I think some of these guys post a wall 'o text treatise hoping to get some engagement from someone who will debate on their terms or within their set of assumptions but they’re not up for anything substantive and, in fact, don’t have anything substantive to offer to an actual debate or conversation. It’s no fun for them.
Also I think sometimes they polish off their arguments and post them and let us shoot holes in them so they can go back and refine it. But, no matter – it is just polishing a turd.
I actually give this guy credit for anticipating some of the arguments he might encounter from freethinkers even if he doesn’t fully understand them and can’t counter them.
Before I came to this forum Calilasseia, I was a member of the now defunct forum Ex-Christian.com. There a wise sceptic and agnostic had a phrase which I’ve found very incisive and useful in debates with people who think that reality stems from human consciousness.
“There are certain brute facts about reality which you ignore at your peril.”
It was that adage that made me think of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki riposte. Reality rudely intruded into the lives of those poor people in a thermonuclear way, instantly negating overlong arguments from armchair philosophers with too much time on their hands.
So I can’t really claim that the idea was mine and mine alone. It came from the mind of a clever and honest New Yorker whose handle was Ficino. In homage to this person.