AJ,

I did promise that I wouldn’t be continuing our conversation but you’ve really caught me by surprise with your last lot of posts.

I believe it’s possible for two reasonable people to disagree on an issue. This happens a lot- for example at work this morning I was listening to some people debating the flood levy, and I found myself strongly disagreeing with the person who was dominating the conversation. Nonetheless I don’t think they were being “unreasonable”- it’s just that the two opposing sides have different ideas about what is really important and how to implement it. This is a generally applicable idea- two reasonable people can disagree on things.

Until your last lot of posts yesterday, I had thought you were a reasonable person, despite disagreeing with me.

Brushing off William Lane Craig with a wave of the hand “Oh he’s a dill, his reasoning is clearly impaired, how can you take him seriously?”, does NOT constitute an argument. It’s called an ad hominem attack. The man has two phd’s and has probably forgotten more than you’ll ever know. If you don’t understand the arguments/are ignorant of them/aren’t sure how to respond it’s ok to admit this- there’s plenty of things you don’t know and there’s plenty of things I don’t know- we are merely everyday people discussing an important issue over OLO.

This was one example of many. If you’re going to constantly ignore the best arguments I make, make factual errors, make ad hominem attacks, throw in red herrings and respond to something other than what I’ve said (when I have CLEARLY stated my views) then I’m not sure why I bother with arguing over the internet. At least in person I’d have some idea of your integrity/seriousness/willingness to discuss.

Clearly that was a good decision to end the discussion from my side of things (for all practical purposes) with my last post, since it’s now clear that you are more interested in disrespectful, dogmatic debate than thoughtful discussion.

Cheer

Cheers*

Squeers,

Thanks for your kind words, I’m humbled by them. Thanks too for the link, fascinate stuff there, although I’m only half way through it so far.

I’d be curious to see how a thread on scientism would go. What constitutes scientism seems to vary quite a bit depending on who you ask and their level of hostility towards it.

Trav,

I too thought this was going fine until your last post where you descend in to a nasty attack in which you accuse me of all sorts of things that you not only fail to provide examples of, but that you know are not even true to begin with.

<<Brushing off William Lane Craig with a wave of the hand “Oh he’s a dill, his reasoning is clearly impaired, how can you take him seriously?”, does NOT constitute an argument.>>

Absolutely.

Which is why I provided you with a link to a video that debunks the first premise of Craig’s re-hashed, dusted-off old cosmological argument so that you could see the reasoning behind my claims.

Did you bother to watch the video?

It doesn’t sound like it.

<<It’s called an ad hominem attack.>>

No, it’s not.

An ad hominem attack is an attempt to divert attention from the issue by attacking the person instead of their arguments.

That being said, the only ad hominem attack here is in your last post with your questioning of my integrity and seriousness and accusing me of being unreasonable and dogmatic without actually backing your claims with any reasoning or examples.

You do realise that others can just read what I’ve said and verify if what you’re saying is accurate, don’t you?

<<The man has two phd’s and has probably forgotten more than you’ll ever know.>>

Precisely why he should know better.

Craig demonstrates, in the video I linked to, that he doesn’t even understand the concept of ‘I’ - something a person with a PHD in philosophy should certainly understand.

Again, did you even bother to watch the video?

<<If you don’t understand the arguments/are ignorant of them/aren’t sure how to respond it’s ok to admit this...>>

I certainly admit when I don’t understand something. I did so earlier when I told you that I had no idea of what you meant by the “young university group-think bubble”.

I know and understand very well what Craig’s arguments are as well as how to debunk them. All five “proofs” in fact.

Continued...

...Continued

I’m sorry that I didn’t have the posting allowance to go into detail as to why the cosmological argument fails - that’s why I gave posted the link to at least give you a taste - I could go in to them all if you’d like but it would probably be quicker if you just Google it all. There’s nothing I could say that’s not already out there.

It’s like I said, his cosmological argument (in fact, all of his arguments) have been debunked thoroughly and repetitively, so there’s certainly no shortage of websites.

<<...there’s plenty of things you don’t know and there’s plenty of things I don’t know- we are merely everyday people discussing an important issue over OLO. This was one example of many.>>

Well, since we’ve now cleared this up by showing that it wasn’t, could you please give me some examples of where I:

-ignore you’re best arguments;
-make factual errors;
-use ad hominem attacks; [We can check this one off now actually]
-respond to something other than what you’ve said.

That first one is particularly offensive given the time I invested in taking great care to cover every point of yours as accurately and as thoroughly as I possibly could within the word limits.

<<Clearly that was a good decision to end the discussion from my side of things (for all practical purposes) with my last post, since it’s now clear that you are more interested in disrespectful, dogmatic debate than thoughtful discussion.>>

Could you provide me with some examples of where I have been dogmatic?

I apologise if I come across as “disrespectful”, but I have a habit of telling it how it is, so a better defence would be to prove me wrong rather than simply crying foul.

It sounds to me like “thoughtful discussion”, to you, means discussion without mentioning something if it might offend someone, regardless of whether or not it’s true.

At the end of the day though, Trav, you haven’t actually demonstrated that any of what I have said is wrong, just that you don’t like it.

Foyle, you state:

<<Grateful,
You have fallen back to the idiotic 'we cannot know the mind of god defence'. In an earlier post I warned against that defence.

You are in effect agreeing with the idea that god permitted the HIV virus to jump the species barrier to punish humans, many of whom are innocent victims of someone else's behaviour, such as the virtuous wives and of promiscuous men.

I would back my ethics against yours or your god's any day.>>

It seems you have given up on reason, if the best you can do in responding to my post is to verbal me and erect a strawman for you to knock down. Nothing constructive can come from this approach.

As for ethics, cann't you see that your post is itself an example of poor etiquette and unethical (at least in my religion). You are betting on a loser, bro! I'll leave you to it.