Two recent threads have come together to completely tick me off. In one, badchad persists in misrepresenting my position in a sort of reverse fundamentalism – if you don’t believe the Bible is literally true in every detail, then how can you justify having any kind of belief that is based on it? In the other, the old argument about whether Libertarian actually saw a TV show that he claimed to have seen has been brought out and dusted off for another round.
I can and do accept the fact that it may not make sense to people to say that customs of writing style differ over the years, and that therefore a statement intended as supportive of one point of view may be considered as untruthful when observed under a criterion of literality. I can and do accept the fact that memories can be fallible and confabulation can occur.
But, damn it, for anyone to insist that because they disagree with a given viewpoint expressed by someone, that person must not be competent to know what is in his own mind and that you know better than he does what he thinks, is going just a little bit beyond the pale!
You know who you are. You’re unmitigated assholes. Not for disagreeing with us. But for superciliously claiming that you know what we think better than we do.
Polycarp-I agree with you; Badchad is doing his best to be condescending and his rhetoric is inflammatory; in my opinion he’s not looking to debate.
I’m at a loss for his inability to accept “faith” as anything good. He seems to not understand the concept. In order for him to have faith he needs it to be proven?? Uh…
He also has the ability to determine what someone’s faith is without asking :rolleyes: It’s begining to piss me off that he’s assuming that I believe certain things just because I choose to label myself a christian.
My favorite gem was this:
Assumption after assumption, covered up with an admittal that he couldn’t prove anything scientifically. He’s broad brushing religion in general. He seems unable to separate people of different beliefs-okay, I don’t believe this but I’m responsible for it (and I’m out right against it) because I’m promoting the faith in it??? I don’t think so. I’m “promoting” something different.
It seems to me that he’s under the delusion that none of this would happen if everyone was an atheist.
I would also like to add that I all sorts of messed up the coding in one of my posts.
“But if I have constructed, in my mind, a temple which I desire to build, and infer from the description of it that I must buy such and such a site and so many thousand stones and other materials, will any sane person tell me that I have drawn a wrong conclusion because my definition is possibly untrue? or will anyone ask me to prove my definition? Such a person would simply be telling me, that I had not conceived that which I had conceived, or be requiring me to prove, that I had conceived that which I had conceived; in fact, evidently trifling.” — Benedict de Spinoza
Soon tomndeb will come in here and ask if Poly would like for him to kick some ass.
I am not suprised at all that Poly got mad. It’s more surprising how he can keep his cool in almost any situation.
As an environmental analyst, I am always amused when I see the term “unmitigated asshole”. If an unmitigated wetland is an impacted wetland that has not been redressed, is an unmitigated asshole an asshole that has been adversely affected by construction projects without amends? Earthmoving machinery can definately do a number on wetland areas, what damage will bulldozers do if they travel up a human digestive tract? How do we mitigate assholes? Is there a federal asshole conservation program? Are there asshole mitigation banks for those who cause adverse affects to anal acreage? If you completely destroy an asshole, must you create a new one to take it’s place? If so, is that what “tearing him a new one” means?
<Sigmund Freud>You know, you only think you’re upset about this. You’re really upset because your mother didn’t hug you enough as a child.</Sigmund Freud>
Seriously, though, I can’t really speak to the Libertarian Newlywed Game thread, because I haven’t been following it, but I really don’t think Badchad is saying what you believe he’s saying. It seems to me that he’s saying that, while a literal reading of the bible requires one to believe things that are factually false, a figurative reading of the bible is intellectually dishonest…accepting as legitimate those teachings and stories that are pleasant and fit one’s worldview (like Jesus saying to love each other) and illegitimate those teachings that seem to support what you have already morally rejected (that people who don’t accept Jesus go to hell for eternity, that homosexuality is immoral, etc) That is to say, the risk of a figurative reading of the bible is that you shape the bible’s teachings around your preexisting beliefs, and therefore do not need to deal with potential contradictions and unpleasantries.
Poly, you’ve helped me out a number of times. Both in threads I was participating in, and others I was mearly watching.
So, let me return the favor. Sometimes, it seems that people take their own intellectual capabilities way too seriously and fall into the trap of actually thinking they know what you are thinking. (Circular logic, yeah, I know…)
Bottom line is: You can’t reason someone out of an unreasonable stance. There is no common ground on which to struggle.
On the side point of swearing, give the guy a break, y’all. I’m surprised he hasn’t bitten some of us before now.
Well, it sounds like this badchad might have a backhoe, a couple cement trucks and maybe a bobcat or two up his butt… mitigating them might help things out a bit.
A reflexive frame is a frame within which the Bible is complete and infallible. (It is reflexive onto itself.) A transitive frame is a frame within which the Bible is incomplete and fallible. (It is transitive, i.e., accessible to other frames.) In a reflexive frame, there must exist certain deductions from the Bible that are undecidable, so it is therefore inconsistent. But in a transitive frame, it is possible to establish a set of statements that are both deductive and consistent.
Biblical literalists operate in a reflexive frame. They look to the Bible to validate the Bible. They are forced to deal with the contradictions they encounter because they believe that the Bible is complete. Any deductive system that is complete is also inconsistent. (See Godel’s paper on undecidable propositions.)
But Biblical figurativists operate in a transitive frame. It is intellectualy dishonest to hold them to the rules of a reflexive frame. Figurativists may develop a deductive system from the Bible that is consistent because they do not have to take the Bible as complete. This is apparently something that Poly’s nemesis, Badchad, does not understand.
I have no problem with the idea that my claiming to be a Christian might make someone confuse me with a literalist Bibliolater, nor that the idea that an underlying truth conveyed through myth and story might not be an easy concept for some people to grasp – but the attitudes and claims of badchad went beyond a simple inability to grasp the points I tried to make, to a point where he was claiming that I was being disingenuous in believing anything if I did not take the Bible literally (or at least that’s how I read it). This goes beyond the bounds of proper debate to an assault on the debater’s character, and I remain thoroughly pissed about it. fixed URL tag
