series.”

Now WTF do you suppose “if I’d described myself in one post as a high school instructor for thirty years, and as a College dean for thirty years in another, and as being only forty years old in yet another thread” IS if not an introductory series, you impossibly stupid old woman?

“When I could no longer concentrate” you chose to remove yourself from the workforce? Well, I’ve got some news for you. feeling disqualified to push some pieces of paper around a desk should also imply that you’re no longer qualified to post on a messageboard, or choose your own under-clothing, for that matter. Hire a nurse to sop up your drool, and stay the fuck out of intelligent and semi-intelligent people’s faces already.

Would someone other than me please inform this ninny that her attempts to prove that, grammatically, I couldn’t possibly be a graduate of a good auto mechanics school are not welcome in this thread? Even if you hate everything Ive been saying here, do you really want to read her repeated verbose challenges to my sense of good punctuation (and my lengthy harangues back to her), or her challenges to discuss a nineteenth century philosopher who is utterly irrelevent to this thread? Is this anyone’s idea of useful discourse? Please–give her the merciful hook already.

717

Zoe – what pseud said – you ain’t doing yourself any favors here.

Now – disprove my claim that I’m an editor.

718

**BadChad ** is going to be jealous if you make this about you instead of him and Tom. Do you have any idea how you come across in this thread? I will give you a hint, like squirrel food.
I think it was very poor form when **badchad ** was declaring himself the winner before and your remarks to **Pseudo ** are just a sad.
Oh, I missed it yesterday, but, yes I have read this entire silly nasty thread, I have been reading and occasionally participating in it since the first day.
So answer me this, Zoe the Arbiter over who is a Professor by only reading a few posts from a angry poster.
Are you calling for the banning of either Pseudo or BadChad?

Jim

719

Sorry, you’ve lost the thread. This part of the conversation started with you saying: “Or, more formally, I do not understand why you should think that non-falsifiability should be sufficient grounds for believing in something”

Something I don’t think, and never suggested I did.

So if you got nothing ever you would just go on thinking that prayer worked?

Got you to answer though, didn’t I?

None of your examples have particular and unlikely characteristics for which there is no evidence, nor are they entities that you and I agree don’t exist. They are merely everyday entities we cannot detect. Not as effective as IPU’s as an example of what the argument is about.

So why do you reject so many potential beliefs that are non-falsifiable? The number of non-falsifiable potential beliefs that are not inconsistent with your beliefs is infinite.

Yes, well whether the Christian God is absurd is in the eye of the beholder, trust me. Do you think the gods of other religions besides your own are absurd? If not, why don’t you believe in them? If so, how are they different to your own?

My objection was to your statement that the argument entailed asking you to believe in something when the argument asked nothing of the sort.

720

Oh. :frowning:

:: wanders off ::