I knew someone who smoked and lived to over a hundred, and someone who never smoked who died in their 40’s from lung cancer, according to your post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, not smoking causes cancer, and smoking a long life, it seems you want to simply repeat the fallacy without ever addressing it, but it isn’t going to going to go away as it’s poor reasoning (irrational), and without some objective evidence to support your core claim.
Now pay attention, you may learn something, correlation is not causation.
Now you’re offering an argumentum ad populum fallacy, and you seem to be shifting the goal posts slightly, from religion being essential for those things, to it performing better at producing those things, perhaps you thought no one notice this shift? Would you like a quote of your original claim?
I shan’t even feign surprise that Nyarl got there before me, or that @FILECABINET has ignored the question, and responded with a new raft of unevidenced assertions, and rhetoric.
Meanwhile I will point out that @CyberLN’s perspective is examining your claims critically and objectively, whereas you are clearly not, The former is essential for honest debate. What you are doing now is preaching your beliefs.
Is that a yes you are, or a no you are not making that assertion? Only you seem not to have answered @CyberLN’s question…
Your examples are a false equivalence, as there were likely a host of other factors influencing those things, that you have not even mentioned. You’re also moving the goal posts here, as your original claim was that “strong religions, no matter what their doctrines might be, are essential to act as the fabric that unites the population.”
Your anecdotal claims don’t objectively evidence that assertion, and of course all one need offer is one counter example to demonstrate the claim to be false, as the word essential makes the claim an absolute. North Korea, China, seem like two good counter examples. As I said initially, and you ignored of course, whilst I accept that religion can, or might, add societal cohesion, I’d need to be convinced by some strong objective evidence that religion was essential, and you have offered nothing but more anecdotal claims, most of which wouldn’t support that assertion even were they true, and they seem to be describing some pretty subjective concepts in places.
People seem to ignore the fact that in dictatorships, such as North Korean and China, the people worship the dictator as their deity. You can see the same thing happening in America with the nitwits who kiss trump’s ass, although he is one of the most despicable people in the country.
You are ignoring all responses to your posts, and the several fallacies you have used, maybe address those, once you’ve finished preaching your unevidenced beliefs at us that is.
Oh, in all your excitement you forgot to answer @CyberLN’s question…AGAIN? Plus a whole raft of questions others have asked of course…
Obviously, you are on a rant and think you are talking to a bunch of third-grade idiots. do you have anything at all worthwhile to talk about? Do you think you have said anything at all that is even remotely rational in all your inane venting? We will be sure to give you a participation trophy at the next monthly meeting. We appreciate the effort. Everyone has to start someplace.
So no objective evidence is coming, and he has no intention of even acknowledging Nyarl’s question, I think at this point it is fairly obvious why as well.
Did early humans even have a concept of "productive lives? You’ll have your work cut out establishing that.
Plus, you do realise that every organism in the biosphere that has ever existed, had to “overcome challenges” in order to survive and reproduce? Including organisms that lived millions of years before the concept of religion even existed, and which did not possess the cognitive machinery required for abstract thought of any sort, let alone that required to concoct a mythology?
If the vacuity of thought you present here is an example of the effect of believing in a cartoon magic man, then I and others here are truly glad our brains were spared the requisite palsying.
Correct me if I’m wrong. But doesn’t that come off like you’re close minded to the views of others? I always thought debating with others was a learning experience. If you’re wrong, then you stand corrected. But if your mind is closed to even that, what’s the point of debate?
“Closed-minded?” File Cabinet? You can’t be serious! He has hard facts backing up every assertion he has ever made. … We just wouldn’t be able to understand them.
Well there you go, nothing @Filecabinet posted suggested he was ever here for debate, but that trolling demonstrates it beyond any reasonable doubt. . He wanted to preach, and show how impressive his “reasoning” was. Sadly he has not learned to think critically, only to indulge the same bias theists and religious apologetics does all the time. The irony is of course palpable.
He is as closed minded a poster as I’ve ever met. However the way his strident unevidenced and irrational beliefs were challenged by other atheists here, thoroughly exposes the equally dishonest lies by theists like Sherlock for example, about the atheists here, who almost universally rejected his rhetoric, and for the same reasons they reject theistic apologetics.
I have said this before, but when extremists from both sides of a debate are attacking me, because I am insisting they offer more than their strident irrational rhetoric to support their beliefs, I usually infer I’m showing the right amount of epistemological prudence.
It’s ironic really that Sherlock and FILECABINET seem more angered by those who don’t share either opposing beliefs, than by each other, perhaps because they use the same mendacious rhetoric, they are certainly two of the most relentlessly dishonest posers I can remember. Refusing to answer questions, and making endless assertions they don’t care to defend, only repeat until inevitably they are shown the door.
