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[By the way, I corrected your sloppy spelling, cupcake]"Assumptive language" is the term you use to describe my statements of conditional certainty ... just before you accuse me of making statements of unconditional certainty.
I'm betting you won't get to them ever, and that has less to do with how much time you have, and more to do with my ability to expose the usual fallacies you employ for rebuttal.Hmm. "Hate?" Ok. Intense hate. Right. Ahem.The issue, I think (because I can't claim to speak for all atheists), is not so much with Christian faith, but with the nihilistic anti-reason of faith in general. And if you object to the phrase "nihilistic anti-reason of faith," please don't voice your objection until you have fully considered nature of the center stage role that faith has played in the ongoing drama featuring the several tribes of superstitious rock chucking retards in the middle east.How did I do? Did I capture the "hate" well enough for you?
And just to be clear; as I have stated before, atheism offers no certain immunity from the anti-rationality of faith--there are clearly atheists around who hold an unstubstantiated conviction that there is just-no-God, and they are no more rational than anyone else holding beliefs by the same retarded standard.
I suspect that here in the U.S., where the privileges that Chistians enjoy are taken for granted, whenever the validiy of faith's realationship with objective reality is questioned, it appears that Christianity is under attack rather than anti-rationality.
Hollie has the end-game of superstious retards characterized precisely: "X is true ... because I say so." "I am right ... because I say so." "You are wrong ... because I say so." You don't dare question this because you can't "PROVE" them wrong.
Which leads to the obstinate hypocricy of the faithful in setting the bar of validation at "PROOF" for others, while not even requiring logical validity for themselves, is just the tip of the iceberg that is their sanctimoniously arrogant anti-reason.
You know what? I might be wrong that the issue isn't about Christians. The obvious (undeserved) privilege of deference they enjoy, combined with their manifestly retarded hubris, just serves to make them a bunch of insufferable *****.
Maybe this guy does a better job. Sam Harris Simply Destroys Christianity - YouTube
Because some of them are not smart enough to realize that no amount of hard work will suffice to discredit a belief system that is already intellectually and morally bankrupt--faith is bereft of moral and intellectual capital.
No one is really trying ... it's just being pointed out. And the reason for pointing out how wrong you are, is the hope that you might develop a moral conscience--that cannot be consoled by obedience to God--such that you will all stop killing everyone--whether through war, genocide, murder, or the cultivation of ignorance.
If the sentiment was at all reciprocal, you would probably not have any reason to make this complaint."That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution rages among some, and to their eternal infamy the clergy can furnish their quota of imps for such a business."--James MadisonThis isn't happening the way you think. Christians are literally working hard at irradicating the religious heritage of our nation."The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous."--Thomas PaineIf you are not considering talking about David Barton, then you are just talking crazy talk.
These roots?"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."--John AdamsIncluding the Christians. No one here is feeding them to lions. I kid you not.
Oh, let's not pretend that there's no effort among the Christians to advance Christianity though the coercive appurtenances of government.“The Rule of Law is second only to the Rule of Love. The here and now is less important than the hereafter.”–-Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court JusticeAnd if contemporary Christians had some perspective on what forced religion is, they'd stop insisting that their efforts to wedge their religion into government policy are all so innocent.
Well, rational atheists ARE over it. To us, "In God We Trust" on the money has the same objective intellectual and moral value as "We Throw Salt Over Our Shoulders For Good Luck." "In God We Trust" just enjoys the benefit of brevity.
I can't think of a single uniquely Christian contribution that is of any benefit at all. And to clarify, I'm not speaking of contributions by Christians that are just the rationally valid contributions decent folks would offer regardless of religion.
The tenets of Christianity-specifically characteristic of Christianity-are not all that, or a bag of chips. They're rather embarrassingly self-indicting.
Human sacrifice--even human self-sacrifice--is intellectually and morally repugnant. Nihilism, no matter how divinely rationalized, is not a moral paradigm any rational society should embrace.
Well that's just sad. It's sad that without Jesus Christ, there'd just be no reason for the members of your church in Chandler to attempt something so nice. Thanks Jesus!
I agree with this. Entirely. But I am skeptical of the charitable under-pinnings that churches lay claim to.
I have yet to discover a church--ANYWHERE--that when the collection plate is passed around, the kind folks of the congregation are as free of conscience to pull a few bucks out of the plate--for their needs, as they are to put a few bucks in. Why is that?
There are so many things wrong with this rebuttal that I don't have time this morning, or today, to get into them all.
"Assumptive language" is the term you use to describe my statements of conditional certainty ... just before you accuse me of making statements of uncnditional certainity.
Let's just say your first clause has merit; a pot calling a kettle black, does not make the kettle any less black.You also haven't responded to the horrors of materialism, but try to charaterize Christianity as being morally bankrupt.
Wrong. Your pretense that ID is science; that your superstition and every conclusion derived from it is rational, is you taking terms from a rational worldview and insisting your superstitious worldview has any logical basis in reality. They don't.This is the most preposterous thing of all about your post, that you borrow terms from the theistic worldview and pretend like they have any logical basis in the materialistic worldview.
]You know what? I might be wrong that the issue isn't about Christians. The obvious (undeserved) privilege of deference they enjoy, combined with their manifestly retarded hubris, just serves to make them a bunch of insufferable *****.[/INDENT]How did I do? Did I capture the "hate" well enough for you?
Maybe this guy does a better job. Sam Harris Simply Destroys Christianity - YouTube
Because some of them are not smart enough to realize that no amount of hard work will suffice to discredit a belief system that is already intellectually and morally bankrupt--faith is bereft of moral and intellectual capital.
00 in the WHOLE video here. 
Thank you for that.I'm betting you won't get to them ever, and that has less to do with how much time you have, and more to do with my ability to expose the usual fallacies you employ for rebuttal.There are so many things wrong with this rebuttal that I don't have time this morning, or today, to get into them all.
"Assumptive language" is the term you use to describe my statements of conditional certainty ... just before you accuse me of making statements of uncnditional certainity.
Let's just say your first clause has merit; a pot calling a kettle black, does not make the kettle any less black.
Wrong. Your pretense that ID is science; that your superstition and every conclusion derived from it is rational, is you taking terms from a rational worldview and insisting your superstitious worldview has any logical basis in reality. They don't.This is the most preposterous thing of all about your post, that you borrow terms from the theistic worldview and pretend like they have any logical basis in the materialistic worldview.
This isn't even a response to my statement you put in quotes. I was referring to your materialist worldview that drives your belief system. Perhaps you should educate yourself on what you actually believe, since your posts scream that you are utterly and totally lost. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself a bit more with the worldview which you espouse...
"Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism, and spiritualism.
Despite the large number of philosophical schools and subtle nuances between many,[2][3][4] all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, which are defined in contrast to each other: Idealism, and materialism.[a] The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality, and the primary distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: "what does reality consist of and how does it originate?" To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind (ideas) are primary, and matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary, the product of matter acting upon matter.[4]
The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically, famously by René Descartes. However, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another.
Materialism is often associated with reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description typically, at a more reduced level. Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties, or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. Jerry Fodor influentially argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics. A lot of vigorous literature has grown up around the relation between these views.
Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, and the curvature of space. However philosophers such as Mary Midgley suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.
Materialism typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, vitalism, and dual-aspect monism. Its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept of Determinism, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers. It has been criticized as a spiritually empty philosophy.
During the 19th century, Karl Marx extended the concept of materialism to elaborate a materialist conception of history centered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the institutions created, reproduced, or destroyed by that activity (see materialist conception of history)."
Materialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I'm demonstrating that the issue is entirely immaterial to you--"assumptive" or "certain" language will inspire an attack based in its reciprocal for no reason but to attack.[By the way, I corrected your sloppy spelling, cupcake]"Assumptive language" is the term you use to describe my statements of conditional certainty ... just before you accuse me of making statements of unconditional certainty.
Conjunctions aren't your strong suit are they? My quote implies you do both, use assumptive language and pretend that because you aren't aware of it, it doesn't exist. Why is this not clear to you?? I'm saying some statements use assumptive language and others are statements of unconditional certainty.
Anyone with half a brain isn't falling for this notion of yours that I'm trying to trick anyone. I'm not the one here presenting an invisible friend and trying to peddle the notion he's not imaginary.I'm betting you won't get to them ever, and that has less to do with how much time you have, and more to do with my ability to expose the usual fallacies you employ for rebuttal.There are so many things wrong with this rebuttal that I don't have time this morning, or today, to get into them all.
"Assumptive language" is the term you use to describe my statements of conditional certainty ... just before you accuse me of making statements of uncnditional certainity.
Let's just say your first clause has merit; a pot calling a kettle black, does not make the kettle any less black.
Wrong. Your pretense that ID is science; that your superstition and every conclusion derived from it is rational, is you taking terms from a rational worldview and insisting your superstitious worldview has any logical basis in reality. They don't.This is the most preposterous thing of all about your post, that you borrow terms from the theistic worldview and pretend like they have any logical basis in the materialistic worldview.
Loki, you may be able to trick the weak minded with your absolute statements but anyone with half a brain isn't falling for them.
I am not pretending. You're pretending it doesn't.You pretend that the religion of Christianity requires 100% faith, ...
Whatever you're speaking of, it doesn't apply to me as the notions I have presented are all consistent with valid logic applied to verifiable evidence--hence, no faith needed and not fairy tales.... but it requires no more faith than your Darwinian fairytale.
What a fatuous mischaracterization of everything--BUT yet a candid admission that your Creator is nothing.The Bible teaches the universe was created from nothing, which totally aligns with Big Bang cosmology.
Who is trying to trick who?For all of Hollie's sound and fury about Christianity wanting to take science back to the dark ages, it was Einstein's materialistic worldview that caused him to miss the Big Bang. Everything pointed to the universe having a beginning but this idea was repugnant to him, because it aligned with Christianity.
The verifiability of the existence of some carpenter named Jesus, and archaeological verification of ancient civilizations, are ENTIRELY immaterial to your belief in this God thing of yours. Hence, still 100% faith.It is also widely accepted that Jesus existed and is a real historical figure. The Bible is just as much a historical document as it is religious, with 95% of the geographically features and civilizations described therein having been archeologically verified. So the faith component you refer to is about 3 to 5% for believers, not 100% as you so deceptively try to infer.
The quality of New Testament material is almost embarrassing in comparison to other works of antiquity Next to the New Testament, the greatest amount of manuscript testimony is of Homers Illiad, which was the bible of the ancient Greeks.
Dr. Bruce Metzgar, quoted in Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ, p. 60
Contrast that with the depiction of Jesus Christ in the gospels. They talk about someone who actually lived several decades earlier, and they name namescrucified under Pontius Pilate, when Caiaphas was the high priest, and the father of Alexander and Rufus carried his cross, for example. Thats concrete historic stuff. It has nothing in common with stories about what supposedly happened once upon a time.[You think he is referring to Darwin here???
Dr. Greg Boyd, quoted in Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ, p. 121
Wow.Funny thing about this debate is that both sides were "high fiving" that they had won. I found the following interesting "unbiased commentary". Please pardon the language. I am merely linking to this guy...
A Google search of the debate reveals how much a bro's predispositions influence his opinions on the outcome - several athiest blogs seem convinced that Harris crushed WLC, and Christian apologists are already bragging about their debate superstar chalking up another one.
Here's the deal: WLC wrecked Harris' shit.
Let me qualify that: I'm a trained debater, and from the perspective of a trained debater, this was a fucking bloodbath. WLC has a strict flow, he stuck to the proposition at hand (He constantly affirmed that objective morality must be based in God and can't exist without Him) and he easily and consistently dismissed arguments of Harris' that didn't matter to that proposition.
So when Harris trotted out the problem of evil and the problem of the unevangelized, WLC shrugged those off and went about laying waste to Harris' case like a machine. Yeah, if I'm a judge at a debate tournament, and these two get up and say exactly what was said last night, I'm signing a ballot for WLC and giving high speaks all around. I had never heard of WLC before, so I thought that Sam Harris was going to have no problem, but holy shit. Apparently the bro did debate in high school and in undergrad, and it shows.
Okay, here's my caveat: there's no real clear sense of what it means to win one of these things. Yeah, WLC did a better job of affirming the proposition at hand; but Sam Harris was a much more broadly compelling speaker. He was definitely funnier, and the audience just seemed more stirred by what he had to say. Is that closer to a win? Because really, what's at stake here? Google tells me that pretty much everyone knows that WLC is a fucking badass at debate, so it's not like reputation is the issue - national championships don't get handed out at this level, kids, sorry. So when Harris says something like, "It's odd that, when we have all our preconceptions out of the way, when we were dealing with the world as it is, assumptions stripped bare, that's precisely the time when we have nothing to say about the most important questions of humanity - wouldn't that be strange?" And then sits back down, the rippled whispers might be more important than WLC's rhetoric. It's hard to say.
I would imagine that at ND the audience is a pretty fucking sophisticated group of kids; everyone who goes there has to take philosophy and theology, even the engineers. So when Harris mentions the problem of evil, they all go, "Um, don't we have two bros with definitive solutions to that problem on our faculty?" (Maybe that's up for grabs, but they're definitely two of the most important solutions in the last century, and they're both at ND.) and aren't necessarily impressed. They've probably thought through every word WLC had to say three or four times over in their first two years of undergrad. So just because Harris really stirred them doesn't mean he had better points; maybe he just had newer points.
Anyway, I'll post a link to the video when it goes up. It was a really interesting debate, even if there wasn't as much clash as I'd like.
Philosophy Bro: Special Event: Sam Harris v. William Lane Craig
What a fatuous mischaracterization of everything--BUT yet a candid admission that your Creator is nothing.
Wow.Funny thing about this debate is that both sides were "high fiving" that they had won. I found the following interesting "unbiased commentary". Please pardon the language. I am merely linking to this guy...
A Google search of the debate reveals how much a bro's predispositions influence his opinions on the outcome - several athiest blogs seem convinced that Harris crushed WLC, and Christian apologists are already bragging about their debate superstar chalking up another one.
Here's the deal: WLC wrecked Harris' shit.
Let me qualify that: I'm a trained debater, and from the perspective of a trained debater, this was a fucking bloodbath. WLC has a strict flow, he stuck to the proposition at hand (He constantly affirmed that objective morality must be based in God and can't exist without Him) and he easily and consistently dismissed arguments of Harris' that didn't matter to that proposition.
So when Harris trotted out the problem of evil and the problem of the unevangelized, WLC shrugged those off and went about laying waste to Harris' case like a machine. Yeah, if I'm a judge at a debate tournament, and these two get up and say exactly what was said last night, I'm signing a ballot for WLC and giving high speaks all around. I had never heard of WLC before, so I thought that Sam Harris was going to have no problem, but holy shit. Apparently the bro did debate in high school and in undergrad, and it shows.
Okay, here's my caveat: there's no real clear sense of what it means to win one of these things. Yeah, WLC did a better job of affirming the proposition at hand; but Sam Harris was a much more broadly compelling speaker. He was definitely funnier, and the audience just seemed more stirred by what he had to say. Is that closer to a win? Because really, what's at stake here? Google tells me that pretty much everyone knows that WLC is a fucking badass at debate, so it's not like reputation is the issue - national championships don't get handed out at this level, kids, sorry. So when Harris says something like, "It's odd that, when we have all our preconceptions out of the way, when we were dealing with the world as it is, assumptions stripped bare, that's precisely the time when we have nothing to say about the most important questions of humanity - wouldn't that be strange?" And then sits back down, the rippled whispers might be more important than WLC's rhetoric. It's hard to say.
I would imagine that at ND the audience is a pretty fucking sophisticated group of kids; everyone who goes there has to take philosophy and theology, even the engineers. So when Harris mentions the problem of evil, they all go, "Um, don't we have two bros with definitive solutions to that problem on our faculty?" (Maybe that's up for grabs, but they're definitely two of the most important solutions in the last century, and they're both at ND.) and aren't necessarily impressed. They've probably thought through every word WLC had to say three or four times over in their first two years of undergrad. So just because Harris really stirred them doesn't mean he had better points; maybe he just had newer points.
Anyway, I'll post a link to the video when it goes up. It was a really interesting debate, even if there wasn't as much clash as I'd like.
Philosophy Bro: Special Event: Sam Harris v. William Lane Craig
I really struck a nerve with that Sam Harris YouTube.
I threw that in as an after-thought, just so you wouldn't get confused by the invective of my "intense hate."
You're spending some special time there making sure everyone "knows" how Dr. Harris got punked.
But you're not addressing any points. Why is that?
Ok then. If there was nothing, whence this creator? Try to avoid the question-begging, special-pleading appeals to ignorance you usually attempt to assert.What a fatuous mischaracterization of everything--BUT yet a candid admission that your Creator is nothing.
FROM nothing, not BY nothing imbecile.
I explained this clearly; the Harris YouTube was an after-thought.Wow.Funny thing about this debate is that both sides were "high fiving" that they had won. I found the following interesting "unbiased commentary". Please pardon the language. I am merely linking to this guy...
A Google search of the debate reveals how much a bro's predispositions influence his opinions on the outcome - several athiest blogs seem convinced that Harris crushed WLC, and Christian apologists are already bragging about their debate superstar chalking up another one.
Here's the deal: WLC wrecked Harris' shit.
Let me qualify that: I'm a trained debater, and from the perspective of a trained debater, this was a fucking bloodbath. WLC has a strict flow, he stuck to the proposition at hand (He constantly affirmed that objective morality must be based in God and can't exist without Him) and he easily and consistently dismissed arguments of Harris' that didn't matter to that proposition.
So when Harris trotted out the problem of evil and the problem of the unevangelized, WLC shrugged those off and went about laying waste to Harris' case like a machine. Yeah, if I'm a judge at a debate tournament, and these two get up and say exactly what was said last night, I'm signing a ballot for WLC and giving high speaks all around. I had never heard of WLC before, so I thought that Sam Harris was going to have no problem, but holy shit. Apparently the bro did debate in high school and in undergrad, and it shows.
Okay, here's my caveat: there's no real clear sense of what it means to win one of these things. Yeah, WLC did a better job of affirming the proposition at hand; but Sam Harris was a much more broadly compelling speaker. He was definitely funnier, and the audience just seemed more stirred by what he had to say. Is that closer to a win? Because really, what's at stake here? Google tells me that pretty much everyone knows that WLC is a fucking badass at debate, so it's not like reputation is the issue - national championships don't get handed out at this level, kids, sorry. So when Harris says something like, "It's odd that, when we have all our preconceptions out of the way, when we were dealing with the world as it is, assumptions stripped bare, that's precisely the time when we have nothing to say about the most important questions of humanity - wouldn't that be strange?" And then sits back down, the rippled whispers might be more important than WLC's rhetoric. It's hard to say.
I would imagine that at ND the audience is a pretty fucking sophisticated group of kids; everyone who goes there has to take philosophy and theology, even the engineers. So when Harris mentions the problem of evil, they all go, "Um, don't we have two bros with definitive solutions to that problem on our faculty?" (Maybe that's up for grabs, but they're definitely two of the most important solutions in the last century, and they're both at ND.) and aren't necessarily impressed. They've probably thought through every word WLC had to say three or four times over in their first two years of undergrad. So just because Harris really stirred them doesn't mean he had better points; maybe he just had newer points.
Anyway, I'll post a link to the video when it goes up. It was a really interesting debate, even if there wasn't as much clash as I'd like.
Philosophy Bro: Special Event: Sam Harris v. William Lane Craig
I really struck a nerve with that Sam Harris YouTube.
I threw that in as an after-thought, just so you wouldn't get confused by the invective of my "intense hate."
You're spending some special time there making sure everyone "knows" how Dr. Harris got punked.
But you're not addressing any points. Why is that?
I did above regarding the stereotypical ad hominem attacks Harris spent wasted time going on about instead of addressing the salient point of the debate. Apparently you missed that, or just thought that no one would notice and you could use it as an opportunity to make it look like I hadn't addressed Harris' points.
All religious writing is presumptive.is it just me, or is all religious writing assumptive?
is it just me, or is all religious writing assumptive?
Ok then. If there was nothing, whence this creator? Try to avoid the question-begging, special-pleading appeals to ignorance you usually attempt to assert.What a fatuous mischaracterization of everything--BUT yet a candid admission that your Creator is nothing.
FROM nothing, not BY nothing imbecile.
All religious writing is presumptive.is it just me, or is all religious writing assumptive?
I wouldn't call it coincidence that all creationist and intelligent design writings are presumptive as well.
