But ya just had to get another fucking novel in before you responded, eh?
I have a few adjectives to describe that maneuver.
2 Likes
my apologies, I had already written that response before I saw your comment. Had I saw your comment first, I would not have written it.
No problem, I appreciate that reading it all of necessity, must be a trial, especially as itâs often repetitive.
No, thatâs definitely not an opinion I share, but since after many many posts this still seems unclear, this is another reason to move on.
After 60+ posts over four days, I would say the only thing confirmed here is the definition of an intractable position.
I would only add that with the level of acrimony between existing religions and belief structures currently, logic and critical thinking will always take a backseat to belief and fear.
Well a misconception with this sort of apologetics, is the belief that logically consistent arguments offer support to their belief, but this is dubious.
It is logically consistent to assert that if Superman existed as imagined, then he could be harmed by kryptonite. This is not credible evidence for the claim, or for Superman.
A claim that if a deity exists outside of objective scrutiny, methods like science are unsuitable to examine such a deity, are logically consistent, but it is no more significant than the claim above about a comic book character.
We have seen countless such arguments, and the best test is to use the argument in this fashion, if they lose nothing for mermaids or unicorns or comic book characters, then the arguments is of no objective value.
The alternative to objective scrutiny, is subjective bias, and what could one not believe using that. It seems to be heading in the opposite direction of critically examining beliefs.
It feels like the several threads of pedantic back-and-forth has been about the notion that itâs logical to consider a possibility, however remote, so long as itâs carefully framed as a hypothetical with no specific claims being made. It seems like a lot of effort to go through just to score that dubious point.
I used to think that an atheist on another site who used to post that he didnât care about the âhobbyâ of some believer or other, was a bit derisive and needlessly harsh, but in light of this conversation Iâm more comfortable with such remarks because when you think about it like youâre framing it here, Sheldon, a theist making such points is very much like a comic book collector debating the plot points of Superman #37 or something. One can get quite passionate about and involved in it but either way itâs still indulging a hobby specialist interest and the made up backstory for it and neither hobby has anything to do with anything that actually ever happened.
1 Like
I always want to give people every chance to offer every defence of any belief or claim, I am of course âargumentativeâ by nature, though I donât think this is necessarily a bad thing, since to me a truly critical examination demands that much, but yes I am inclined to think that hypothetical claims about deities donât really differ to hypothetical claims about unicorns or comic book characters, or any non-existent thing.
A subjective belief can be held about anything, they can be either harmless or pernicious, they can be rational or irrational, they can be true or they can be erroneous, they can be trivial or they can be important, but what they cannot be, is as reliable as beliefs that can be objectively verified.
2 Likes
Indeed, Willard Van Ormand Quine, in his seminal textbook Methods of Logic, pointed out that logically true propositions need have no connection to reality. His example involves Cerberus.
2 Likes
there are things in life that happen to people that just FEEL right, and how the bad things theyâve experienced eventually connect into something that can be considered good. It might even be said nobody deserves such âgood,â but then receives it anyway as a âgift.â
FEELINGS(not evidence, feelings), such as this is enough to bolster oneâs faith that somebody is watching over them and they donât need to think too much.